Mr. Speaker, the Budget speech of the hon. the Minister yesterday reminded me of a rather well-known verse. It is the one that goes :

The saddest are “it might have been”.

Sir, if one thinks what might have been in our country with our Post Office and one compares it with the realities of today, it is indeed a sorry comparison. “What might have been,” indeed, could have been the fulfilment even of the promises the hon. the Minister made to this House last year, which were not fulfilled. He envisaged, and practically promised, a surplus last year; he envisaged that he would announce a surplus in this House of at least R1 million. Yesterday, on that sad day, he told us that instead of this surplus of more than R1 million, there would be a total deficit, the biggest in the history of the Post Office, of R29,5 million. Even worse, there was bought for our comfort for the future, in that he also indicated that for the coming year, for 1972-73, the deficit would even be much greater namely R33,7 million; a sad picture indeed, Sir.

I now quote those words against the background of telephone services, and what he told us last year in this very House. In his Budget speech last year he said that before 31st March of this year, in a weeks’ time, there would be 100 000 new telephones in South Africa. Here I have his Budget speech :

What did he actually achieve, Sir? A shortfall of 20 per cent on his figure; he only achieved 80 000, scarcely keeping pace with the ordinary growth, such as it is, of the economy today. Yes, Sir: “Of all the things of tongue or pen; the saddest are ‘it might have been’!” His promises in regard to the surplus were not carried out. His promises in regard to the telephone services were not carried out.

And now, Sir, I am very concerned about what he has said regarding tariffs in the past, and what we heard yesterday. You will remember, Sir, that he made a promise last year. You will forgive me for rubbing it in, because it is very important that the House should take note of this. Last year, when he increased tariffs by the greatest amount ever in the history of the Post Office, he said :

That was a clear promise from the hon. the Minister, and now we are hearing ominous noises. The Minister admittedly has indicated that he does not expect to increase tariffs before March, 1973, and he hopes not soon thereafter. But he did say in his speech yesterday: “It is obvious that our tariffs should be realistic.” I agree; “realistic” is a good word, but, unfortunately, realism to the hon. the Minister means higher and still higher tariffs. And in the past he has not scorned increases of from 10 per cent to 20 per cent to 60 per cent and even more in the case of certain tariffs. He told us in his Budget speech yesterday that he would now make it his aim to increase tariffs gradually and in easy stages. What does this mean? Last year, when the Post Office had two infected teeth, he pulled out the first one with a hefty tug. Now, Sir, he is going to pull out the second infected tooth gradually. Where will the greater pain result? Should we be grateful for a gradual and long-endured, painful extraction, or should we be grateful for the sudden, quick extraction that we had last year?

Sir, all this reminds me of the sad little story the hon. the Minister told us a few days ago. In reply to a question of mine, he told the country what had happened to a certain crate which had been addressed to the Post Office, but which had been lost on account of its having no address on it at all. It contained an antenna worth R3 000 and it was sold on a blind Customs sale by the Department of Customs and Excise for R9. This box and that antenna remind me very much of the hon. the Minister. He too has lost his antennae. He too has lost his feelers, his direction-finders. He too, like that crate which ended on a blind sale, is without a destination, anonymous, without any direction. I could even take the analogy further. The fault was really not so much that of the Post Office; it was also the fault of Customs and Excise. It was the Minister of Finance’s department which sold the Post Office crate down the river for R9. I think the hon. the Minister will agree that the hon. the Minister of Finance has also sold the Post Office down the river during the past year. On account of all these points, I wish at this stage to move the following amendment :

Sir, in considering a financial measure such as this Budget, we naturally start with finance first of all. It is a sad story that the hon. the Minister told us yesterday of this present financial year and of the financial year that lies ahead. Let us start with the present one first of all, 1971-’72. He told us that there was a shortfall on revenue of R14,8 million; that there is an increase, more than he expected, on operations and capital expenditure, of R15 million, and there were various other shortfalls, adding up to a total of R29,5 million.

How did this happen, Sir? It is good that we should try to find out what is happening to the Post Office so that we can seek the necessary remedies. With regard to the downfall in the revenue, the crash in the revenue, the hon. the Minister said in his Budget speech that he blamed the temporary cooling off in economic activities. I shall not go into who is to blame for this. We know who is responsible for it. He gave a second reason for the shortfall in revenue; he said it was due to a more than normal counter-reaction to the tariff increases introduced last year. In other words, he got less revenue than he expected.

Consumer resistance.

But, Sir what on earth could he expect when he increased telephone calls by 15 per cent, telephone rentals by 33 per cent and the letter rate by 60 per cent, from 2½ cents to 4 cents? Did he expect to get a 60 per cent or 33 per cent increase in his revenue? What sort of reasoning is that? Now he comes and tells us that it was due to a more than normal counter-reaction. He has had the normal counter-reaction, and now we see what the results are. We told him last year that this would happen, and he will find our warning in Hansard.

Let me come now to the shortfall of R15 million on capital for the current year. I believe it is indicative of the most serious capital crisis that the Post Office has experienced in its whole history. It almost led to a major crisis in December last year, when the capital resources of the Post Office almost dried up and the expansion programme was almost grinding to a halt. That was one of the big reasons why he supplied 20 000 fewer phones this year than he had promised. Why was this? It was due to the terrible vulnerability of the Post Office, caused by tying its capital expenditure to two sources and to two sources only, firstly Treasury loans and, secondly, ordinary surpluses. Of course, a Treasury loan is a good thing; you can tie your capital expenditure to Treasury loans, as the Central Government has done to a large extent, but when you tie it to surpluses to the extent that 62 per cent of your whole capital programme has to be financed from your surpluses and you suddenly find that there is a cooling down in the economy or a recession in the country, and that 62 per cent drops, as it has done in this case, to 53 per cent, you find that you simply have not got the money. That was the position in which the hon. the Minister found himself.

Sir, I am quite sure that the Minister was warned by the Postmaster-General about this and that he knew about it. He should have acted on it earlier. Here I have the words of Mr. Louis Rive in December, 1971, before a meeting of the committee on postal affairs of the Federated Chamber of Industries held in Johannesburg. On that occasion Mr. Rive said—

That is what I said, too. Then Mr. Rive added this—

Sir, I say no more than his own Postmaster-General in saying that the system of financing was disastrous. We told the hon. the Minister that last year in March in a similar debate. Why then did he come with this disastrous policy? These are not my words but the words of the most senior official in his own department. We warned him that taking 62 per cent for his capital expenditure out of revenue would be a disastrous policy. We pointed out that the original Franzsen Committee had recommended that only 40 per cent of capital expenditure should be financed out of revenue. The new Franzsen Committee, as distinct from the commission, has now recommended that 50 per cent should be financed out of revenue. Our own proposal last year was 33 1/3 per cent, which I personally believe is high enough. Here I have the latest report of the B.P.O. in Great Britain and this is what I read—

If I read this correctly, it means that only 14 per cent of the British capital expenditure was provided from internal resources, from revenue and from surpluses, and yet the hon. the Minister made that fatal mistake, that dangerous experiment, of trying to find 62 per cent of his capital expenditure from revenue.

He escaped by the skin of his teeth. We had the Additional Estimates a couple of days ago, from which it appeared that the sudden discovery had been made that the Stores Account needed another R10 million—the type of thing that comes only once in 5 or 10 years. The Auditor-General had discovered that another R5,4 million had to be added to the Stores Account. The hon. the Minister grabbed at that straw, and came and asked Parliament for R10 million in the Additional Estimates. If he had not done that, his position, the growth of the Post Office, would have been even worse than it is at the moment. I wish he had explained all this to us when he came along with this request for an additional R10 million capital in the Additional Estimates. But, Sir, that was only one amount, a temporary amount, that he could use; he was fiddling while Rome was burning.

He had this loss of R29,5 million to make up, and how was he going to compensate for it? He told us that for this financial year he could take the telephone revenue not for 12 months but for 13 months, not for a year but for much longer than a year, and to that extent he was suddenly given a little bonanza of, I think, about R12 million, but that gift, which he can fortuitously use now for his capital expenditure, will not return in future. Sir, to find a calendar of 13 months you have to go back to the Sumerian calendar of 1 000 B.c. It was used by the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur. If the hon. the Minister is interested, the name of that thirteenth month was Dirsegurkud. So, Sir, coming along with 12 months—January to December—plus the funds from the telephones for the month of Dirsegurkud, he could bring his losses down slightly.

To that he added a hasty Treasury loan of R10 million to meet his big losses, so that he had a loss of R7,5 million left after Dirsegurkud and after raising a loan from the Treasury and after getting funds for the Stores Account.

What is he doing about the remaining loss? He is using our money. He told Parliament yesterday that the floating moneys in postal orders and money orders would be used by the Post Office to cover that part of the deficit. If I take out a postal order for R5, then the hon. the Minister has charge of it for the two or three days or even longer that it takes for that postal order to reach its destination, and that is the tenuous basis on which he hopes to bring down his losses for the year. These are the words that he used in his own Budget speech yesterday. Almost desperate measures are being used.

Of course, it is anti-inflationary.

Yes, this is supposed to be anti-inflationary. He should be taking money out of circulation through the Post Office for those few days, which would have been anti-inflationary, but now he is using it immediately; he is taking out postal orders and running with them to the nearest bank. I suppose. He probably has a special service for doing it.

If he does not take it, he will ask Agliotti to take it for him.

But worse lies ahead for the coming year, 1972-’73. Here the Minister is predicting a deficit of R33,7 million but he does not have all these strange sources to meet part of his deficit that he had in 1971-’72. He has to do other things; he has to make other plans. He told us in his Budget speech that it will have to be financed from other sources recommended by the Franzsen Committee. He will have to meet his deficit for R37 million for the coming year from other sources mentioned by the Franzsen Committee. Now, Sir, what makes me suspicious is that immediately after saying those words, he spent four pages of his Budget speech in defence of higher tariffs and telling us how necessary higher tariffs are and how they have to be applied gradually but that he will not apply them before March, 1973. I am not very much convinced by that statement of his that he will not increase tariffs before 1973. I would like to ask him now across the floor of the House, with everyone here as witness, whether he will give an assurance that before 31st March, 1973, he will not announce any tariff increases.

It is our aim not to do so.

I know it is your aim, as it is everybody’s aim not to have higher tariffs. It is also your aim not to have telephone shortages. My question was clear : Is the Minister prepared to give an assurance that he will not announce a tariff increase before March, 1973? [Interjections.] If the Minister will not reply, I can only refer him to Proverbs 17, verse 28, which says that even a fool, “when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise”, or “seifs ’n dwaas sal, as hy swyg, wys gereken word”. In mentioning these recommendations of the Franzsen Committee, the interdepartmental committee, I do not wish the House to get the impression that we are rejecting those recommendations; we are not. We believe that basically the majority of them are sound and that they represent necessary steps that have to be taken sooner or later in regard to Post Office finances. They indicate legitimate sources of revenue and I take it that the committee has done good work, but those recommendations of the Franzsen Committee do not represent a magic wand that is going to bring the capital he needs to the hon. the Minister. He will have to pay for every cent of it. Instead of paying interest on R199 million to the Treasury, the money for which he bought the Post Office, he will have to pay 6 per cent dividend to the Treasury on the capitalization of the Post Office’s capital assets.

Tell us something about television.

I will do so, in passing, later on. I hope the House noticed the expression of unrestrained joy on the face of the hon. the Minister of Finance when the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs said that this was going to cost the Treasury R7 million and he thanked the Minister of Finance for it, but I do not think there was really great joy on the part of the hon. the Minister of Finance. This committee further recommended, and this is what the hon. the Minister will have to do, that the Treasury must now provide the Post Office with extra loans during the year for unforeseen demands, and to prevent serious dislocation. In other words, the type of demand and the type of dislocation that the Post Office experienced, without the country knowing, during December of this year and the early part of January, when everything will nearly grind to a halt. Now the hon. the Minister is asking for the right to get these special loans. Well, it is the sort of remedy similar to that of an ordinary person like you and I when we are in financial difficulties, not having enough money. We go to some or other loan institution or get money from a loan shark. I am not saying that the Treasury is an institution like a loan shark; it is a respectable institution; but it will see that every cent of that money is paid and repaid with interest.

There is a third method to which we as ordinary people resort when we have not sufficient money to finance our purchases. We use the hire-purchase system, the “never-never system”. It is a legitimate system, I admit. The hon. the Minister will also be using it. The Franzsen Committee calls it the system of extended credit terms on imported equipment. I don’t mind him buying this imported equipment on the “never-never system”, but again it is a fact that he will have to repay every single cent of it; there is no magic wand in that either.

There is a fourth method which he will have to adopt and which is also recommended by the Franzsen Committee. He will be allowed to negotiate additional foreign loans. He has been given or will be given permission by the Treasury to do so. It would have been strange indeed had he not been given it. The S.A.B.C. already has that permission. Dr. Piet Meyer of television is already abroad trying to negotiate loans. It is on a par with somebody like myself who goes to a pawn shop when in financial difficulty.

