WAR EXPENDITURE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 March 1943, Page 2

WAR EXPENDITURE

COST TO NEW ZEALAND. POSITION REVIEWED BY MINISTER. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Some of the items of expenditure under the War Expenses Account were given in the House of Representatives yesterday by the Minister in Charge of War Expenditure, Mr Hamilton. Expenditure from the beginning of the war up to December 31 last amounted to £163,000,000, he said. Of that total £65,000,000 was spent on soldiers’ pay and their keep. Equipment had accounted for £33,000,000, and transport for £6,000,000. On the acquisition of land and construction of buildings, ships, fortifications and aerodromes for the armed forces, £22,000,000 had been spent. Mr Hamilton said that it was possibly only the last items mentioned that would be criticised. It amounted only to about 20 per cent of the expenditure altogether and the other 80 per cent was not likely to be criticised. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland: You have another £40,000,000 to mention yet. Mr Hamilton said a large amount of the other expenditure had been on the housing of American troops and the construction of stores and hospitals for their use. All proposed expenditure was examined by a Supply Council and reported on by the Treasury before it came before the War Cabinet and was finally approved. He claimed that war expenditure was reasonably examined, though perhaps-not so minutely as in peace times, but that was explained by the urgency of much of the work for defence and similar purposes.