AN OPPOSITION MEMBER ON RETRENCHMENT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2304, 16 April 1887, Page 2

AN OPPOSITION MEMBER ON RETRENCHMENT.

# Mr G. Fishbr, representative of South Wellington, in his address to his constituents, said :— We were £200,000 deficient. Here were a few samples of the wav in which some of that £200,000 might have been saved—When the District Railway Bill (to purchase the Waimea Plains Railway) was introduced last se.ssiou it provided for the payment of £110,000 for the line. The highest railway officers in the country, Mr Maxwell and Mr O'Conor, said in evidence before the Public Accounts Committee that the line was only worth £95,000 —a difference of £15,000. The Parliament, acting upon the opinions of the public officers, split the difference, and reduced the £110,000 by £8000. The reduction was carried by one vote. Did the matter rest there ? No. Repeating the process so successfully adopted in the previous session in the case of the Waimate Plains Railway, which saddled the country with a burden of £35,000, the Government brought the vote up again, and by means of an infinite amount of whipping they succeeded in getting a. majority of two to reverse the vote and' add £4000 to the cost of the line. So w& gave £106,000 for the line instead of: £05,000. These were the directions in which money might be effectively saved,, for it would take a good many odd £50 and £25 off Civil servants to make up £11,000. Again, take the travelling allowances of Miuisters. How they had grown! In ISSO they amounted to £1591, in 1881 £1429, in ISS2, £1648, in ISS3 £2404, in 1884, £1511, in ISBS, for the first six months the of Stout-Vogel Government, £2094, in ISS6 £2SII, and expenditure on Ministerial residences for the year £1000. Was this economy? Mr Fisher asked. His opinion was that it was possible to retrench largely without punishing the public officials. But, above and beyond all, he earnestly entreated the public in their own interests to bear constantly in mind the one startliug fact that the entire Customs revenue and the property tax were swallowed up to meet interest ou loans—interest which had to be sent out of the country. He did not agree with land nationalisation for two reasons—First, as regarded New Zealand it was impossible, for this colonycould never buy back all the land it had sold ; and, secondly, those who proposed it to the people of this country did not believe in it themselves. Sir Robert Stout, who proposed the principle to the people of New Zealand, was the Prime Minister who gave the freehold of two millions and a half of the lands of this colony to the Midland Railway Company ; and if Sir Robert could explain away that little inconsistency he might forgive him. He wished to point oufe that the Laud Acquisition Bill had nothing; whatever to do with land nationalisation—this was a rich man's scheme. If the object of the bill was to put small farmers on the land, he wished to call attention to the fact that v/e had already in existence seven di g.-rent principles of land-purchase which would do that. The Crown Lands report said— " The preference is still in favour of the deferred payment system." Mr Fisher expressed his belief that that the bill would not pass the Legislature ; that it would be laughed out of the the House ; that it was never intended to pass ; that it was a piece of Sir Julius Vogel's ingenuity designed to divert the attention of the people from the hard seriousquestions of finance and taxation, the hope being that the democratic portion of the people of the colony would take to the measure as one that would burst up> the large estates, and that the bill would form part of a cry for the general election.