He has furthermore been given the right not only to go to the Treasury for a quick loan of R10 million when in difficulty, but he can also now get an overdraft from the Reserve Bank of R10 million as soon as he is in difficulty. It is the same as with you or me, Sir; we must run to our bank, not for R10 million of course, but for much less than that. But again, it is the ordinary procedure adopted by the ordinary person when he finds himself in financial difficulties. This is not done by a person in a sound financial state. Every time you do a thing like that, you are not richer but poorer.

The same goes for the sixth recommendation of the Franzsen Committee, namely to lease office accommodation instead of building or buying it. If you or I, Sir, cannot afford a home of our own, we have to rent a flat. If the Minister cannot afford to build a post office, he has to start thinking of renting post office accommodation in future. These are all legitimate methods. I am not blaming the Franzsen Committee for recommending these methods. All of them are legitimate, but not one of them is really a true indication of sound finance in the Post Office. The financial methods to meet next year’s deficit are going to be those of an ordinary hard-pressed citizen with a bank overdraft, renting a flat instead of buying a home, buying goods on the “never-never system” and borrowing from the pawn shop.

*What sad fate has befallen our great and proud Post Office? This is not what the sturdy men of the Post Office deserve. Without any reservations, this side of the House thanks every person on the staff of the Department of Posts, from the hardworking Postmaster-General down to the most humble TNW 7 messenger.

You will not buy their votes in that way.

The hon. member talks of buying votes. I do not buy votes. Why does he talk about it then? We thank the administrative section with their postmasters and superintendents; the clerical section with its clerks and female typists; and the professional section. In this respect I am thinking especially of the engineers of the Post Office who, in my opinion, should really get a better dispensation. Of the top 15 men in the Post Office, there is one engineer, the Chief Engineer, who, together with five others, is on the lowest scale of those 15, namely R10 800 per year. I think the engineers’ production has increased more than that of any other section in the past ten years. In 1961, 20 engineers were needed for a million kilometres of electronic wire, and in 1971 only 7 were needed for the same length of wire. This means that their production had trebled. I really think that, as distinct from the others, more attention should be paid to the wages, the working conditions and the incomes of these engineers.

This does not relieve the hon. the Minister of his responsibility to consider the other members of the stalf as well. We shall remember the promise he made. He said that when production increased in the Post Office, he would take the necessary steps to ensure that the working conditions of the staff were improved. We are grateful to them, who have to work a million hours overtime in a year because the hon. the Minister could not set the Post Office in order. In the past year, a million hours of overtime were worked and we are grateful to those who sometimes worked for 24 hours a day during the floods in the Eastern Province and on the Witwatersrand. It is not the fault of those men and women that we have the present state of affairs.

*It is not therefore on account of the staff that we have this terribly serious telephone shortage in South Africa today. I want to refer to that now. At the beginning of my speech I said :

This applies to the finances and also applies to the telephone shortage. The following two lines of that same verse, lines which are probably less well known, also apply, and particularly so, to the telephone services, viz. :

The telephone mess is like Gertrude Stein said:“A rose is a rose is a rose,” or like Kant’s Categorical Imperative: “It is.” Nowhere can we say with greater justice:

That is the trouble : it is, but it should not be. He told us only yesterday that the present waiting list for telephones numbered 100 000, which is somewhat down in comparison with this time last year. I am a bit suspicious of that figure; as a matter of fact, I am very suspicious. Does that figure of his of a 100 000 take account of the long list of applications for the “sundowner service”, this half service which is only in operation on the late afternoon and at night? Does it include the hopeful people, despairing of getting their own phones, who have put down their names for shared lines and for party lines? Does it? We would like to hear from him.

However, let us take the shortage to be a 100 000 and let us look at the position 10 years ago. What was the shortage under the same Government 10 years ago? It was then only 10 000. There has been a ten-fold increase over the past 10 years in the shortage of telephones in South Africa. In this 10 year term there were three Ministers and therefore it cannot be the fault of a single Minister alone. It grew under Dr. Hertzog, Mr. Basie van Rensburg and under the present Minister. It cannot be the fault of changing economic conditions —if ever something grew continuously, like Topsy, it was this shortage in the telephone service. It grew through prosperity, and it grew through recession. It grew through inflation, and it grew through deflation. It grew through recession. It grew through and periods of capital famine; it grew through devaluation, and it grew through no valuation. It grew, it grew and it grew and today we have a 1 000 per cent increase on the shortage of telephones we had 10 years ago. The only things which grew comparatively were the Government’s promises in this respect. The first Minister, Dr. Albert Hertzog, increased the charge for local telephone calls from 2½c to 3 1/3c in 1966 and said :

This means he said that all the telephones necessary would have been supplied by 1971. Dr. Albert Hertzog was not speaking on his own, but was speaking as the voice of the Cabinet on Post Office matters in those days. The year 1971 has gone, it has been buried three months ago and today we have a shortage of 100 000 telephones. I think of the words of the next Minister, Mr. Basie van Rensburg, in 1968 he said:

Does the Prime Minister subscribe to that? I am sure the hon. Minister does not, because there is no hope of ending and eliminating the backlog by 1973.

He is an unforeseen circumstance.

We had his own promise of 100 000 new phones this year, but he could only supply 80 000. So whatever he does promise us, I am going to look at with a very, very jaundiced eye.

Let me tell him of one of his problems if he wants to eliminate the telephone shortage. His main problem, apart from labour, is that he does not have sufficient capital.

Or the brains.

The shortage of telephones is 100 000. He himself estimates that he needs R1 000 capital for one single new telephone service. That is correct; it includes buildings, exchanges, cables, instruments, etc. So if he wants to eliminate the shortage of 100 000 telephones, he needs 100 000 multiplied by R1 000, which is R100 million in capital. At the same time he must cope with the natural increase every year of, say, 80 000 or 100 000 telephones, which he is hoping for this year. So, if he wants to get rid of the telephone shortage, he will in the next 12 months have to cope with 100 000 new services and a 100 000 backlog, and will therefore need R200 million in capital. He must tell me where my calculations are wrong. That is the amount he will need.

What a prophet!

I am not a prophet; I am doing ordinary, elementary sums that my hon. friend can even do himself. But what is the hon. the Minister supplying?He is only budgeting for R117 million capital for telecommunication expansion. Obviously he will not be able to eliminate the backlog by the end of the next financial year. He still has a building programme for which he needs R13 million this year, and another R100 million over the years to come. His capital needs are becoming insatiable.

Meanwhile, what is he losing through this backlog? It has been estimated officially that the average income per telephone in this country is R116. If there is a shortage of 100 000 telephones, it means that the Post Office is losing as a result of this shortage almost R12 million per annum in revenue. That is what the shortage means— R12 million loss per year. An hon. member asked me about television. Well, this amount is enough to provide South Africa with a colour television service within four years …

Etienne, what is your solution?

… if he could eliminate this backlog.

I accept the figure, but where must the money come from?

That’s the point! “Where must the money come from?” I pointed out to him the recommendation of the Franzsen Committee. I know that they cannot find the money; they must not now start looking for money. They should have known about their capital needs ten years ago when the backlog was 10 000, which would have required R10 million. They should have been quite aware of their needs then. Of course, they are having difficulty finding it now. Why, we all ask ourselves, are we in this mess? When greater autonomy was granted to the Post Office by the Post Office Readjustment Act in 1968, which is four years ago, we thought that plans would then be made and put into effect. Yesterday we were to hear in the speech of the hon. the Minister that the five year plan of the Post Office will in future be placed before the Finance Committee of the Cabinet. Good gracious, why was it not placed before that committee four years ago? Was there no five-year plan? After these four years since 1968, when we gave him the power by that Act, I would have thought the hon. the Minister would have been the leader of the five-year plan and that he would have been the Viljoenovich Stakhanov of the five-year plan.

Why don’t you go to Hyde Park?

Is the five-year plan of South Africa similar to the five-year plan of another country? Good gracious, I hope Moscow never hears of our five-year plan. It certainly would not improve the image of our country.

There was no real thought given to the problem on the part of the Government. There was the incredible stupidity in their idea that, if one’s country grows by 5 per cent per year, there should be 5 per cent more telephones. Let me make a very simple little calculation to try to prove once and for all where the hon. the Minister went wrong. Let us take the simple case of four potential telephone users and let us call them Alf, Bill, Charlie and Dan—I am making it very simple, i.e. A, B, C and D. A and B form a telephone exchange. Each pets a telephone. They limit themselves to 50 calls per month. In other words, in that limited little telephone exchange of two telephones, they make 100 telephone calls —50 each—per month. Now C and D are added and they too get a telephone each. Now the number of telephones has been doubled, to four, but the telephone calls have not been doubled. Let us see why not. A can now phone B. C and D. B, C and D can likewise phone the other three. Where each person could make 50 calls per month, he can now make 150. In other words, where formerly with two telephones you could make 100 calls, you can now make 600 calls with four telephones. I admit that this is an over-simplification. C might be unknown to B and thus never be phoned by B: on the other hand C might be a grocery store with more than 50 calls to make. I am only illustrating the basic point that if the number of telephones is doubled the number of telephone calls more than doubles and increases three- or four-fold and even more.

The Postmaster-General also mentioned another factor. He says that even if no phones are added the capacity of the telephone service doubles every six years. That has been the terrific challenge facing this Government, but they did not realize it. They did not do ordinary sums. The Post Office department could not bring these facts home to the hon. the Minister and the hon. the Minister could not bring these facts home to the hon. the Minister of Finance, because he does not understand them and the hon. the Minister of Finance does not understand them either. These are the problems that are facing the Post Office.

I have here a report which appeared in Rapport on Sunday which shows how vitally important the telephone service is throughout South Africa. The caption is “Telefone belangriker as kanonne”.

*This was suggested in an interview by Mr. L. Rive, the Postmaster-General. These were not Mr. Rive’s own words; this is in fact a summary, an interpretation, of his words. He spoke about having a sound infrastructure in order to develop a vigorous economy. He said : “In my opinion, economic viability even takes priority over military viability. Economic defence is more important than defence with cannons.”

Do you agree?

I say that both are equally important. We can have both in South Africa under a good government. This puts me in mind of a proposal and I wonder if the hon. the Minister has given any thought to it.

†When you have national disasters, like floods, or snowstorms abroad—I am now thinking of Great Britain in particular—the Post Office makes use, they even did that during war time, of the British Army Signal Corps, to restore the broken telephone lines and telecommunication services. I have been in touch with the Department of Defence and I asked them a fair question. I asked them whether the Post Office had approached them to ask if they could help them during the recent floods in the Eastern Province and in the Transvaal. The reply was “no”. Why was it not done? Surely this was an obvious manner in which to cope with a natural disaster, an obvious method of giving training to our youngsters in the Defence Force at the same time.

My time is running out, but I want to ask the hon. the Minister that, when he comes with examples to this House he must not always try to compare South Africa with other countries. I can make comparisons myself. I have the United Nations’ statistics here. I am not going to seek glory for myself or confusion for the Minister by pointing out to him that in the comparable figures over the period from 1953 to 1969 of 21 countries in Africa, giving the increase of telephones over that period, 15 have done better than South Africa. I get no joy out of the fact that these small countries are doing better than South Africa.

Furthermore, when the hon. the Minister comes here he must not, as he did, quote from newspaper reports and say that in France only 8 in every 100 Frenchmen have telephones. Admittedly he was quoting from a newspaper report, but that newspaper report may have been drawn up hurriedly or there could have been a typographical error. Before quoting, he should have checked his figures, because he had time to do so. Here I have the facts. The population of France is, as we all know— and 50 million Frenchmen can’t be wrong —50 million. This fact is confirmed by the latest issue of Whittaker’s Almanac. The number of telephones in France is 8 114 000. In other words, there are 16 phones for every 100 Frenchmen in France. The Minister is therefore 100 per cent out with the figures that he gave the House. I wish he would check the figures he places before us.

I could say much about the telephone services, and so on, but I wish to conclude on a more hopeful note by saying to the hon. the Minister that there are signs in his Budget, indeed, of some new thinking derived from the suggestions of the Franzsen Commission, of a new approach to the labour problem, on which I would have liked to say much more than I did. There is also an improvement in the expansion of direct dialling, of the overseas cable service, the telex, and good plans being made by him for the training of technicians. But the hon. the Minister will of course realize as a politician that it is not the task of the Opposition to praise the Minister, but rather to point out what his faults are; and, indeed, there are many. I conclude by assuring the hon. the Minister that he will have the support of this side of the House in all steps that will contribute materially to the solution of the fiscal and telephone service problems of our Post Office. Governments come and Governments go, but the country’s essential services, such as the Post Office, continue all the time. It is in the interests of all the inhabitants of this country, of whatever political persuasion, that the Post Office should achieve the success and the expansion that it deserves.

Mr. Speaker, when someone on this side of the House has to follow up on the argument of the hon. member who has just resumed his seat, it is very essential, in my opinion, for him first to judge the background against which he delivered his argument. During the Budget debate last year the hon. member made a tremendous fuss about the tariff increases. It would allegedly break our country economically and hit the users of telephones and postal services so very hard. In addition the hon. member again had a tremendous amount to say about the deficit this year. I just want to state here that in my opinion this is just play-acting, because they cannot be serious when they argue in this fashion. I am glad the members of the public are absent and consequently do not have to witness this play-acting.

