Enclosure No. 5.
87
Your Excellency,
In accordance with your instructions I rise to
move the first reading of a Bill intituled "an Ordinance
to apply a sum not exceeding seventeen million four
hundred and fifty thousand one hundred and three dollars
to the Public Service of the year 1928". I would once
age in remind Honourable Members that the total estimated expenditure as shown in the printed estimates exceeds the total shown in the Bill by the amount of Military Contribution and Public Debt Charges.
The last two years have been difficult years
for the Colony, but as Your Excellency has just pointed
out in the historial retrospect which must have been of
great interest to Honourable Members this is not the first time that it has experienced, not a set back, but a halt in its progress.
I share Your Excellency's
confidence and I am sure Honourable Members do so too,
that it will not be long before we are not only back
where we were prior to the outbreak of the strike and
boycott, but advancing far beyond. But until that time
comes we must be content to hold firmly on to what we
have got, and to restrain ourselves from any undertakings which would jeopardize our financial stability when we wish to take the next big step forward. Consequently the
present budget has been framed on the most conservative
lines possible. Economy has been our watchword in framing
it, and however much we may have wished to proceed with
eminently desirable works, we have decided that for the
present we must cut our coat according to our cloth, and
I am afraid it has resulted in a somewhat tight fit. In
accordance with our policy of maintaining our estate and
a very fine estate it is at the highest possible efficiency
we