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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Personal Volume

Administration

Administration.

Now, I must deal with the question of administration—a subject that would in fact almost need a speech to itself. It has been said that since we took office we have page 20 been spending more borrowed money than ever, Well, that can only have been said by people who had not the figures before them. In 1883-84, before we toot office, the expenditure out of loan monies was £1,409,588 18s 1d. When we took office in August 1884, we found that the expenditure for April and May had been at the rate of about, I think, £1,700,000 a year. And when we took office, instead of letting new contracts we tried so far as we could to reduce the expenditure, so that at the end of twelve months—at the end of March 1885—the total expenditure had only been £1,336,727 4s 11d, or about £70,000 lees than the preceding year. In the next year, 1885-86, there was an expenditure on district railways of £188,300 in their purchase, and if you add that to the loan monies expended under public works, the expenditure only came up to £1,475,386 6s, For this present year the expenditure for eleven months has only been £999,580, and the expenditure for the remaining month, that is the present month, will not bring up the expenditure to £1,100,000; it will be less than that. So that you will see if we had left out, as we had a right to leave out, the normal expenditure on public works, we would have reduced the expenditure to £1,287,086 6s, You will see that actually since we took office we have decreased the normal public works expenditure at the rate of £100,000 a-year. Why then talk about our expending: more money than previous Governments. There are the figures; I have given them to you, and they may be examined at your leassure. I say this, that looking at the attitude England has taken—that the English money lender has taken, of this colony, and of Queensland and other colonies in reference to their loans—looking also at the heavy taxation we have to bear, it is the duty of the Government—I have said this in Invercargill, I have said it in the Dunedin Drill Shed, and I say it here—it is our duty to do what we can to stop borrowing. And I believe that we ought to do that as speedily as possible. I do not say that we have not our engagements to meet. I never said that there are to be no more loans, but what I said was, that so far as we can, honestly carrying out our engagements, we ought to have no new works; we ought also to bring the works now going on, I do not say to the paying point of completion, but what I may term to the working point of completion. Of course, we have yet to expend the loan which has been already pledged to the North Island Railway, beginning at Morton and going to Te Awamutu. "We must carry that out, but we must not enter upon new works upon other new lines. I hear it said by some people that all this land up the Waimarino is no good—nothing but pumice and bush, and that the Government have been buying useless land. Well, if this costly railway is to go through land that is not fit for settlement, we must stop the railway at Hunterville. I have heard, on the contrary, from gentlemen who have been over it recently, that the Waimarino land is most excellent land; that the Government has obtained it at a cheap rate, and that it will be most suitable for settlement. If that be so, it will be the duty of the Government to press on the railway, and carry out the instructions given by Parliament before we took office. Now, what I think I have to find fault with is what Mr Bryce said in his speech at Waverley. He spoke to this effect; Why, he speaks against borrowing for public buildings, and yet is laying the foundation stone of a new block of buildings for the Lunatic Asylum at Christchurch, and he is going to put up the library at Wellington. I was speaking of the future policy in dealing with buildings, and not of buildings already authorised by Parliament. The Lunatic Asylum in Christchurch has page 21 been a disgrace to the colony. The Government had put up two wings, and they left the central administrative building incomplete. There was no kitchen in which to cook the pa-patients' food except a wooden building at a distance which was a disgrace and should have been burned down long ago. The meals had to be carried across a court yard in summer and winter, exposed to all weathers. On wet and cold days the patients could not get their meals in a warm and comfortable state. I recognise it to be the duty of the State to those in affliction, such as poor people suffering from mental affliction, to treat them with the utmost kindness and the utmost consideration. As to the library in Wellington that had been already authorised. It was a disgrace to the Colony that such a valuable treasure as we possess in Looks at Wellington had not been put in a fire-proof building long ago. When I was speaking of buildings I was especially referring to wooden buildings. I said I did not think it fair that we should go on borrowing money and putting up wooden buildings which will only last 25 or 30 years, and leaving the loan we put them up with to be paid by the people coming after us. I suggested that there should be a terminable annuity that would wipe out the debt on wooden buildings and that stone buildings should if possible be erected, so that people coming after us would have a chance of having the buildings paid for. I believe that is a mode of getting rid of depending upon borrowed money—that will have to be adopted by the Assembly.