But the hon. member has, inter alia, moved an amendment here, as read by you, in which he sets the Government certain tasks and also makes certain demands. In the analysis of this amendment it is very clear that the Opposition is completely out of touch with the activities and with what has already been achieved by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs.

Before I take my statement further, I should like to respond briefly to a few statements the hon. member made. Firstly, he accused the hon. the Minister of having made promises with respect to increasing the tariffs, that he allegedly said last year that for the next four or five years—I think five years was the figure mentioned— there would be no tariff increases. I am very sorry to say this, but the hon. member is putting words into the Minister’s mouth that he did not use. With respect to tariff increases, the Minister only said he did not want any tariff increases in the near future, a statement far removed from any promise.

I shall read it.

No promise was made, and the hon. member cannot quote me any promise that was made. The hon. the Minister stated this, but he did not make it a promise. He only stated it as a future possibility, without making any promise in that connection. The hon. member is therefore putting words into the Minister’s mouth. This does not redound to his credit. I also want to say that the hon. member referred to the addition of the thirteenth month’s revenue to this year’s revenue. He tried to imply that this was going to be a procedure adopted every year.

No.

Yes; why did the hon. member then criticize it? If you accept the Minister’s explanation of that, why did you then make those comments of yours about it? It is surely clear from the Minister’s Second Reading speech. Sir, I hope you will give the hon. member a second chance to speak; perhaps he would then give me a chance to make my speech. “Simultaneously with this development, a recommendation was received from the Controller and Auditor-General to the effect that telephone revenue for the month of March, which had previously always been accounted for during April, has to be credited against the month in which it was earned.” That is what the hon. the Minister said. He therefore did this to implement the recommendations of the Controller and Auditor-General, and not to obtain R12 million to add to and cancel out the deficit. That was the thought expressed by that hon. member, and I am very sorry to say that this does not accord with the truth. Here it is stated very clearly: It is the recommendation of the Controller and Auditor-General that the thirteenth month’s revenue be added to that year’s revenue, so that the financial year with its full revenue can terminate at the end of March. I think the hon. member tried to fish out something there that could not be found.

The hon. member referred, inter alia, to the increase in wages and salaries of engineers, for example. He let his heart bleed so for the wonderful overtime they are doing and the long hours they are working, but I find it remarkable that it is always that side of the House that advocates salary increases, but when deficits mount up as a result of the salary increases, and consequently the increase in operating costs, then they are the last people who want to approve tariff increases. Must one not finance these salary increases from working capital? Must one then finance this out of loan capital? Is that the United Party’s policy? Sir, we accept the hon. member’s statement for what it is worth. If they were in the position of the Government and the hon. the Minister, they would not find it easy to plead this case if they did not have the means with which to carry it out. That plea of theirs is altogether without substance; it is devoid of all substance.

The hon. member also spoke of the tariff increases. In this connection I want to refer to the position overseas, and I want to reiterate what the hon. the Minister said in connection with this matter. I quote briefly—

I want to extend an invitation to the Opposition: Would you not rather go and live in London and use those telephones that are so cheap? I am really serious about this invitation, and I shall help you to do so.

The hon. member mentioned another point in respect of which he wants to cross swords with the Minister. He said that the Minister had now taken over the non-White policy, or Bantu policy, of the United Party in toto. That is not nearly the true position either. I think it is devoid of all truth. I submit that it is not the Opposition’s policy the hon. the Minister has taken over. We find it difficult to determine exactly which horse is now going to run on which track—“which horse for which track”? We would like to accept the United Party’s challenge with respect to the debating of policy matters. Throughout the years it has been very clear to us that they can rightfully be called the “no” people, and this applies in respect of our labour policy as well. The hon. member made the accusation—I call it an accusation—that we are now taking over the United Party’s labour policy pattern. This is devoid of all truth. What is the United Party’s labour policy as stated by them here, and also as stated in their yellow booklet? It is not a policy of work reservation; it is a policy of integration. I now want to call the hon. member for Jeppes as witness. I hope he is in the House; he usually takes part in these debates. Today he will perhaps again use his own words in connection with this matter. I quote from the hon. member’s speech of 24th March of last year (Hansard, Vol. 33, col. 3455). In connection with the labour problem he said—

Without qualification the hon. member states this as the United Party’s policy, because if this were not the policy, his party would have neglected their duty by not repudiating it. But here it is just stated that any kind of labour, and any amount of it, must be used. [Interjections.] Those were the hon. member’s words, as recorded in Hansard. I now charge the hon. member with having given the House the wrong information by saying that the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is now taking over their policy. Throughout the years it has surely been stated very clearly, consistently and without the slightest deviation, that the National Party’s policy concerning the employment of Bantu is a policy of work reservation. The hon. the Minister stated very clearly that in training the Bantu for appointment for certain positions, this will not be done in such a way that the Whites are embarrassed. What is more, these Bantu who are being trained will also be prepared for serving their own people. That is the foundation of the National Party’s policy, and it is not the United Party’s policy with respect to labour. I now extend a friendly request to hon. members opposite to prove that I have now made an incorrect statement.

Sir, I said a moment ago that I refer to those hon. members as “no” people. Last year those hon. members said “no” from time to time with respect to tarriffs and the employment of these people I have just spoken about. We know them as the “no” people. When South Africa had to make the choice about becoming a Republic, they said “no”. We know that they said “no” when the National Party Government wanted to establish industries, as in the case of Iscor, Sasol, etc. So it continues; when something is done in the interests of the development of South Africa, it is those people who say “no”. I want to go further. Is the policy of those hon. members no longer the “rate for the job”? According to the statements of one of their senior members—I do not want to apologize for calling the hon. member for Jeppes a “senior” member; I regard him as such— it seems to me that this labour must be used without any qualifications or reservations. They must simply stream in. If there is something the White workers of Posts and Telegraphs must take note of, it is these statements of the United Party with respect to our labour problems. I think the National Party is doing a great service to every race group in South Africa when it aims at training them to serve their own people in the future. We hope that this will still take place to a larger extent. Where has the hon. the Minister and the National Government taken over that party’s labour policy in toto

There is another matter the hon. member mentioned. He said there is something else the hon. the Minister took over from the United Party in toto, this being concerned with, the question of financing. I think I am right in saying that that, according to the hon. member, was the second point the National Party Government took over from the United Party. He refers to the fact that we should more extensively finance our capital expenditure from our capital sources and not from our revenue. Sir, this accomplished fact stares us in the face, but why is this the case? The hon. member referred here to a surplus of R1.1 million which was converted into a deficit of R29,5 million—that is correct—and he said—

Sir, I do not believe the Opposition feels very hurt about this fact, because last year when the proposal that tariffs should be increased was accepted in this House, it was the Opposition who expressed the dissatisfaction of telephone subscribers and those using other postal and telecommunications facilities, and now, because we have obtained less revenue in the past financial year, they blame the National Government, the Minister and the officials. Last year the hon. member for Jeppes asked—

He had the temerity to use this pitiful expression—

Knowing that in previous years there was a deficit of R11,6 million on postal services alone, knowing that there was insufficient revenue to finance these services and knowing that in the four years after the Post Office became independent it was not able to build up any reserves, the Opposition comes along with this attitude and expresses the dissatisfaction of the South African public because tariff increases were introduced. I now want to say this. The hon. member expressed criticism of the deficit, but if there had not been tariff increases, what would the deficit have been then? And he must not tell me that greater use would have been made of telephones and postal services. I can tell you this, Sir, that if you work it out you will see that the relationship is such that they succeeded to a large extent in creating resistance to the use of these services because tariffs were increased. Now the hon. member, or the next speaker, must tell me from what source of revenue that party would have covered the deficits, because after all they say they are the future Government? Now they can surely tell the electorate that in this sphere this department failed in its financing, and if they come into power we will do this or that. And if the hon. members opposite are not going to do so, I put it to you, Sir, that no right-minded person need take any notice of their promises. I said that this is an empty proposition and I challenge them to refute it. But the hon. member for Orange Grove—you know, last year I made a slip of the tongue and called him the hon. member for Orange Grave. From the grave comes darkness, and the United Party took note of that and now they call the hon. member the shadow Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. But in that shadow there is darkness, but that darkness is not so impenetrable that we cannot see the germs of the venomous in it, the germs that want to make the healthy economy of South Africa and of this Department of Posts and Telegraphs an ailing one. I say they are “no” people in every step that is taken to benefit South Africa. In his budget speech the hon. the Minister referred to the reasons for the financial problems and stated that a more than normal counter-reaction to the tariff increases was discernable. There you have the evidence in the words of the department and the Minister. This Opposition boasted a great deal and made many promises, and now I want to ask them this question. Why did you not point out to the public, when you made such a great fuss about the deficits there are, the necessity for adequate surpluses being furnished by the major services as a contribution to a sound basis for the great capital investment that must be made. After all, you are asking for the extension of services and for improved services. This department and the Minister can only provide this with more capital. But I also want to give my other friends on this side a chance to take part in this debate and almost two hours have already passed; I therefore want to make haste. With respect to this question to the Opposition I want to point out to them that they have really picked some of the fruits of their destructive and negative conduct when we discussed this question of tariff increases last year.

Are we now responsible for the losses?

Yes, you are responsible and I stick to that, because you built up the public’s resistance to tariff increases instead of pointing out to them that there are deficits and that good services cannot be furnished if there is insufficient capital, and where would you be furnishing the wonderful services if you did not have the capital for doing so? Where would you find the capital if you could not obtain it from the operating revenue and loan capital?

Unfortunately the public believes us and not you.

If that were the case, we would have had a much greater deficit because there are still sufficient right-minded people in South Africa who did not believe you, and that is why this department could still continue with such energy; that is why it could still furnish the services which it did furnish. I want to conclude. I should like to mention a few other aspects, but time has caught up with me. I want to conclude with the thought that this House and South Africa owe the hon. the Minister, the Postmaster-General and all his officials and workers a great deal of thanks. They had to finance these services under extremely difficult circumstances. They had to cut away, measure, fit and make adjustments. We nevertheless thank them very much for the energetic way they tackle the problems and the great dedication with which they serve the public’s interests. I do not have the time now to go into the recommendations of the Franzsen Commission. However, I think that the implementation of those recommendations is showing us the light with respect to the financing of the Post Office. I hope, in the spirit of the Franzsen Commission’s recommendation, that sufficient loan capital will be found. I said this last year and I say again that I hope the Opposition will also make their contribution so that the public of South Africa will get this important service facility for communication purposes in commerce and in the private sector with their fullest support. Then possibly it would not even be necessary to implement the recommendations of the Franzsen Commission. If we can obtain sufficient capital from loyal citizens of South Africa, good services can be furnished. We thank them very much for having made the recommendations of the Franzsen Commission applicable to such an extent to the Post Office. It is still my conviction that the more one can finance one’s industry from revenue, the better it is for the future. I wonder whether the hon. the Minister cannot manage to have the R199 million, which we inherited with independence, written off. I shall be very glad if you succeed in that.

In conclusion I wish, for this department and the hon. the Minister, support in the year ahead and in the further years under the control of the hon. the Minister. And there are still many years left. He shall eventually have to retire with age. We hope he will succeed in building up a reserve fund for the Post Office so that we shall be less dependent on loan capital.

Mr. Speaker, in what was really a pot-pourri of a speech the hon. member for Harrismith quoted a tremendous number of points. I certainly do not intend to follow him completely in that respect. He asked, inter alia, that we must now give him the solution for the Post Office. I would say, as the saying goes: “That is a fine cheek.” After having neglected the Post Office for 20 years and longer through maladministration, they ask us for instant solutions! Now we must tell them the answer. I can tell the hon. member that we do have certain proposals we should like to make. These are however only proposals, and not instant solutions. They may be of use. If we think for one moment we are going to solve the difficulties of the Post Office within two hours or a few days, we are making a big mistake. Then the hon. member charged the hon. member for Orange Grove with talking of increased tariffs last time and saying that South Africa would be hard hit by that. What has happened now? This is exactly what I am asking him; what has happened now? The hon. the Minister is now saying himself that it had the effect of building up a resistance against it amongst the people. Most certainly it hit the Post Office very hard. Consequently this is also one of the reasons why the deficit is so great. He also said that the hon. member for Orange Grove had allegedly said that the 13 months that were calculated into the past year, would recur. The hon. member for Orange Grove however never said anything like that. The only point he tried to make was that the 13 months’ income which is shown makes the Minister’s deficit look considerably better. As I have said, I do not want to react to the hon. member’s speech because I believe we should talk on a higher level than on the Oudtshoorn election level, since there are many important matters to be discussed.

†The hon. member for Orange Grove has already mentioned the telephone shortage and has dealt with several aspects of that. I would like to deal with several other aspects because I believe that one of the most pressing problems in South Africa today is undoubtedly the telecommunication service backlog. It is not merely the backlog; it is also the general standard of the telecommunication service.

I know for a fact that members on this side of the House are faced with the phenomena, and I am sure that hon. members on the other side of the House are faced with the same phenomena, that we daily receive letters from people who cannot obtain telephones. We also receive letters from people who have telephones but do not get a satisfactory service. In this regard I really want to commend the department and its officials for the most courteous and helpful way in which they deal with members who come to them with problems. I think we must really congratulate them on that.

