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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 46

Finance

Finance.

The abolition of the old Local Governments brought no diminution in public expenditure and no aid to the Treasury. On the contrary, the expenditure has increased, and in such a form as to be much less under control. One hundred and forty legislators now do, at enormous cost, that which Provincial Councils did far more economically. A host of ministers, under-secretaries, private secretaries, royal commissions, nominee boards, chairmen of counties, county officers, and civil servants of all kinds, are now needed to do work which the Provincial Governments did more simply and cheaply. Local Self-Government cannot, therefore, be regarded as injuriously affecting colonial finance It would only be necessary to decide what sources of revenue should be retained by the General Government and what sources be handed over to such Local Governments as might be created. This would depend upon the work and responsibilities assigned to each, and must be considered by those who may have to undertake the re-establishment of Local Government. It would be their further duty to propose some equitable arrangement, in order that available funds may be so distributed as to balance the great disproportion in the assets that would be handed over to different portions of the colony. For example, the railway expenditure in the Middle Island has so much exceeded that in the North that, on the 31st March 1881, there were 845 miles open in the former and only 432 miles in the latter. The surplus of railway receipts over expenditure in the Midele Island for the year was consequently £265,000. In the North Island it was only £50,000. If the railways were handed over to one or more Local Governments in each Island, this great disparity, as well as the value of the Crown Lands and of other assets that might be divided among them, must be taken into account. A ready way of equalising these differences would be to issue General Government debentures to each Local Government, in such proportions as a careful investigation might prove to be just. The interest on these debentures would add to the local revenues until works—such as those of the Auckland-Taranaki Railway—could be advantageously begun. It would be a useful safeguard to require that no Appropriations or Loan Acts of Local Legislatures should be legal unless passed by an absolute majority of two-thirds of the members. This provision has been found an admirable check on hasty extravagance wherever it has been tried, and would have been of great use in the old Provincial Governments.

In the meantime it may be useful to see how the present expenditure can be roughly divided by analysis of the Appropriation Act of last session into General and Local charges respectively,