RASH SPENDING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 November 1939, Page 3

RASH SPENDING

CRITICISED BY OPPOSITION

LEADER. CHECK GREATLY NEEDED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) ROTORUA, October 31. “Policies based on pleasant sounding platitudes and making things pleasant all round regardless of the burden and trouble being stored up for the day of reckoning are the curse of democracy,” said the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Adam Hamilton, in an address last night to a large gathering of National Party supporters. “We have rightly been warned a thousand times in British history that rash expenditure of money extracted from the taxpayer and ratepayer is one besetting vice and peril of democracy. Once stimulate local and personal cupidity to feed on the public purse through scattered grants, at the request of individuals and sections, and the structure of enterprise and selfreliance is undermined. It is the curse of popular government. It is a grave responsibility of the Government to check and correct the flood of public expenditure. “The first duty of the Government must be to review unremunerative expenditure. It is not too much to say that failure to do this is discouraging enterprise and affecting savings. It is an 'unfortunate fact that there is today a widespread belief that the Government possesses a bottomless purse and that the more money is extracted from it the happier everyone will be. It cannot be repeated too often that no more can be got out of the Government purse than the taxpayer puts in.