The point is however, that if the South African economy is going to be lifted from the doldrums, we must have an effective telecommunication service. The telecommunication service has in fact a vital, an integrated role to play in the future prosperity of South Africa. I have here the economic development programme for South Africa from the period 1968 to 1973. Here it says that if the G.D.P. of South Africa is to grow at 5 per cent, then the telecommunication services have to grow at 5,3 per cent. Alternatively, if the G. D. P. grows at per cent, the telecommunication services have to grow at 5,8 per cent. If the G.D.P. grows at 6 per cent, the telecommunication services grow at 6,4 per cent. In other words, it merely means that the telecommunication service in South Africa has to grow faster than the economy does. The reason for that has been given by the hon. member for Orange Grove in his speech. It is because the traffic on the exchanges and on the lines does in fact increase by a greater percentage than the actual number of telephones increase. Therefore, we actually face a terrible position in this regard, because the telecommunication service in South Africa is not growing in any real terms at all. It is not growing because of the massive backlog with which it has as yet to catch up. It has not caught up with the backlog yet, so how can it be growing?

But you expressed your gratitude for that a moment ago.

This is a projection and not a fact. It is a projection of what should be done if the economy is going to grow. Never mind growing, it has not even caught up with the backlog. To show how important this is, already in 1967 the Wiehahn Committee had the following to say as far as the backlog was concerned. I am quoting from page 6 of the present report of the committee of inquiry into the Post Office financing—

That was in 1967—

It is, therefore, very clear to all of us that the elimination of the backlog and the upgrading of the general standard of the telephone service is one of the highest priorities. One of the greatest stumbling blocks seems to have been, and still is, the capital and labour shortage. In this regard the recommendations of the Franzsen Committee are to be welcomed, because it would seem that some of the recommendations that have been made are in fact the only possible way out of the position as we find it at present. We are not saying that these are the perfect solutions or that this is what should normally be done, but in the present situation I am afraid they are unavoidable. I think the basis on which we must discuss any future plans for the Post Office while it is faced with its present dilemma, is “what can we do?”—facing the position as we find it.

I would especially like to welcome the R199 million loan debt from the Treasury, which is going to be converted to permanent capital of the Post Office. It is abundantly clear that if the Post Office is going to negotiate is own loans, it will need to break away from the loan capital structure in order to enable it to operate as an autonomous business enterprise. We, on this side of the House, welcome all moves that give greater autonomy to the Post Office. Here I would like some clarity from the hon. the Minister. It is not clear to us whether it is the intention of the Government that the Post Office, in negotiating its own loans, will be able or empowered to underwrite some or all of its loans. I specifically ask this because it seems that private enterprise, and especially the large international companies in the telecommunication field, would prefer, when dealing with the Post Office, for the Post Office to underwrite its obligations itself. So I would like the hon. the Minister to give us clarity on whether this is his intention.

I furthermore say this advisedly because I am convinced that, if we are to clear up the mess in the telecommunication services, a mess which has, as I have mentioned, been created by the years of neglect and mismanagement by this Government, it is going to call for some bold thinking and, more especially, some bold acting on the part of this Minister and the Government. What is more, it is going to call for this very soon indeed because time is of the essence. I am further convinced that one of speediest and most effective avenues of action, one which will have to be thoroughly investigated, and I commend this to the Minister, is that of making more and more use of private enterprise in the running of the Post Office. I know that the hon. the Minister will listen or, rather, I hope that the hon. the Minister will listen with an open mind to some of the ideas that can be considered in this regard because, after all, we know that any Minister of Posts and Telegraphs who has his post at heart, is in the yellow pages. This hon. Minister, I may say, is not in the yellow pages, but in the red. Therefore it is even more essential that he should be able to think boldly and globally in this regard.

I know that private enterprise has to a certain extent been used in the running of the Post Office and in the building thereof, but I believe this has been done only to a limited extent. There are a number of very large international telecommunication companies operating in South Africa at this moment and which have both the capital and the labour resources as well as the know-how and experience. Not only in South Africa, but in countries all over the world, and for a very long time, have they had the necessary know-how to extricate the hon. the Minister from his precarious position with regard to the telecommunication services.

I believe that the hon. the Minister should seriously investigate the possibility of negotiating with these companies not only to build new extensions to the telecommunication system, not only to supply and install new equipment in these buildings, but also to finance all these activities from their own capital resources and to make use of their own labour. In these circumstances they could or even should be responsible for the maintenance of these installations.

Whom are you quoting?

This would not involve the Post Office in a direct loan, because these installations would then be owned by private enterprise itself. Furthermore, every cent need not necessarily be paid back, unless circumstances warrant it. I believe, however, that in such an event this service to the public should still be rendered by the Post Office. In other words, the Post Office does not divest itself of a part of its telecommunications network; the network is, in fact, still controlled by the Post Office. I believe that this type of action would in the first instance relieve the chronic trained labour shortage in the Post Office in this field, a shortage that has been hampering expansion, because trained labour would have to be brought from overseas for such contracts. They are not available in South Africa at the moment. I believe secondly, that these international companies—and this is clear from the vast resources available to them— given the chance can eliminate the present backlog and update the present system almost in a matter of months—from 12 to 18 or in 24 at the outside. Thirdly, such a course of action by the Minister would earn for us very valuable foreign exchange not to speak of the valuable uplift which the whole economy would get by having an effective and smooth-running telecommunication system.

I agree that this is only a general line of thought and that there are many possible ways of doing this. In his speech the hon. the Minister mentioned “lease-back” and “equipment trust” schemes. They may possibly be of some use in this regard, but I wonder why the hon. the Minister is only going to investigate them now. Surely he could have investigated them before even if in a different context to see whether it would work. As I have said, we need bold action and above all speed. The way he mentioned it in his speech, it seems that the Minister is still thinking piecemeal about lease-back schemes and only in terms of fixed property and equipment trusts. This looks like a piecemeal way of doing things, while we should be thinking of whole networks, of whole installations which must be done in one go, because the backlog must be caught up as soon as possible and as quickly as possible, if not immediately. I believe that these avenues should be speedily and thoroughly explored. The Franzsen Committee has opened the way for the Minister through these new financial arrangements and he must act now; time is of the essence and time is running out.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Florida said just a moment ago that the United Party will wholeheartedly support any steps to grant greater autonomy to the Post Office. I am very glad to hear this from the Opposition today. The hon. member was not here at the time, but I want to tell him that when Dr. Hertzog introduced his policy motion in the Senate in 1958, this Opposition opposed it. He must take note of that, but I am nevertheless very glad the Opposition is finding its feet in this way.

We listened yesterday to the hon. member for Orange Grove. He made a few statements. He said firstly—and I want to endorse what the hon. member for Harrismith said, because I think it is a shocking thing the hon. member did here yesterday —that the Minister had used certain words, and he virtually insinuated he was quoting from Hansard. The hon. member said things that are not printed in Hansard. I want to ask the hon. member for Orange Grove to be courteous enough to listen to what I am now saying. The hon. member quoted from Hansard (Vol. 33, col. 3495 of 24th March, 1971) what the Minister is supposed to have said, i.e.—

However, there the hon. member stopped quoting. He did not read the rest of the sentence, i.e. “that is our objective”. The hon. member then went further and said : “That was his word and his promise to the country no further tariff increases until 1976. Does he still stand by that promise in view of what he has told us today?” Why does the hon. member quote incorrectly form Hansard? He insinuated that last year the hon. the Minister promised that for the next five years there would be no tariff increases. The hon. member even mentioned the date 1976.

I spoke of last year’s speech.

I am quoting from the hon. member’s Hansard speech. Let us quote and let us debate the matter if someone has said something, let us quote from Hansard what he said and then castigate him if we can. However, we must not make insinuations and suggestions that are incorrect. It does not befit us in this House. Yesterday the hon. member made a terrible fuss about this Budget. He pretended the whole world was collapsing. He spoke of the “terrible” deficit we have here. If it was such a poor Budget, and if South Africa and the Post Office is in such a terribly sad state, to what does he then ascribe the good effects? Let us look at Die Burger of this morning. This is now the poor Budget of yesterday, one that affects every man, woman and child in South Africa. The newspaper states: “Exchange on the move as of old.” It is prospering. The public, and even the men at the Stock Exchange, now have confidence in the Government. It is a pity the hon. the Minister cannot introduce another Budget now. Let us just look here at what the people state here. The report reads :

People supposedly have no confidence in the Government and this is ostensibly such a poor Budget. I just want to quote one more paragraph—

That shows you the people are happy. Things are going well with this country of ours. If South Africa was so badly off, would the Exchange then have shot up like this? In conclusion I just want to quote the following—

Sir, I can also say this is a bull Budget, and we are very thankful to the hon. the Minister and his department for what has been done in the past year to lead the Post Office along this road. Let us look at what the leader in this morning’s Transvaler has to say. I think it a very good thing to read it.

Order! Is it relevant to this debate?

Excuse me, Mr. Speaker, I shall rather leave it at that.

The hon. member also referred yesterday to non-White labour that must be better utilized. He said he was very grateful and happy that the Government has taken over their policy. Again he insinuated that this is the first time the Minister has stated his policy here. I want to quote to the hon. member what the hon. the Minister said last year on 22nd February. I refer to Hansard, col. 1343. The hon. member for Orange Grove asked the Minister—

The hon. the Minister’s reply in the next column was—

This was no novelty. After all, it is the policy the hon. the Minister stated here last year.

Now I should like to discuss another aspect of our Budget with the hon. Opposition. It is not only in this Budget that it has come so appositely to the fore, it has also done so in our other Budgets. The matter concerns the relationship between the Loan and Revenue Accounts. Mr. Speaker, the maintenance of a separate Loan Account must keep pace with the recoverable expenditure, expenditure which is an addition to the permanent assets of the Government. Then the question crops up: What must be financed from the Loan Account? The policy of burdening the Loan Account with expenditure of this nature has already been in vogue since 1910, and was formally affirmed in 1936 and 1958 by the relevant Ministers of Finance. I now want to point out to the Opposition that in his Budget speech of 1958 the Minister of Finance declared—

That is what the Minister of Finance said in 1958. Since that time, and prior to it, there were amendments and changes at times. In this way successive Ministers of Finance increasingly began to deviate from the traditional separation between these two accounts, the Revenue and Loan Accounts. We found that before 1953 the unforeseen annual surpluses in the Revenue Account were mostly transferred to the Loan Account to help finance it, thereby to cancel out the Loan Account deficit. The extent of those transfers was ever known, and at times it was very changeable. I must say that the 1953 decision to transfer an amount in the Budget from the Revenue Account to the Loan Account reduced to some extent the distinction between these two accounts, even at that stage.

Then, in his Budget speech of 1954, the Minister declared, inter alia: “… that there is no hard and fast rule which could be applied under all circumstances in regard to the sources from which the loan programme should be financed”. At that time recognition was consequently granted to the principle that a portion of the capital expenditure could be financed from taxes and other current revenue. The Franzsen Commission investigated the question of South Africa’s fiscal and monetary policy in great depth. I now want to quote what that Franzsen Commission and the present Secretary for Finance, Mr. Gerald Browne, said. Mr. Browne wrote an article entitled “Die Fiskale Politiek” in the book “Die Ekonomiese Politiek van Suid-Afrika” under the editorship of Prof. J. A. Lombard. In the article he stated (translation)—

Sir, they examined that very thoroughly, and that is what the present Secretary for Finance told us even before 1962. After all the information they obtained, the Franzsen Commission—I am now not referring to the Franzsen Committee of Inquiry into the Post Office—recommended (translation)—

The commission proposed that this should fall away, and now with a great deal of fuss the hon. member comes along and objects to the Minister wanting to finance as much as 50 per cent and more from revenue.

Franzsen said not more than 40 per cent.

The hon. member now says “not more than 40 per cent”, but here it is in the Franzsen Commission’s report, which the hon. member has also seen.

Yes, the committee states 50 per cent, but the commission stated 40 per cent.

The latest report states 50 per cent. Sir, one can let the emphasis fall on four important aspects in any one Budget: Firstly, the expenditure; secondly the revenue; thirdly the surplus or the deficit; and, fourthly, how the budgetary deficit will be financed. That is where the emphasis must fall. Sir, the tendency throughout the world is to do what the Franzsen Commission proposes here; the policy that is followed depends on whether the country is a developing or an already developed country. We find that the United States of America and the United Kingdom, two developed countries, have one Estimate. The hon. member knows this is so. There they have done away with the two separate Estimates. They now only have one Estimate, in which the Revenue Account and the Loan Account are pooled.

Are you also suggesting this for the Post Office?

Sir, this is what is developing in South Africa. We are not a backward country; we are not completely underdeveloped. In the pleas one hears from the Opposition they want to imply that South Africa is underdeveloped. We are already highly industrialized. The hon. member knows that our industries make the greatest contribution to the national product. We must continue along the present road. In my opinion 50 per cent from the Revenue Account for capital expenditure is still too little. I think the time has come for us to use even more than 50 per cent from revenue for our capital expenditure. We must operate more on a cash basis. We must not overload future generations. The hon. member surely knows that if one negotiates more loans one’s annual burden in respect of capital redemption and interest becomes very extensive. We in South Africa also have many foreign investments here, and the interest and dividends that have to be paid out on foreign investments in South Africa, will in 10 years be equal to the total gold production of South Africa.

