I understand that a committee which was supposed to be an advisory committee was not found to work satisfactorily, and that in the last two years it has not been in existence. I am not in a position at this stage to say what the ultimate intentions of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs are in relation to the reconstitution, not of the old committee but of an advisory committee on possibly rather a different basis to co-operate with the Minister and with the broadcasting Director. No decisions have been taken in that regard, because it is quite obvious that we want the new Director to survey the whole position untrammelled as far as possible by any preconceived notions which the Government or other people may have as to how the service should be run.
To get back to what I think ought to be the main feature of a debate of this sort: that is, the general policy of the Government as expressed in the Estimates for the public services and in the Bill before the House, Senator Blythe, in what I, as Minister for Finance, regard as a very reasonable speech—one which I think was perfectly fair—asked me to give at this stage some indication as to how I regarded the position, and how I proposed to deal with the mounting expenditure on public services. I think that the Senator will agree with me that it would be unwise at this stage, when next year's Budget is in the making, to say anything like that, because I could not say anything without, I feel, incurring the risk of making remarks which would be misinterpreted, which would be indiscreet, and which might possibly reveal what is at the present moment in incubation in the arcana of the Ministry of Finance. But we can deal with the expenditure as we see it, and see how it compares with the expenditure in previous years. The Senator said that he thought that our expenditure this year, as compared with the expenditure in the last year of the Administration of which he was a member, would show an increase of about £10,000,000. I have been looking through the figures, and I have them here, and I think that, while the increase is considerable, £10,000,000 is greatly in excess of what the actual increase is. As the Senator knows, when one is compiling estimates, Departments leave a fair margin for contingencies, and we are only able, in the volume of Estimates before us, to compare the actual net expenditure for the year 1931-32 with the Estimate of expenditure for the year 1935-36, which does not include all the Supplementaries and other Estimates that may be added thereto. I think that a fair figure—I am not going to say that it is an exact one—but I do not think that I unduly minimise the increase when I say that the expenditure on public services to-day represents an increase of about £7,000,000 on the cost of public services in 1931-32. I know it is a huge sum. I do not want anybody to believe that as these increases have occurred year after year they have been agreed on with a light heart, or that they have been regarded with indifference or even without concern; because any Administration that wants to secure a renewal of its mandate from the electorate, when the time comes for it to render an account, has to remember that for all this expenditure there comes a day when one will be called to pay, and that as a rule the Administration which has the best chance of surviving is the one which shows that it has kept a tight hold on the purse strings.
But then again we have at the same time to take into consideration the actual circumstances of our time. Senator Blythe has indicated that he has always been a believer in the industrial development of this country. I think that the need, not merely for an industrial development in this country, but for a complete change in our standard of living, in our industrial activity and in our agricultural economy, is being forced upon us by one fact that did not exist in 1931-32, a fact that neither we nor any other Government can leave out of account: that is the increase in our population and the increased pressure which such increase puts on our means of subsistence here. I do not believe that economically or financially there is any fear of a collapse, any fear of a crisis, any reason for any deep-seated uneasiness on the part of any person in this country, but I do say this that if something was not done to provide for these new mouths that have to be fed in an increasing number year by year, we might have a crash here. If those people once conceived the idea that the Government and those elements in the community which have more than the means of subsistence were going to regard the plight of the new mouths with absolute indifference, I believe that you might have a very serious social upheaval in this country. It is that factor and a realisation of its urgency and importance that has very largely conditioned the increased expenditure which the Government is incurring: that and this fact, that there were in existence, and have been in existence for a long time in this country, social evils that were clamorous to be redressed. I do not want to be unfair to our predecessors. They had their job, but these social evils for one reason or another did not get the amount of attention which, I think, the position required. That and the other factor, the factor of our increasing population has been the occasion of most of the increase in the expenditure to which I have referred.
I will give you some items. In the year 1931-32 the Land Commission cost £614,000, and in the year 1935-36 it is estimated to cost £1,369,000, some of the increase is due to the fact that we have to meet interest on the land bonds, but a large part of it due to the fact that we have to speed up the division of the land in this country. Now, why have we to speed up the division of land in this country? To provide for an increasing rural population. You are not going, I believe, to absorb the whole of this natural increase of our population into industry here overnight. I am doubtful whether, in view of the habits of our people and the fecundity of our people, that you are going to be able to absorb all the increase into manufactory industry, so that the only way that you can provide for those people is by putting as many as possible of them back on the land. Quite frankly I admit that you are not going to be able to put this increment of the population back on the land and at the same time maintain the standard of living for the well-to-do and rich farmers in this country. These people have to feed out of the common stock of the community, and those who have much will have to give a little in order to enable the community to maintain them.
