215
Abstract of Expenditure has been altered by totalling all
expenditure other than Public Works Extraordinary, in order
to emphasize the difference between recurrent and extraordinary
cxpenditure. Expenditure from surplus balances has been
shown in a separate line. The particular item this year is
for the Naval Arsenal scheme which is considered a proper charge
against Surplus Balances. To charge it against current revenue
would mean either starving Public Works Extraordinary to that
extent, or raising further taxation. It is confidently expected
that the Government will recover the expenditure from the sale
of the land in question. Another alteration in the form of
the Estimates is in Head 35 Public Works Department. Instead of
moattering the staff in full detail under the different sub-
departments, all staff common to the department as a whole, e.g
engineers, overseers, foremen, messengers, etc., is grouped
under "General Staff". Specialists such as Land Surveyors and
Meter Readers remain under their sub-departments, whilst the
electrical sub-department is retained as a separate entity.
The distribution of the General Staff is however set out in
detail in Appendix III. The sub-head Conveyance Allowances
has been reduced from two pages to a few lines, showing the
amount for each sub-de partment instead of for each individual
officer. The se alterations have been made solely for the sake
of clarity and convenience and I trust that Hon. Members will
approve.
Non. Members will see that we have budgeted for an
expenditure of $34,981,661 to meet which we expect to receive
a revenue of $33,991,510 and to withdraw a sum of $1,000,000
from our Sirolus Balances.
This last sum as I have already
remarked