Sir, in South Africa we must now realize for once that we cannot only live on loans, and I want to express the hope and trust that the hon. member for Orange Grove, who continually speaks about the Post Office and who is the United Party’s main speaker on Post Office matters, will realize once and for all that we want to administer the Post Office on a sound business footing. We cannot simply want to negotiate loans continuously, and therefore I am very grateful that the hon. the Minister has reached the stage where the State will now convert this R199 million into a permanent burden of debt and the interest rate on that be only 6 per cent. We know that this R199 million is about 50 per cent of the total loan burden which the Post Office has had from 1910 to that day. This is arbitrarily calculated, but it is the approximate amount.

Sir, I should also like to discuss the Budget itself for a moment and then look at a few figures. The hon. member for Orange Grove said yesterday that it is shocking that there is such a great deficit. But is there a deficit?

The Minister used the word.

It is true, there is a deficit when the two accounts are pooled, but the hon. member wants to imply that there is a deficit on the Revenue Account, which is not the case.

I did not say that.

Let us review this Budget in the light of the fact that South Africa is a developed, industrialized country. The Revenue Estimates for 1972-’73 amount to R321 million and the expenditure on the current account, the Revenue Account, is R280,7 million. This gives us a surplus of R40,3 million. The position is therefore not nearly as bad as the hon. member wanted to imply yesterday afternoon. That R280,7 million also includes R26,8 million for depreciation. That is an item we did not make provision for last year.

This year the hon. the Minister made extra provision for this because we are thinking of the days to come. We know that the present assets must be replaced. What is more, we know that in future, as the result of many factors, such as salary increases, revaluation, devaluation, etc., it will perhaps cost much more to replace these assets, and therefore I am glad that the Minister and the department have provided a suitable amount in that respect. Sir, the capital expenditure amounts to R 139,8 million which will be financed by the surplus of R40,3 million, the additional provision for depreciation and the Treasury loan of R46,5 million. This then leaves a deficit of R26,2 million on the Loan Account. If we had obtained a Treasury loan of R72 million instead of R46 million, there would have been no deficit, and what would the hon. member have said then? He would probably have shouted “Hurrah”.

The fact that the Minister did not ask for the maximum loan is surely good business policy. In addition I also want to say this to the hon. member: The Post Office is going to make use of short-term financing, for example the R10 million bank credit. The Government has so much confidence in South Africa’s economy that we believe that at the end of the next financial year we shall, instead of having a deficit, perhaps be able to balance the Budget or even have a surplus. Sir, we have confidence in our people and we know that we are going to stimulate and expand our economy in spite of this Opposition. We therefore need not be afraid that we shall not succeed in placing the Post Office on a sound financial footing. [Interjections.] That is our view; that is our aim; that is our endeavour, if the hon. member can understand what that means.

It means that you will not make the grade.

Let us look at the appropriation in respect of the Revenue Account. We see that the net increase is R55,5 million, an increase of 24,7 per cent on last year. If we do not take provision for depreciation into account, there is still an increase of 12,8 per cent on the previous year. Sir, the Minister does not want to paint a pretty picture to bluff the South African electorate or the man in the street, and that is why these Estimates have been consequently and logically drawn up.

Sir, I should just like to look at a few other items. This year a revenue of R321 million is being budgeted for, an increase of R22,7 million, i.e. a 7 per cent increase. Hon. members of the Opposition want to imply that there is a tremendous decrease in the Post Office’s revenue because we are budgeting for a deficit of a few million. For telecommunications alone we are budgeting for an increase of 8,3 per cent and for an increase of 5,2 per cent for postal services. This is considerably lower, it is true, than the 10 per cent growth rate the hon. the Leader of the Opposition advocated for our entire economy, but we know that a 10 per cent growth rate will ruin this country; one simply cannot do it. The economic development programme, worked out by experts, puts it at a 5½ per cent maximum; that is what we can achieve and that is what we are striving for. If we achieve it, we shall not disrupt the economy. It will not place an unnecessary burden on the labour source and will not exhaust our capital source either. This shows you that with this Budget, without the hon. the Minister having said so, this development programme of South Africa has been taken into account as far as we possibly could.

I want to conclude by saying that I think the Opposition also has a function. If they say they one day want to take over this Government, which will certainly never happen—perhaps they will be drawing a pension one day; this Government will look after that—they must ensure that when they take part in this debate or speak to the general public they do not present certain facts in such a way that it can appear to be true while it is actually not the truth. We say thank you that we have again received the kind of Budget we have this year, and we hope things will go well with South Africa in future.

I want to tell the hon. member for Sunnyside that the difference between an objective and a promise is the credibility gap of the Government today. I therefore do not want to follow the hon. member in his financial arguments, but rather to discuss something in connection with the technical section of the Post Office. The Post Office has in the past been described as an extension of our senses, because it is possible through letters, telegrams and telephones to remain in touch with your friends and business partners over long distances. The Post Office’s telephone service is in fact an extension of our central nervous system. Poor communications may inhibit and stunt our growth, and may in serious cases even paralyse our existence. The fact that there is an ever-increasing waiting-list for 108 000 telephones indicates to me that our commercial and industrial growth, and therefore our economic progress, is already being seriously handicapped. What does a country do if that extension of civilization’s central nervous system, its existing telephone service, shows the symptoms of a nervous breakdown? If in spite of treatment for years it still shows signs of being overtaxed, we must apply shock treatment and place another government in power. If one picks up a telephone today, too often there is, instead of a healthy dailling tone, only silence or a click and a crackle, or to your embarrassment you get the same wrong number three times in succession.

Why does that happen only to United Party people?

Or you find yourself in the middle of someone else’s conversation. The hon. member should just go and live on the Reef and try to make a telephone call there. It is the most frustrating thing in our lives today. The bottleneck causing the difficulty is easy to detect. We just have to look in the Estimates for the section for which the most money is being asked, and that is for telephone dialling equipment. The largest single amount of R62 million is being asked for that, an increase of R13 830 000 as compared with last year—an increase of nearly 25 per cent. We have no objection to that, but we feel that it is still too low in the present circumstances, and, provided the priorities are right and the management is allowed to use the money effectively, we are in favour of the most effective system available on the market being installed. Well-informed telecommunication engineers believe that 95 per cent of the Post Office’s problems may be ascribed to the overburdening of the understaffed and outdated telephone exchange system still being used by the Post Office.

What source are you quoting now?

The telephone system still used by the South African Post Office in its exchanges is the Strowger step by step two motion rotary selector system. It has a number of mechanical moving parts making use of a wiping contact rotary selector mechanism, causing considerable wear and tear. Its maintenance is high and its life span is only about 6 years. But a highly efficient and tested telephone exchange system is now on the South African market, being installed for private and business exchanges. The department of Posts and Telegraphs has recently granted approval for it to be connected to the public exchange network. It is known as the cross-bar switching system. It is a modern electro-magnetic system with pressure contacts. It completely eliminates the high wearing wiping contact of the two-motion rotary selector of our present system. The cross-bar system is extremely fast and reliable. It has shown that it can handle about 40 million calls before any adjustment is necessary.

Is the hon. member not reading his speech?

I am reading certain technical terms. This represents, Mr. Speaker, an 8 000 per cent increase or improvement in efficiency on the conventional system. It has a life expectancy of 10 to 15 years, twice that of the present system being used in the Post Office today. According to Time magazine, the New York central telephone exchange, one of the busiest in the world, catering for something like 40 000 telephone subscribers, uses the crossbar system. Also according to Time magazine, the exchange is so reliable that it averages only about 20 seconds down time a year on the average. The telephones only go out of order once every 4½ years.

The conventional exchanges of about 10 000 lines, which we use in South Africa, need approximately 10 maintenance men daily, whereas the cross-bar exchanges normally have their doors locked. Cross-bar could mean a 50 per cent decrease in running costs, although they are more expensive to install.

I should like to recommend most urgently and strongly that the Post Office recommendation of a few years back be implemented, namely that cross-bar switches should be installed in all our exchanges. Why its introduction into the South African Post Office has been so long delayed is a peculiar mystery.

Mr. Speaker, in terms of Standing Order No. 102, is the hon. member entitled to read his speech so persistently?

The hon. member must not read from his notes to such an extent.

One important aspect is that the cross-bar is being produced locally with about 70 per cent local content. One international South African company has installed something like 30 000 closed circuit cross-bar internal office lines for companies throughout South Africa. Orders for the instalment of equipment to cater for more than another 2 500 lines have been received in a very short time. It is being used with great success in about 75 countries throughout the world. Even the South African Railways will be spending from R5 to R6 million to introduce crossbar to all its own exchanges, except for its main exchange in Johannesburg, where they want to introduce the most modern electronic system.

Private enterprise will be responsible for the total supply and installation of the South African railway system. All the trunk, main and end exchanges, except for Johannesburg, will be done by them. The main motive for doing it this way is that it requires less maintenance, especially where we have a manpower shortage in South Africa. I should like to ask the hon. the Minister why the Post Office does not follow the good example of the South African Railways. I should also like to ask the hon. the Minister why the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is so slow to modernize. The introduction of cross-bar exchanges will be a step towards electronics because it reduces the mechanical and introduces central processing units which routes calls along the best alternative and available lines. Cross-bar will save valuable maintenance staff and repair men and it is very much more efficient than the present system in use. Orders to and through the five big telecommunication manufacturers will uplift and stimulate our economy in South Africa.

May I ask the hon. member a question?

No. [Interjections.] The equipment bought overseas has also become considerably more expensive since devaluation and it would be a considerable advantage if we could make use of locally produced equipment. Judging from agreements with private enterprise, I am quite sure that the big five of the telecommunication manufacturers will be quite prepared to install and finance the new exchanges because it is well known that the Post Office suffers from a great shortage of manpower and capital in South Africa. I am convinced that the big five manufacturers will be prepared to enter into “leaseback” agreements, as has been suggested by the hon. member for Florida. Lastly and most important, the new system will provide South Africans with a better and decidedly more efficient telephone service. The advantages are so self-evident and great that it is quite incredible that the Post Office has not yet installed the new and modern cross-bar system. The Minister is still tying South Africa to the apron-strings of Britain, because they were the people who introduced the exchange systems in all the countries within her Empire. We must ask the Cabinet to plan ahead courageously and if they are unable—as is apparent—to do so, they will have to make way for a United Party Government. I therefore support the amendment moved by the hon. member for Orange Grove.

Mr. Speaker, to start with, I should just like to refer to one matter raised by the hon. member for Orange Grove. This is a matter which in my opinion deserves comment. Referring to the supposed shortage of 100 000 postponed telephone applications as at 31st March this year, he cast suspicion not only on the Minister, but also by implication on the staff of the Post Office. He implied that this was an erroneous figure, for in respect of that figure of 100 000 telephones he said: “I regard it with suspicion”. Those were the words he used. What does he mean by casting suspicion on the figure mentioned by the hon. the Minister in his speech? I think it is very reprehensible to have suggested that that figure is not correct. I can tell the hon. member that even the figure of 100 000 …

May I ask the hon. member a question? I want to ask the hon. member whether the total shortage was not indicated as being 108 000 telephones in the figures which the Minister was so kind as to make available to us before the time? He did in fact give that figure.

Order! The hon. member must proceed.

I think that the shortage of 100 000 or 108 000 is still far more than the actual figure in regard to the position. I shall tell hon. members why I say this. When this evening, night and week-end service was introduced hundreds of telephone applicants on the Witwatersrand, particularly in the Wakeville exchange area, and also in Springs, were asked whether they wanted the night and week-end service. Not half of the applicants were still living at the place where they h?d been registered and from whence their original application had been made. Therefore that figure is far more than what it should actually be.

Now he is accusing them of dishonesty.

Yes, that is what he is doing. The hon. member for Florida suggested that the Department of Post and Telegraphs could solve all their problems very, very quickly if they would only make use of people from outside the Post Office. He thus has no confidence whatsoever in the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and its staff. He wants to bring in people to solve the problems of the telephone shortage.

There are not enough technicians.

I shall leave them at that, for they do not deserve more attention than that.

All of us will agree that the Post Office should be managed as a business concern and that this is in fact being done. As befits any good business concern, that concern must know what it is doing. I want to say in the first place that one is very grateful to the Department and the hon. the Minister for having made all these statistics available to us as a supplement to the report of the Postmaster-General. These statistics are very interesting. The same applies to the Annual Report of the Post Office for the year ended 31st March, 1970. Any business concern which wants to manage its affairs well, is dependant on statistics to know where it is going. Here there are all the statistics one could possibly need for the sound management of a business concern.

When I refer to the Post Office I want to see our hon. the Minister as the chairman of that business concern. The members of the public are the shareholders. The hon. member for Orange Grove, who is the main speaker for the Opposition, I see as a person striving for a possible directorship. The Postmaster-General I see in the position of managing director. He gave a very good report of his activities here. When the chairman reports on his activities for the year one expects the person striving for the alternative directorship, i.e. the hon. member for Orange Grove, to point out the errors which were made. He should point out the short-comings in the annual report; he should point out the lack of profit; he should point out the existing shortage of services. When he points out these matters, one expects him to say how he is going to rectify them.

I also put that question to him.

