A POLITICAL PROGRAMME.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2323, 31 May 1887, Page 2

A POLITICAL PROGRAMME.

_: [Hawkpa STAK,J , The railway returns for the past year must effectually disenchant; those who have any faith still lingering in them as to the fifcuess for his post, of the present Minister of Railways, the gentleman who, so all the country was was the one man to run them as a ' (Sommerical success. When the year's accounts were made up, and Mr Richardson found that the lines had carried 7000 tons lees firewood than last year, 27,000" tons' less timber, 68,000 tons lessVgrain,\ and 39,090 tons less merchandise, loss of £48,000 of revenue, he mustTiaye felt very uncomfortable. And the working expenses, too, appear to be increasing, as they are higher by .4 per cent, in the last monthly returns than for the same period of 1886. It is surely high time that they were worked on some different plan. ; . ... It is amusing to look back and see what has become of all the wonderful promises made by the present Ministry and their friends when they took office. The Treasurer was going to abolish the property tax, set the finance on a sound footing, and make the sum of prosperity shine us as in the good old days ; the reality being that he has increased the property tax, brought ih6> colony's credit to a miserably low ebb in London, and made things generally about as dismal as they can well be. The Premier and the Minister of Lands between them r- t were to preserve for posterity the fee-simple of all the remaining waste lands in the country, and to .watch clos6lythat before railways We're made at tile expense of the . country the State should,. have possession of the lands to be benefited/ the result being that they have handed over 'to an English company something more than three million acres in the'. South Island, and are allowing the Maories to get the benefit of the" enhanced price of the land through which the main trunk line will run—if it ever runs at all in our time. The Minister of Railways, nothing more need be said about, and the rest of the Cabinet are merely respectable nobodies. Between them they have fooled away h'atf-a-inilfion on defence works, enormously in creased the amount of . their personal travelling expenses, piled on taxation to breaking, point fostered by artificial 'aid 3 the creation of peasant settlers who will never be able to stand when the Government prop is drawn away, prated about economy while practising extravagance in their pet districts, and—one of the gravest mistakes of all—allowed a highlypaid Premier to actively follow his profession and even to figure as Crown Prosecutor in criminal trials. , And now, last straw of all, they want us to go in for protection, and are putting a 50 per cent, ad valorem duty on the children's food. If that indictment is not heavy enough, there is plenty more left. I really believe the country would gain immensely by putting an entirely new set of men into power—say Bracken for Education, Bruce for Lands, Fergus for Public Works, Ivess for Colonial Secretary, Samuel for Justice, Seddon for Mines, and—yes, there's the trouble—l must leave the Treasurer's name blank ; but they would find one somewhere. Of course, they would have both of the old parties digging at them, but there is no earthly reasou why they should not do as well as either the present or former Ministry, and perhaps a good deal better; while, as to difference in their political creed, they could not be more, widely divergent than the present Cabinet. Then take two three thousand a year from the Governor's salary (and still leave him well paid); reduce Ministers' salaries and travelling allowances by half; pension off some of the heads of departments who do very little for very large pay; restore the £1 a year house tax for education, which should never have been abolished, and do [ something like justice to Roman Catholics in this matter ; take away from local bodies and devote to the support of gaols aud asylums - she license fees which at present are only a premium upon retaining three times as many hotels aa are wanted; reduce the property tax exemption to £100 j let those who use the high schools maintain them, always excepting scholarship boys from normal schools; pay no more money to members of the Legislative Council (ill you have weeded out those who only care for the "screw," when the other.-* might have £100 a year to pay their expenses in Wellington ; cut down the pay of M.H.R. to £150; abolish the iniquitous system of paying members of the House for two sjessiong }n one year; make the ljjqd Iws 3imp}e enough and attractive enough to induce English farmers to come out here and settle; place inspectors of education under the direct control of the depart.meut, and abolish education boards; hand the education reserves over tq the land boards, to be no longer a to settlement and a glaring hardship to their neighbours j and take a lesson from the postal department, and run your railways at low enough fares to make people use them. A big programme, isn't it? bat then a big change is wanted, and is bound to come before things are on a sound footing.