The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16,1885. THE PUBLIC WORKS ESTIMATES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 2096, 16 September 1885, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16,1885. THE PUBLIC WORKS ESTIMATES.

The determination of the House to reduce the Public Works Estimates is in many respects very remarkable. Individual members have session aftor session denounced the expenditure as moat reckless, and the House and Ministers have always agreed with them; but when it came to voting on the various items, each member, no matter how provident he professed to be, was up in arms directly he saw that it waß proposed to take even twenty shillings off expenditure in the district which lie happened to represent. If it was only the building of. a useless office, he would " get his back up" and deolare that the welfare of the country depended on the work. By means of the most shameless log-rolling the expendi-

ture was always kept up at the old rate' though the opinion of the House, had it been taken without prejudice, would have ; been given in 1 favor of retrenchmotit. Tliia session; the eyes of members seem to have -been.opened by the debate on Captain Russell's motion that the Public Works Estimates be reduced by £500,000, and the principle having been approved of, it is for once being carried out to the letter.Logrolling seems to have been altogether discountenanced, and; to have been replaced by a desire to save money, The East and Weßt Coast railway, the North Island Main Trunk line, the Manawatu Gorge line, the Otago Central, and other works that would have required a very large outj.lay, were handled in the most fearless manner, and the pruning knife. was applied to all of them. The cause is apparently not far to seek. There has of late been a return to extravagant expenditure, which, tad it been allowed to continue, would have landed the Colony in ruin. It had gone on for a whole year, and there was a promise that under the StoutVogel regime there would have been a return of prosperity. Members were apparently willing, for a time tit least, to listen to the promises' that were made j but they seem to have realised that there has been no improvement whatever, and that it was proposed, as a last resource, to bring it about by an increase in the Public Works expenditure of upwards of half a million. The eyes of members were then opened, and we are glad to see that the result has been a very satisfactory one. Having once determined that there shall be no expenditure except upon works that are absolutely necessary, the House will perhaps continue on the same course, and if it does, we aro much more likely to have a return of the much-talked-about prosperity, than through the spending of an extra million a year.