We listened for approximately an hour to the nagging of the hon. member, but there was no positive, practical suggestion to try to place the affairs of the Post Office on a better basis than it is on at the moment.

The Franzsen Committee made certain recommendations and I want to refer to them briefly. The conversion of R199 million in capital on which 6 per cent will be paid annually to the Treasury is a step in the right direction. I think the Opposition agrees with that. In earlier years, before the Post Office came under a new management and began to manage its own affairs, hundreds of thousands of telephones were installed in dwellings and business enterprises without the persons in question ever paying any installation fee or even deposit for the installation of that instrument. I was fortunately one of them. I would be quite prepared to make a contribution, even at this late stage, by paying a deposit or even an installation fee so that the Post Office could be provided with additional capital in this way.

The Opposition said that they could find nothing wrong with the five year plan or with the supplementary loan funds from the Treasury. I recall that the hon. member for Orange Grove said in haste yesterday afternoon that we accept all the recommendations of the Franzsen Committee, but that they do not. I did not hear today what recommendations they do not accept, so I take it that they accept them all.

They also referred derogatorily to the overdraft facilities by means of which the Reserve Bank may be provided with R10 million for the Post Office. Any business concern—and the Post Office is a business concern—makes use of overdraft facilities. There is no enterprise I know of which does not make use of financing of this kind. What is wrong with that? I should also like to emphasize the following recommendation of the Franzsen Committee, namely that the surpluses in the Post Office Fund— and I am very confident that there will be surpluses—may be held in that Fund as a reserve for the lean years. A great fuss was made about the lack of planning, and I now want to give you a single example of the kind of planning which does take place in the Post Office. I am going to mention a half-dozen exchanges where there is a waiting-list for telephones. In the Alberton area, according to the report, there are 2 054 postponed applications. This figure sounds terrible when one reads it on its own and thinks that there are many people who do not have telephones, but one must also read what is being done there. In the capital spending programme one reads that an amount of R158 000 has been appropriated for the Alberton-Alrode area, and in the Alberton-Roodekop area R160 000 for the provision of additional telephone facilities. Progress is being made with the construction of exchanges and provision of telephone facilities there, and in due course that waiting-list will disappear. In the Boksburg area there are 2 559 postponed applications, the Boksburg exchange is being enlarged at a cost of R540 000. In the Witfield area R169 500 is going to be spent. In the Edenvale area there are 2 044 postponed applications, and here R206 000 is going to be spent in Eastleigh. In the Kempton Park area there are 2 976 postponed applications, but the Kempton Park exchange is being enlarged at a cost of R151 000. In Springs there are 3 002 postponed applications and in Dersley Park an amount of R230 000 is going to be spent. This is, after all, planning. One does not build an exchange in an area where there are no applications for telephones. In the Wadeville area, in my constituency, there are 1 888 postponed applications and in the Elspark area R220 000 is being spent. I may say that the Roodekop area also covers part of the Wadeville area. This list which I have just mentioned surely testifies to planning. When one looks at all the postponed applications and also at the capital programme for the next year, the approved works, one sees that in every area where the need exists there has been thorough planning and that the provision of amenities is in the process of developing. One can, after all, understand that the installation of a telephone exchange is a process which takes time. It is not like ordering something from the O.K. Bazaars. One cannot make a telephone call today and say that you wanted it yesterday. Here it is a question of planning and the appropriation of funds. It is a question of the capital equipment which has to be ordered, and which has then to be manufactured and installed. It is a protracted process and one cannot expect a telephone exchange to be constructed within a few weeks.

In conclusion I want to refer to the staff. I have the greatest regard for all the good work which is being done by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, and in particular for the staff of the Department. When I speak of staff, I include that chairman of ours, the hon. the Minister, the managing director, the Postmaster-General and everyone down to the most junior official in the Post Office. I receive from them only the best treatment and I am still waiting for any hon. member on that side of the House, except in general, to express any praise for the Department and its officials. The hon. the Minister said that in future salary increases would be linked to productivity. The Post Office staff may take cognizance of this. If one looks at Table 1 on page 13 of the supplementary information in the Report, one sees that the number of staff members Der hundred million calls was 19 in 1961, while the figure is only 7 for 1972. Surely that testifies to productivity. The Opposition referred to those 1 000 000 hours which the staff of the Post Office worked without remuneration for the sake of South Africa. They referred to that in a derogatory fashion. As long as the public places its faith in the National Party, they will never regret it. One has the greatest praise for that staff which did this. They did it for the sake of South Africa and not for the sake of a little political gain, which is what the hon. Opposition is seeking.

Sir, the hon. member for Germiston District said that hon. members on this side of the House do not tender thanks to the officials. Now, I just want to point out to him that the hon. member for Orange Grove, as well as the hon. member for Florida, has already done this today.

It has been four years now since the new dispensation for the Post Office was announced, namely that the Post Office should be autonomous and should function on a business basis. For the information of the hon. member for Sunnyside, who doubted whether the United Party supports the autonomy of the Post Office, I can say that this side of the House did in fact support that step. Not only did we support it, but the general public, and particularly the business sector, were all pleased about it, because we hoped that we in South Africa would then be a business partner the richer. But what is the situation today? After having had to listen yesterday afternoon to a desperate Budget speech, it is very clear that the idea of a new business partner in South Africa was a dream which has faded into nothingness. What do we see before us in this department under the leadership of the hon. the Minister? We see in actual fact a brake on progress; we see a department which, because it has failed to keep ahead of South Africa’s development, is now placing obstacles in our way. They have in actual fact failed to pave the way for essential growth.

[Inaudible.]

I shall come to that. Appeals to the people of South Africa for greater productivity are continually being made by hon. members on the opposite side of the House. I agree wholeheartedly with that. I would go so far as to say that it is in fact the ideal of every person and businessman in South Africa to be more productive. But I want to ask the hon. the Minister—can he reconcile these appeals to greater productivity with the poor telephone service we have in South Africa today?

Is it really so poor?

Can he reconcile these appeals for greater productivity with the long periods persons have to wait for their telephones to be repaired when these are defective? Can he reconcile this appeal for greater productivity to the increased tariffs in South Africa which I think actually retard and counteract productivity?

May I ask a question?

Unfortunately not. Recently it has become very fashionable to make random tests and surveys. I think that if a survey were made of the unproductive hours which people are forced to spend before their telephones as a result of the poor service we have in South Africa, it would amount to several million hours per annum.

Give us definite proof of that.

“Give us proof’, they ask. Does he know how long it takes to repair a telephone? In my hand I have an advertisement which appeared in the Daily News of the 20th of this month. The advertisement reads as follows—

Then they give the telephone numbers. I took the trouble to telephone this firm. I was informed this morning that the telephones have been out of operation for ten days.

What was the reason for that?

Give me a chance. This firm hires out motor cars. In other words, their clients must be able to reach them by telephone. After the telephone had been out of operation for ten days they decided to make use of the telephones of another firm as a temporary measure. Then the hon. member for Rissik still asks : “Give us proof”. Here is the kind of proof he wants. As a result of this state of affairs I do not think the hon. the Minister can make an appeal to the public for greater productivity. As a result of deficiencies in his department we are actually being retarded to too great an extent in this respect.

We have already in the past discussed the tariff increases. We know that from August 1970 to March 1971 the hon. the Minister resorted to unparalleled tariff increases. I found it interesting to read in the speech made by the hon. the Minister yesterday that he attributed the financial problems to the following. He said—

Sir, I think it would have been far better and more correct if the hon. the Minister had stated it thus—

Sir, I want to continue and give attention, briefly, to a few matters affecting the staff. As usual, the Minister tendered his thanks yesterday to his dedicated staff. We agree with that, also to the reference he made to the million hours they were prepared to work without overtime payment, but …

There you have the “but” again.

The hon. the Minister did not give the slightest indication that there was going to be salary increases in the near future. I want to draw his attention to the fact that the last salary increases were granted in January, 1971. I think that if something is not done in this regard, particularly in view of the galloping inflation we are experiencing he will soon find himself in difficulties. Here I have a copy of Livewire, the monthly journal of the South African Telecommunications Association. Six months after that general salary increase we find that in the July 1971 edition they pointed out the increase in the consumer price index, and then arrived at the following conclusion (translation)—

Then, two months later, the warning is sounded again. In the September edition it was stated—

It is in this respect that I say to the hon. the Minister that South Africa does not have very long to find a solution to these problems. I am very sorry to see, particularly in respect of the staff, that the provision for housing has been curtailed by 40 per cent, if one compares it to what was made available in the Estimates last year. This is the one aspect in respect of which we dare not allow a backlog to develop. In addition, the hon. the Minister said that the staff establishment would be expanded. We hope that he will be able to recruit trained technicians overseas. We know that at the end of December, 1971, there was a shortage of 1 631; but I cannot associate myself with the provision for housing. I want to tell the hon. the Minister that in future he will have to give greater priority to this matter.

Lastly I want to refer to something in respect of which the telecommunications association has also submitted requests, namely the financial sacrifices which staff members are forced to make when they are transferred. The transfer of staff usually leads to their having to sell their houses at short notice, below the prevailing market prices. When they buy houses again, they have to pay the highest possible prices. As I have said, requests have already been submitted in regard to support in respect of transfer fees, transfer duties and agents’ commissions. I know it is perhaps impossible for the hon. the Minister to support them to such an extent, but I think the time has come when these dedicated staff members, who have helped to make the Post Office so productive, will have to be assisted and that the hon. the Minister will have to give attention to financial assistance in cases where staff members are transferred.

Sir, the hon. member for Durban Central, if I am not mistaken, comes from Natal. He is fully aware that the Durban Corporation gave them many problems and that they were very grateful when the hon. the Minister took over that Corporation. I know that the hon. member for Durban Point is very sensitive about this matter.

We received much better service from the Durban Corporation.

Sir, the hon. member for Durban Point says that they received much better service from the Durban Corporation.

Definitely.

I want the Post Office officials to take note of this ungrateful attitude the hon. member for Durban Point is adopting.

They are the same officials.

They are the same officials, but they are working in very close co-operation with the department and in the department, with all the privileges associated with that. I am very certain that if a survey were to be made among them you would find that they would never want to return to that English nest (rooines).

What do you mean by that?

I said it by way of a joke, and if the hon. member cannot stand a joke, then he will just have to sit on it.

Sir, I asked the hon. member for Orange Grove to be present when I spoke; he was here, but he has now left the Chamber. Sir, the hon. member for Durban Central did something which I did not like very much. He asked: What is going to happen if the Post Office staff come forward with demands for salary increases as a result of the erosion of the rand and the problems we are having to cope with? What is the factual position? This Government had once again, to combat inflation, introduced fiscal and monetary measures, and from that side we have heard nothing but criticism of those measures. Why did the hon. member for Durban Central not tell the Post Office staff that the salary increases they received were, percentage-wise, far in excess of the increase in the cost of living?

Give us the figures.

Sir, I am sorry the hon. member for Jeppes did not speak before I rose to speak. I know that he is going to fall headlong into a trap again this afternoon. We in South Africa are dealing with a slack period in the economy. During the past two weeks we have had two Budgets from which it was obvious that the two Ministers in question had done everything in their power not to place a damper on our economy. On the contrary, it is clear from the Budget that they want to ensure that the inherent potential of this country is utilized. It is also clear that the present economic slack period is a temporary trend. In their Budgets, and specifically in this Budget, they make provision for major capital expenditure. But what is the reaction of the official Opposition to this Budget? The main speaker on their side, the hon. member for Orange Grove, concluded his speech yesterday with the following warning—

Mention is made of convulsions and that type of thing. We shall leave it at that. Now they claim to have a clear-cut policy today. With all due respect and in all generosity, Sir, I ask which hon. member on the opposite side came forward with one positive idea. The concept the hon. member for Orange Grove wanted to leave in our midst, and the idea he wanted to convey to the general public, was that the telecommunications system of the Republic of South Africa is stagnant, that it is an inefficient service. The hon. member for Durban Central supplemented this by reading from an advertisement to prove that our telephone service is out of order. This was perhaps in an area where there had been a heavy rainfall or storms, or great problems with the cables, but those are things which happen in any country. This was to my mind so unfair, this impression being created for general consumption that this department is stagnant. I think in all fairness it should be placed on record that this department is acting in a fully competent way. The statistics prove this. In the 1971-’72 Budget it is estimated that R115,2 million will be spent on the telecommunications system. Last year, this amount was R101,72 million. In other words, the amount being spent this year is R14 million more than was spent last year. This is major spending. R100 million is not peanuts; it is a great deal of money. Then there are the number of telephones. In South Africa today there are 1,5 million telephones. From 1969-’70 to 1970-’71 there was an increase in the number of telephones of 6,43 per cent. From 1960-’61 to 1970-’71 there was an increase of 109 per cent. Over ten years, a decade, there was twofold increase in the provision of telephone services in this Republic. That is an achievement. There is the national dialling service, where you can make a telephone call from one town to another. No fewer than 80 per cent of these calls may be dialled direct. From 1,3 million telephones in the Republic one is able to dial directly from one town to another. I think it was very unfair of the hon. member for Durban Central to speak ill of the telecommunications service when he is here in Cape Town. I find that from my home in Acacia Park I can dial my children direct, and I have never experienced any problem in getting through to them. That is an achievement. I cannot understand what their problem is, why they are always so irritable in regard to this telecommunications system and also in regard to the staff working there. I know the people working in the exchanges. Greater courtesy than you get from them you will never find. But I sometimes have my doubts in regard to the behaviour of certain members of the public. There sits the hon. member for North Rand. When I came here as a new member years ago, he said some of the most derogatory things about those people. I say again that if members like the hon. member for North Rand would treat these people with a little courtesy, they would receive much better service. [Interjections.] Let us look further. This information is at their disposal, but they cannot study these matters. They cannot bring themselves to realize that they also have a task and should display a sense of responsibility. What was the average number of calls per telephone throughout the Republic in 1960-’61?

