On the Fifth Stage of the Bill, Sir, I think we should congratulate the Minister. I have known him for a long time. He has very frequently been in luck. He has been in great luck last week with the Finance Bill and in great luck to-day with the Appropriation Bill, and I do not intend to keep him very much longer here. On the occasion of the Finance Bill last week, Senator Douglas, who, I think, must be in league with the Minister, raised the question of a national or coalition Government, and the Minister was delighted. A number of other people raised various points. Senator Baxter raised a considerable number of points with regard to our economic and financial situation at the present moment. Now, the Minister, in his reply on the Finance Bill, said not one single word about finance—not a single word about finance. He delivered himself of a very long homily on the excellences in various degrees of himself and his colleagues in the Government, but he did not say anything at all about our financial situation or about what precise steps the Government had taken, if any steps have been taken, about the various problems which, for example, Senator Baxter raised.
Now, to-day, Senator Sir John Keane began on A.R.P., and from A.R.P. he went on to lament the fact that our young people do not display the public spirit that they might display, and that they injure public property; and again the Minister was delighted. I have not heard—and I have heard a great many Ministerial answers in my time—anything more vague than the Minister's statement to-day on A.R.P. He told us that he had been against A.R.P. at first, and that he had stopped expenditure upon it, but that recently he had been converted to the view that more expenditure must be undertaken. With regard to how much, however, or in what directions, or by whom, or whether he would give the concessions which Senator Douglas spoke of, to business firms who make air-raid shelters for their employees or for the public, he said exactly nothing at all.
Now, Sir, one can only associate the complacency of the Minister—and in that complacency he finds himself in perfect agreement with Lord Craigavon in Belfast, and I am tempted to call it the smug complacency of the Minister with regard to the present situation— and the capacity of himself and his colleagues to handle it with incompetency. I am afraid that it is an indication of nothing else but incompetency. There was a good deal of nonsensical talk on the last occasion about Governments which have majorities. Nobody, or at least nobody on these benches, denies the right of a Government, legitimately elected, to govern, and I for one am prepared to give it every single thing to which it is entitled, and all the assistance in my power; but no matter how much assistance I give it, I cannot give it confidence if, in fact, I have not got confidence in it. It is worth while telling the Minister and some of the Senators who spoke on his side on the last occasion, that, in the last election, and before the war and before the present emergency, out of more than 1,250,000 votes cast, this Government's majority was less than 50,000 votes. It is, therefore, true that when you meet 13 voters on the street, six of them are against the Government, had no confidence in it in 1938, and I think have not yet any confidence in it. Certainly, they have got no reason to have confidence in it, as a result of any of the recent happenings, and particularly as a result of some of the speeches made here. So much for that.
On the Bill itself there is just this much to be said. This is a very substantial amount—over £31,000,000—but it does not represent the amount which we will be called upon to find or to appropriate for the present financial year, and while a considerable amount of this money, and of the money we will be called upon to find later on, does, in fact, arise out of the emergency, it must be remembered that the policy of the Government, consistently, from the time they came into office, and in the absence of any emergency of any kind, except an occasional one which they brought about themselves, was to increase the amount of the Appropriation Bill year by year: in other words, to increase the cost of the public services. The audited expenditure—not the Estimates, but the audited expenditure—for the year 1930-31 was £20,925,000, or roughly £21,000,000. The audited expenditure for 1932-33 was roughly £24,250,000—in other words in their first year of office, expenditure of this particular type went up by £3,250,000. In 1937-38 the audited expenditure was £28,000,000, in other words an increase of £7,000,000, apart altogether from any emergency. It is now up by more than 50 per cent. over the expenditure of 1930-31. Therefore, Sir, apart from the dire necessities of the moment which we must meet, and which we must assist the Government to meet, to the best of our ability, it has to be remembered that the weight of expenditure— Government services swollen in every direction and Government services increasing in number and expense in every Department—is something which is part of the normal policy of the present Government which had increased it from 1930-31 to 1937-38 by £7,000,000 or about one-third of the total. The fact that that was done and that the burden was already here before the emergency arose, has, of course, a very serious effect on any efforts which we may make now to find money for the emergency. That is all I desire to say now, except that while that is the situation and while great difficulties arise, it is possible for the Minister to be entirely and completely satisfied that nowhere is there to be found any people who have more ability of any kind than any one of his colleagues.