There is one reason why neither this Government nor our successors can deal with that problem in any other way. You cannot ship these people off now—as it was possible to do in the last two generations—to Australia or to America or even to Great Britain. These countries are all feeling, in the changed circumstances, the pressure of population. We feel it and have to deal with it, too.
Then, again, in the year 1931-32 there was spent on the whole of the services of the Department of Local Government and Public Health £527,000. This year we are spending £1,098,000, and of that something like £650,000 is being spent on grants under the Housing (Financial and Miscellaneous Provisions) Acts, 1932 and 1934—that £650,000 is almost 50 per cent. more than was spent on the whole of the services of the Department of Local Government and Public Health in the 1931-32. Again, that increase is due very largely to two factors; the fact that the housing conditions in our towns and cities have been a disgrace to humanity and, secondly, to the fact that the position, bad as it was in 1929-30, has become intensified by—again— the natural increase of our population.
Take unemployment assistance. It is up by £1,600,000. It is a new service that did not exist before and, once again, it is due to the fact that we have these idle hands and must feed them. The Vote for the Department of Industry and Commerce was £98,000 in 1931-32. It is going to be £315,000 this year, and of that sum £120,000 will be represented by the provision which is being made for the industrial alcohol experiments, while £23,000 is represented by the Vote which is being made for mineral experimentation and exploration in this country.
Can the farmer-Senators, who talk about the position of the farmers, object to the spending of this £120,000 in reference to industrial alcohol experiments, unpromising as they may appear to be? We have got to remember that it is only by experimentation of this sort that we shall be able to make use of the 8,000,000 odd acres or at least that part of the 8,000,000 odd acres, to which Senator Baxter has referred, which will become surplus to our requirements, even from the point of view of our agricultural export market, in view of the fact that there is a decline in the demand for our principal live-stock product—beef—in Great Britain.
Take the case with regard to old age pensions. In 1931 the total expenditure under this head was £2,700,000. In 1935-36 it was £3,456,000—a difference of over £750,000. Where is that increase going? Nine-tenths of it—the fraction, I think, is not too high—is going into rural homes. It is going in there to induce the old people who are past their labour to hand over their farms to the young men, so that they may rear themselves and their families. Again, we are largely driven to that by increase of population. That is a thing we cannot stop and do not want to stop because it is only compensating us for the losses we endured for three generations. I hope the increase will continue.
Those items together represent fully £7,000,000. Which of these social services would Senator Wilson or any other Senator, having regard to the temper of the modern world, take the responsibility of stopping and face the consequences of stopping? You can have a crash, but you can have, from the point of those who have property and a stake in the country—those who are farmers or who hold land—many worse catastrophies than the imposition of an extra 4d. per lb. on tea, an extra 15 per cent. on motor cars, or an extra tax on any luxury or superfluity that a citizen may possess.
That is the justification which the Government has to set before the House and the country of the fact that expenditure on these essential services is increasing. It would be a difficult enough situation to face up to in any community, but it is particularly difficult in this community. We may agree, or disagree, as to the farmers being in special difficulties. I quite admit that they have their difficulties to contend with, but I am not prepared to admit that the difficulties the Irish farmers have to contend with under this Government are worse than those which their confréres have to contend with in other countries at the present time under other Governments.
I recognise that the farmers' difficulties are severe. We feel that they are bearing a very large part of the burden of the change which has to be made in our general manner of living. While that is the case and while there is every justification for the man who cannot pay his annuities writing to the Land Commission and asking for time, there is no justification for those who are in a position to pay and who have entered into a conspiracy not to pay —those farmers who are in the position of the man whose case was reported in the Press about three weeks ago, a man who held land, had money on deposit account in the bank, had a substantial holding in very lucrative industrial shares and yet refused to pay his annuities. Nor is there justification for farmers in the position of those who were recently before the Tribunal, men who were, apparently, in a comfortable position and who stated that they were quite prepared to pay their rates but that they were not going to pay their land annuities. Everybody in this country must learn that land annuities and rates go together, that the man who does not pay his land annuities is, in fact, withholding from the local authority that amount of rates and imposing on his neighbour the obligation of making good to the local authority the amount which the local authority is deprived of by the operation of an instrument which has been an essential feature of land purchase since it was first established here, and with which the gentlemen who want to pretend to their neighbours that they are not doing them an injustice when they refuse to pay their annuities are perfectly and fully familiar. So far as we are concerned, the Guarantee Fund is going to operate. We want to make quite clear that the man who wilfully withholds his annuities is not penalising the central Government but is penalising his honest neighbours who are willing to meet the obligations they undertook when they applied for and were granted a parcel of land by the Land Commission.