If you can use your telephone.

The hon. member for Turffontein still has to learn how to use a telephone. I simply cannot understand this. Why do I not experience any problems with the telephone, while they do? The number of calls per telephone, per unit, is interesting, and the hon. members can learn something from this, for it proves the capacity of this telecommunications system. Per unit in 1960-’61 it was 1200 per annum. In 1970-’71 it was 1 770 per annum. This is a tremendous increase per unit. If you consider the statistics further, you will find that over a period of six years there was an average 15 per cent growth per annum in the number of calls per unit, and just in order to keep pace with this, without installing one additional telephone, it would require that the service be doubled, to meet the existing need. In other words, this department is a dynamic department, which is not only dealing with a service to new telephone applicants, but is also rendering good service to the existing units. It is true that at present there are still problems on the Witwatersrand. We must be honest; this is true. But then it is also true that this department is engaged on large-scale planning to solve this problem in the Witwatersrand complex. I can just say that on behalf of my area, Rustenburg —and Rustenburg is a pleasant, doughty, Nationalist town where no United Party supporter dares show his face …

What does Arie Paulis say?

You and Arie Paulis are on the same level.

Order! This is not relevant.

We want to express our sincere appreciation for an excellent, outstanding service for which we are exceptionally grateful. I am not afraid to say this. I am saying this unequivocally here, that in Rustenburg today we do not even have a waiting list. When I came here in 1966 one had to wait years for a telephone, but today we do not even have a waiting list. People receive telephone connections there within six weeks of the application. [Interjections.] The hon. member for North Rand says this is favouritism, but if he does his job, he will find that he will also receive decent service. They must work a little harder in their constituencies. Sir. Let us consider the international telephone services, particularly in view of the fact that we are now becoming a major industrial country.

I want to ask the hon. member whether he knows what the telephone backlog is in the Alberton constituency.

But I have admitted that the Witwatersrand has a problem; still, the department is working at full pitch to solve the problem, and under this hon. Minister the situation will be remedied. But let us consider the international telephone services. Since we are entering a new period of industrial development in this Republic, the United Party is trying to exploit this slack period in the economy, and by the time the next election is held in the Republic of South Africa, the National Party will be celebrating it with tremendous economic prosperity. I am telling you today that your timing is completely out. You should have attempted to participate in the development and expansion in the Republic, but you are chronically derogatory in your entire approach to every service rendered in the department of this Government. As far as international telephone services were concerned, there were 274 000 calls to overseas countries, or an average of 750 per day during 1970-’71. This story of the isolation of the Republic is nonsense. Here are the facts. There are 750 calls to overseas countries per day. That is truly an achievement. Between 1960-’61 and 1970-’71 there was an increase of 1 344 per cent. In ten years this service has grown by more than 1 000 per cent and then they still speak of stagnation and of how there is no planning in this department. Between 1969-’70 and 1970-’71 there was a growth of 73 per cent. Are these not achievements? Is it not wonderful to think that our international telephone services provide the public with 750 calls per day? Then a terrible fuss is kicked up about the waiting list. We admit that there was a long waiting list, but 100 000 is a small percentage of 1.5 million telephones. I want to say again that this is only 5 per cent. The hon. member is laughing because he has a guilty conscience. He knows that in the days of the United Party the shortage was 20 per cent. That is the difference. He knows it.

I should like to say a few words about the financing concept of this service-rendering department. It is easy to say that we should negotiate larger loans. Let us state it hypothetically, namely that there is sufficient capital available for all our loans. That is what the hon. member for Orange Grove regards as the magical treatment. It should not come from tariff increases, but merely from capital loans. By so doing we would be causing posterity and our nation a problem which would become an enormous one in the years which lie ahead. What is the position today in regard to our capital loans? The interest and redemption obligations in regard to the capital loans incurred amounted to R29,275 million for one year only, i.e. the present financial year. If you were to make a projection as far ahead as 1975-’76 you would find that redemption plus interest would amount to R51 million. Hon. members can therefore recognize the danger if the ratio between services from capital loans and services from revenue is not treated with great circumspection. If we were to adopt the policy of merely negotiating loans, the costs would eventually be so great that it would be completely impossible for the general public to apply for and utilize telephone services. That is why this Franzsen Committee is of particular importance. The resolutions of the Franzsen Committee offer the possibilities of our promoting the development of these services in a balanced and purposeful way.

Then there is the R199 million burden of debt which is being converted into permanent capital. Why did the hon. member for Orange Grove not say to the hon. the Minister that he was grateful that the hon. the Minister of Finance had allowed this under the present circumstances. It is a tremendous gesture. It is not only a tremendous gesture because of the large amount involved. This is an absolute admission on the part of the hon. the Minister of Finance that this department should be expanded so that we may enter the future with confidence. The Minister of Finance realizes that in order to provide this service to the industries and the private sector, it is essential that the obligations and liabilities they have to contend with today have to be alleviated. Derogatory references were made here today to an overdraft with the Reserve Bank. This Reserve Bank is the symbol of South Africa’s economic strength. When the Reserve Bank allows an overdraft of R10 million it is the greatest testimonial this hon. Minister could ever have received. We must be consistent and realistic. The Reserve Bank is above the petty politics of the hon. member for Orange Grove. Internationally there is the greatest confidence in and respect for the Reserve Bank on a monetary level. This has been the position for decades.

I did not attack the Reserve Bank.

The hon. member did not say this, but he will never understand what the functions of the Reserve Bank are. The hon. member can never understand that, because he is too stupid as far as finances are concerned. No, I do not want to say that. It is not his speciality. I want to be fair to the hon. member. When one comes to the financing recommended by the Franzsen Committee, one will realize that there will be a very close liaison between the Reserve Bank, the Government and the department, something which is essential, as a result of the proposals which have been accepted and the regular Cabinet committee meetings which will be held. One of the most important aspects is the self-financing. I want to say to hon. members today that the economic climate will change, and that we will receive overseas loans. There has always, on an international level, been tremendous confidence in our economy. Although other countries are also confronted today with inflation, a shortage of capital and a shortage of liquidity of funds, this will also recover in those countries. Then this department will be able to negotiate loans again. It is important to consider the deferred credit conditions. We can derive great benefit from these credit conditions in regard to which the capital and the loans are redeemed over a period of five or ten years. You have this benefit that you can utilize the revenue from telephone units without an immediate major capital outlay.

Something which is an excellent and very important development is the fact that we are manufacturing our own telephones and instruments in the Republic of South Africa. I should like to furnish a few statistics in this regard. I should not like to disclose the names of the factories, otherwise it would seem like publicity for specific factories. I want to refer to three factories. I am referring now to the purchases of the department from each of these factories during the past year. The department purchased equipment to the value of not less than R 15,845 million from one specific factory. What I find to be a wonderful development is that the local content of the products produced by this factory is 90,5 per cent. The purchases made by the department during the past year from another factory, situated in Pretoria, amounted to more than R10 million. The local content of the products manufactured, was 53,9 per cent. Then, too, I want to refer to another factory, the one in Boksburg. The hon. member for Boksburg can feel very proud of this. The purchases of the department from this firm amounted to not less than R8,914 million, and the local content of the products was 81,3 per cent. Let us now consider the utilization of the labour force. The factory in Springs has 1 468 White workers and 1 355 non-White workers in its employ. The factory in Pretoria has 834 White workers and 1 479 non-White workers in its employ, and the factory in Boksburg has 450 Whites and 800 Bantu in its employ. Is this not an achievement that the development of this department has resulted in this tremendous development in the factories in the Republic? I want to conclude by saying that the labour pattern in South Africa is one which is being strictly applied by this department, despite what the Opposition says about it. We shall continue to entrench the position of the Whites.

Mr. Speaker, what has emerged from the speech of the hon. member who has just sat down, is the fact that he was able to disclose to us that in Rustenburg, the constituency which he represents, a telephone can be installed within six weeks after application. With the enormous population that Rustenburg has, I assume that this is indeed a record in South Africa. It may be of interest to him to know what an American told me the other day. He told me that if in New York you applied for the installation of a telephone on a Friday afternoon, they ask you whether you won’t mind waiting for early Monday morning because the workers would like the week-end off. Then the telephone is installed on Monday morning. Perhaps he may be even more interested in the fact that in the city of Johannesburg—with which he is obviously trying to compare Rustenburg—it can take one sometimes up to six months and an important industrialist from a foreign country can be kept waiting for eight months to get a telephone installed. This is not because there is anything wrong with the technical administration of the Post Office. And that is the point I particularly want to make.

Before I reply to one or two other matters that have been raised, I would like, as a representative of the Witwatersrand, to join others in paying a tribute to the staff of the Post Office. As the result of floods towards the end of January, I think, some 12 000 telephones went out of order. A team of personnel was drafted from all parts of the Witwatersrand and I think even further afield and did an outstanding job of work. I think one could well pay a tribute for the services rendered and for the manner in which the technicians and those who worked with them were able to get on top of that job.

Having said that, I want to say further that the whole problem we face today is that of the dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying of the government in its general economic policy, which has unfortunately seeped through the whole of the Government policy and its workings with regard to Post Office finance. For quite a number of years the Postal Department was one of the shining lights of the whole economic spectrum of the Government’s finances. Representations were constantly made that this department should become an autonomous department or, as they call it in the Act, a department “to be run on business principles”, simply because it was one of the big trading sectors of he Government’s spectrum just as the Railways, Harbours and Airways are. But the Government would not listen to these representations. When eventually in 1968 it was decided to make the Post Office an autonomous department, it was done in a very niggardly fashion. They made every effort, based on results of the past, of days entirely different from the last few years, to try to contain the whole of the infrastructure development of the postal services on their own earnings. In fact, when a question was asked of the late Minister, the predecessor to the present Minister, as to why he did not go into the open market for loan funds, he said he was bound by the terms of this Readjustment Act to find his money from the Treasury, or to finance it from his own earnings.

Now we get the traumatic announcement from the hon. the Minister, who, as one could see, was almost exultant with joy because he was able at last to bring something intelligent to the House in order to try to place this department on a proper basis. Now for three or four years, due to the general policy of the Government, i.e. their labour policy, their financial policy and their general conservative attitude with regard to any methods of progress in this country, they kept that infrastructure virtually hidebound so that no one was able to move. That is why the hon. the Minister finds himself in this serious position. It is no good arguing, as other members do, that the position is not serious. After all, the Postmaster-General is a man who gives facts when he talks to people. So when he says—

he knows what he is talking about. The Witwatersrand after all contains virtually half of the population of the country. It has virtually all the industry. Most of the industries of the country are situated around the Witwatersrand, and certainly some of the largest industries. This “swakheid” of the telephone services costs, as has been said, thousands if not millions of manhours. It brings about a slow-down in production and creates frustration. As was rightly described to me two weeks ago, when I paid a visit to the Witwatersrand, the whole situation has become so chaotic that people just do not realize what they must do. It is an extremely difficult and serious situation and I blame it entirely on the government’s policy and its backwardness in that it does not have the common sense to realize that, in a trading department, one must have infrastructure and equipment and one must be prepared. I was accused by the hon member for Harrismith in some insane manner that I had said to the hon Minister that I did not care where he got his labour, but that, if he had a service to deliver, he must find labour I am perfectly prepared to stand by that. After all, the hon. the Minister of Transport did that. He was faced with a situation where he had to provide services and what did he do? He found he was short in certain fields and he introduced non-White labour. He did not do so at the expense of White labour and he consulted with the trade unions, as we have always advised that one should do. He entered into proper negotiations and got their cooperation. The hon. the Minister is also praying and hoping for co-operation from the Postal Union; he said so in his speech. In introducing his Budget he said that he was grateful that at least they were discussing the matter with him. It is important to find labour if you are in a business undertaking and you have to provide the services. All you are doing is strengthening the White man in his position in the economy and lifting his standards. After all, it is all to the good of the country. One is pleased that at last some glimmer of reality has broken through the mind of the hon. the Minister who has the dual post of Minister of Labour and Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, and knows the position better than any of us do. He has now on three or four occasions been pleading this cause in words almost taken from our written policy, a policy which we always put into writing for the world to know and see.

