TRAVELLING COSTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 July 1940, Page 5

TRAVELLING COSTS

MR JULL CRITICISES ESTIMATES i AGRICULTURAL DEPARTMENT VOTE. MR POLSON SYMPATHISES WITH OFFICERS. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. .Votes totalling £48,650 for travelling expenses for officers of the Department of Agriculture were severely criticised by Mr Jull (Opposition, Waipawa) when the estimates of the department’s expenditure were under consideration in the House of Representatives yesterday. “Here we are in a war,” Mr Jull said, “and we have Ministers telling the people that they are doing everything possible to reduce unnecessary expenditure. Here we have £48,650 in one department for travelling expenses last year.” Making allowances for odds and ends and assuming that £32,000 of that sum was spent on petrol, Mr Jull said that was enough to do about 6,000,000 miles of travelling a year on 20 miles a gallon, after throwing about £16,000 or £lB,OOO in for odds and ends. It was enough to go once round the world one day every week, and then leave a trip for the Minister. The Acting-Minister of Agriculture, Mr Langstone, said that the Department of Agriculture embraced a number of divisions, which provided services involving a certain amount of travelling. There was apparently a demand for these services, but if there was any unreasonable or unnecessary travelling it should be stopped. Economy should be exercised along with efficiency. If £48,000 was worthily spent and the people were getting the service there was not much cause for complaint. Offhand he could not say, but the matter would be looked into. .Speaking again later, Mr Jull said he took very stronrg exception to the flippant way in which the Minister, Mr Langstone, treated his criticism. He considered it his duty to call attention to the gross extravagance in travelling expenses in the department. “I suggest that even if only half of the money were for purchasing petrol,” Mr Jull said, “that would buy enough for 50 trips a week from Auckland to Invercargill and back. The Minister should take a little more interest in this vote and not seek, by flippant remarks, to turn away a reasoned request.” Mr Polson (Opposition, Stratford)' said he had had the pleasure of travelling with a number of officers of the fields division of the department in recent weeks, and he had a great deal of sympathy with them. The mileage allowance decreased as the distance increased, and the further they travelled the less they got. The Prime Minister, Mr Fraser: “Of course you know there has to be very strict supervision of the running of cars.’ Mr Polson: “I know that.”