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Q.-But cannot you find one in the Audit Office, some particular bill which has been put through in this special way?
A.-I must go to the office.
Hon. A. LISTER.-Then we will have it before we sit again, a bill that has been put through with special haste by Mr. PRICE's order.
Q.-Hon. F. B. JOHNSON.-You said also that sometimes the Surveyor General gives orders for payment without bills. Is that so?
A.-No.
Q.-What do you mean by money requisitioned for and not requisitioned for?
A.—We send in monthly requisitions for money required for payment of work. We send it to the Treasurer, who forwards it to the Audit Office.
Q.-That is an estimate of the amount of money you are likely to want on the 20th?
A. Yes.
Q.-And if you have not requisitioned for particular bills, do these bills have to stand over, or do you make a special requisition?
A. Sometimes we do not expect the work to be finished so quickly, and we don't put down the item. When the work is finished the Contractor demands payment, and then orders are sent to me and I have to prepare a supplementary requisition.
Q.-How do you know all the bills that are to be sent to you before the 20th?
A.-We know the work that has to be done.
Q-Is there no possibility of delay because the Contractor has not sent the bill in in time?
A. Yes.
Hon. F. B. JOHNSON.-That was what puzzled me.
Hon. A. LISTER.--Before Governor HENNESSY came here the requisition was signed at the end of the month for the bills that had come in. It was not strictly regulation, but it was a very convenient practice, and if a Head of a Department had spent anything not authorised he was in the unpleasant position of having to pay it himself. Governor HENNESSY said, "This is monstrous. I am asked for money which has been already spent, and I have no option but to approve it." He consequently introduced a most vexatious system of requisitioning for money a month before you want it, and when you cannot possibly know what you will want; and so far from enforcing economy it enforces extravagance.
Hon. F. B. JOHNSON.-But surely if you know all the bills you have to pay it won't take twenty-four hours to send in the requisition. If you pay on the 20th, Mr. GUTIERREZ knows it is $10,000 or $20,000 or 50,000 he wants. What is the reason for the delay?