HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
CIVIL SERVICE DEBATE.
HON. MR. M. K. LO.-I beg to move the following resolution :--- "That in the opinion of this Council the Colony cannot afford to maintain so large and costly a Civil Service as now exists, and that the Government should take immediate steps to effect all possible retrenchments in the same."
Your Excellency, In rising to do so, I crave that indulgence of this Council which I know will readily be accorded to a new member, attempting his maiden speech, and this indulgence is all the more necessary because I fear I will have to take up some twenty minutes of this Council's valuable time in saying what I desire to say in support of this motion. The view asserted by the terms of my motion is that the Colony cannot afford to maintain the existing Civil Service, and I will at once proceed to set out shortly the grounds on which this view is based.
It might have been thought at one time that one of the alleged differences between public and private finance is that, whilst in private finance outlay must be gauged and conditioned by income, in public finance the reverse is the case, in that after the expenditures are fixed it is the duty of the Legislature to provide the revenues. But this alleged difference is generally regarded as illusory and unsound because the State, like the individual, must in the long run cut its coat according to its cloth, and persistent violation of this principle must eventually entail the same consequences, alike for State and individual. I unhesitatingly accept the validity of this principle.
What, then, is the present financial position of the Colony? The Hon. Mr. N. L. Smith, as Acting Colonial Secretary, in the course of his extremely able and lucid Budget speech on the 12th September, 1935, after stating that it was anticipated that the estimated revenue for 1936 would be about a million and a half behind the 1935 revised figures, summed up the position as follows: "As a result of all these economies the gap between revenue and expenditure has been considerably reduced but with the dollar rate taken at 1s. 8d., which seems a prudent figure, there will still be a deficit, after allowing for the surplus balances as mentioned, of about $830,000. The exact figures are Revenue $26,671,845 plus Surplus Balances (in excess of ten million dollars) $2,095,789=total $28,767,634; Expenditure $29,598,148."
Pausing here I should like to state that, in my humble opinion, the normal revenue of just over twenty six and a half million dollars must be regarded as representing the cloth according to which Government must cut its coat, for I do most respectfully agree with the views recently expressed as to the inability of the Colony to stand the strain of extra taxation, and particularly by Dr. R. H. Kotewall, who spoke in the last Budget debate as the Senior Unofficial
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