The question of salaries is a very important aspect. The hon. member for Rustenburg, who is now conspicuous by his absence, thought I had put my foot into it because he said that after all, salaries were increasing at a faster rate than the inflationary process. We know that the Railways on the 1st June, 1971, got an increase of R60 million in salaries, an average of more than 8 per cent in their earnings. But as we warned—and we know it now, because we have read it in the Press and it has not been denied—the factual information is that the Artisan Staff Association has just issued a warning, and it is common sense, that if the salary position is not adjusted by September of this year there may be very serious repercussions. The reason is very simple and the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs will have the very same problem: How can a man absorb the cost of living. Members on the other side put up a story yesterday and the day before that there has been a slight recession in this inflationary trend, but one only has to look at the latest figures which show that at the end of February it had risen to 109,6, just over 7 per cent over the last year. The trend is now moving upward again. We predicted this, and it cannot be controlled. We cannot make the worker, the victim of this inflationary trend which is not the fault of the worker, suffer because of it. The worker has to be protected and there has to be some adjustment from the point of view of the cost-of-living allowances so that at least his immediate requirements can be covered until the departments are able to see daylight in this whole process of wage adjustments. We know it is an ever-increasing spiral, but nevertheless we cannot make him, the man who has nowhere else to turn, the victim of a process over which he has no control whatsoever.

I would like to say something in regard to tariffs. I view this warning of the hon. the Minister to the public of an increase next year as a very serious thing. The services are so poor at the moment that unfortunately a person pays almost double in many, if not thousands of instances, for telephone services. One constantly gets wrong numbers which very often means that for each number one dials, one finds that one has to make at least two or three attempts; every call is registered and appears on your bill. If the hon. the Minister thinks that his costs of installation, costs of services and his rental for services and other tariffs are low, I want to tell him that in reality they are just as high, if not higher, than some of the examples he gave to us. What is wanted is an absolute effort to bring about the highest standard of efficiency. That is why we welcome the fact that at last they are using their common sense and have appointed a proper financial committee with an industrialist as one of the three members to have a look at the real situation. We can only say to the hon. the Minister that the sooner he gets on with this job the better, because the situation is very parlous indeed. We cannot hide behind the fact that we have caught up so much per cent, because it means nothing in the business world. It is something which is hindering and retarding the advance of business in this country. I would like to say a little bit more to the Minister, but I unfortunately see that you are anxious about the time, Sir, so I shall leave it for some other time.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 136.

Mr. Speaker, in the first place, I want to thank hon. members on my side for the knowledgeable and positive contributions made by them in this debate. As far as the Opposition is concerned, what did we get from them in this debate? Yesterday afternoon we had from their main speaker, the hon. member for Orange Grove, the following announcement: “Tomorrow during the debate we on this side shall do our very best to whip this lagging Government into some convulsive activity during the last year or two of its period of office.” Now we come to the other important thing. The hon. member also made another important statement: “We shall come, as the alternative Government of South Africa, with a clear-cut and concise policy for the future of our country.” That caused this side of the House to look forward with interest to this “clear-cut and concise policy”. However, what did we get today? What did we get from that hon. member and from other hon. members on that side? Did we get here a “clear-cut and concise policy”? No, that we did not get. What we did get here, was actually rivalry amongst United Party members to see who could complain most. That is what we got from hon. members on that side. That is what we got in the first place. We found that the hon. member for Orange Grove, in his zeal to complain and to present the matter in a sombre light, actually leapt right across the Kruithoring days to the times of the King of Ur, who lived I do not know how many years before Christ. That is how far he had to go back in order to be able to present in this House a sombre image of the progress made by the Post Office. Now, what did we get from hon. members opposite today? On behalf of his side of the House we had a motion from the hon. member. The motion read as follows: To omit all the words after “That” and to substitute “this House declines to pass the Second Reading of the Post Office Appropriation Bill because the Post Office has not been put in a position to make its rightful contribution towards meeting the needs of the people as well as advancing the progress and well-being of South Africa”. In the first instance, everything that has been accomplished over the past year, is disregarded. In the second instance, the new financing framework within which we can allow the Post Office to expand in the course of this year, is also being disregarded by way of this motion. In this motion no recognition is given to, for instance, the tremendous development that took place during this year. In this motion or in speeches made by hon. members opposite no reference is made to the fact that during this past year the capacity of our automatic telephone system was expanded by 56 000 lines. In this motion or in these lamentations of Jeremiah which we heard, no reference is made to the fact that in two years’ time we had an increase of 15,7 per cent in regard to providing the country’s automatic telephone exchanges. We did not hear anybody speaking appreciatively of the fact that during this past year we installed 80 000 telephones, which is 7 000 more than was the case in the previous year. What we did have, was the hon. member for Orange Grove’s slanted representation of what I had said, and because this has been imputed to me, I think it is necessary for me to quote for the sake of the record exactly what I said about this matter last year. On 24th March, 1971, I said the following in Hansard (vol. 33, col. 3495)—

Listen very attentively now—

But they are keeping absolutely quiet about this. Now it is said that I made a promise, and that is an absolute misrepresentation. Now, this is the class of “concise policy statements” we had in this House today. Sir, in the speech he made yesterday the hon. member also referred to what we had allegedly taken over in toto. Amongst other things, we have allegedly taken over their non-White policy. I shall speak about that at the end, i.e. the extent to which we took it over and exactly what it means, for the statement that was made here, is an important one.

Let me deal first with the other matters that were raised. The hon. member for Orange Grove complained about the telephones. Therefore it is necessary for me to draw his attention to the fact that during this past year we installed and transferred 280 000 telephones as against 245 000 during the previous year. Now I ask you, Sir, is this not remarkable progress and advance? We did this in spite of the damage to which I referred yesterday and of which the hon. member is fully aware. In spite of the terrible loss of those man-hours, we still did this. The fact that we installed these 80 000 telephones instead of the 100 000 more, is attributable not only to the storm damage which diverted our manpower from the installation of these telephones, but also to the fact that this year, as I said in my Budget speech last year and am saying again now, we are concentrating on improving the quality of the service—for instance, to obviate the possibility of people getting wrong numbers so that they have to dial again and become irritable as a result. We are intent on improving the quality of the service, for if we improve that, there will also be less cause for lamentations to be heard.

Reproaches were levelled at us because the deficit was allegedly such a large one and would also be large next year. This deficit will have to be met by way of loans. I really hope that it will not be necessary for us to borrow that entire amount in order to carry out this programme, because we look forward to the future with optimism. The hon. member for Durban Central referred to the curtailment, the deficit and the cooling down of the economic situation. In his wisdom he attributed these to the increases in telephone tariffs. Words actually fail one to describe here the magnitude of this wisdom. Apparently the hon. member has not yet heard of any monetary crisis in the world. Apparently the hon. member is a Rip van Winkle who is not aware of the economic recession which took place in the world as a whole and which has had its effects on South Africa. Therefore I want to tell him this : This Government can be held responsible for many things, but we can definitely not be held responsible for economic recessions which take place in the world and have an adverse effect on South Africa.

As far as this coming year is concerned, we are looking forward to it with high hopes and expectations. We have already, as I said in the Budget speech, had an increase in our revenue during the past month. We have also seen this optimism having a ripple effect. Hon. members read this morning about the revival on the Exchange, which also bears testimony to confidence. This confidence is also being stimulated by us. The fact that the Government has introduced neither Railway nor Post Office tariff increases, is proof of the confidence we have in the economy of this country. We are confident that the economic revival will be such that it will be able to help us, and that is the spirit in which we are looking forward to the future Sir, the United Party also have a task, they who are so fond of presenting themselves in a patriotic light. When they go campaigning in Oudtshoorn again, they would like to throw out their chests and tell the voters what great patriots they are, something which the hon. member for Newton Park can do with great skill. Mr. Speaker, here we have a wonderful opportunity for realizing that patriotic disposition. If this patriotism of the United Party has any significance, then they are getting the opportunity to display it in these times by showing confidence in South Africa. In that manner they can display their patriotism, but not by sketching a sombre picture and a negative picture. That is not the way to serve South Africa at the moment. The United Party will find it rather difficult to accede to this request, for a leopard cannot change its spots. We know the United Party; we know what propaganda they made in 1948-’49.

Go back a little further.

After our victory in 1948, and before the provincial elections of 1949—I remember them very well, for that was the first time I was elected in Pretoria Central—they came forward with the propaganda that South Africa under the National Government was on the edge of a precipice; that its banks would close and that its factories would close. That was what the United Party said in 1948-’49. But that was not the first time, nor was it the last time. I still remember what they said after Sharpeville. After Sharpeville they sketched such a negative picture to South Africa that thousands of people—English-speaking people, to be specific—left South Africa as a result of the picture sketched by the Untied Party, and it was only years afterwards that those people could return to South Africa when they saw that we had progress and security here. I want to tell the United Party that this is the spirit in which we are looking forward to the future. As far as this party and this Government are concerned, these economic difficulties, which originated in the outside world and are operating upon us at the moment, will not force us to our knees. This National Party and this Government have always shown in the past that they have an inherent fighting power. Inherently our economy is sound; inherently this people of ours has fighting power and enterprise, and thanks to those inherent qualities of enterprise, fighting power and faith, I have no doubt that we shall overcome these difficulties and that in the years ahead we shall once again be able, in every respect, to take our place amongst the economically powerful countries.

The hon. member for Orange Grove raised a number of other matters with me. Amongst other things, he referred to the financing of the Post Office by saying that in Britain only 14 per cent of the working capital was being used. The very latest position in Britain is that 57 per cent of the capital investment is being spent on telecommunications. It is also important to point out to the hon. member and this House what is happening in other comparable countries. In Australia it is 54 per cent, in Holland 54 per cent, in Japan 52 per cent and in Sweden 98 per cent. We consider it to be reasonable to spend 50 per cent on capital expenditure. Over the past year this amounted to 60 per cent. The estimated percentage of capital expenditure for the next year will only amount to 42 per cent, which is quite within the framework of the Franzsen Report. According to the hon. member, Dr. Franzsen has actually been making contradictory statements, for he said that at one stage the Franzsen Commission had mentioned 40 per cent, whereas they were now talking about 50 per cent. Sir, the facts are as follows : In the report of the Franzsen Commission reference was made to 40 per cent after provision had been made for depreciation, but the Franzsen Commission recommended 50 per cent, including depreciation. Therefore, in practice, it amounts to the same thing. Then the hon. member referred to the labour question; at the end of my speech I shall come back to that.

†The hon. member for Florida wanted to know whether the Post Office would be able to underwrite its own loans. Legislation in this regard will be framed to permit us to obtain external loans, and this will be done, of course, in collaboration with the Treasury. I hope to introduce such legislation during this session.

*The hon. member for Florida did nothing but ask questions and express misgivings. Instead of our getting a “concise” policy from the Opposition, as we were promised by the hon. member for Orange Grove, we found that the Opposition could not give us any instant solutions. They are adopting a negative attitude which does not deserve any further attention.

The hon. member for Benoni said that the Government needed a shock treatment in order to get another Government in power. Sir, if this country should ever get a United Party Government, it would not only be a shock treatment; it would be a fatal shock. I am not afraid that this nation, in its wisdom, will ever take such a foolish step, and therefore I do not deem it necessary to react to this matter by saying any more about it.

The hon. member also pleaded for crossbar exchanges. Well, there are various kinds of automatic dialling techniques. For obvious reasons we must, of course, standardize in the Post Office to a very large extent. We cannot have a lot of dissimilar dialling techniques. Nor should one tax the knowledge of one’s staff unnecessarily over such a wide field, and therefore I just want to give the hon. member the assurance that when we switch over to a different dialling technique, we shall duly take into consideration the technique he has in mind. Our technicians, who are amongst the best in the country, will advise us properly in this regard, and we shall consider the matter with due regard to every aspect.

The hon. member for Durban Central moaned about the tariff increases, but at the same time he nevertheless did the popular thing as well, namely to plead for salary increases. Sir, one wonders where the money is to come from. On the one hand one is supposed to reduce tariffs, and on the other hand one is supposed to increase salaries. It is rather difficult to argue with such people. Therefore I would rather try to reply to his next question; I think this may have been a more intelligent one. He asked for financial assistance to officials who were being transferred. The fact of the matter is that we recently increased that amount. It will interest the hon. member to know that at the moment a married officer is getting R100 to compensate him for incidental losses. This amount was increased recently.

I shall now deal with the other reference made by the hon. member for Orange Grove. Amongst other things, he said yesterday: “The second point is that he (the Minister) accepts the recommendations of the United Party in regard to non-White labour in toto.” We have supposedly adopted the United Party’s labour policy in toto. This does rather sound very interesting, and not only interesting: I think the country finds it most interesting when such a statement is made by the hon. member for Orange Grove, and because the statement the hon. member made is such an interesting one, I think we in this House ought to obtain greater clarity on precisely what this embraces and implies, i.e. that we have taken over the United Party’s labour policy in toto I say it is most important that we obtain clarity in this regard. I think the hon. member may help us to obtain absolute clarity in regard to this matter, to see to what extent we have accepted their labour policy. I should therefore like to know from the hon. member whether it is true that the United Party also stands for controlled employment of non-Whites.

Controlled employment of all workers.

That is to say, all workers, the non-Whites as well? Fine. That is very important. They stand for the controlled employment of all workers, of the non-Whites as well. That is a very important aspect. If we have supposedly taken over their policy, surely we should know what we have actually taken over. The second matter in regard to our policy which is relevant here, is that we stand for the trade unions and the staff associations being consulted about any arrangements effected by us in the labour set-up. Is it also the United Party’s attitude that they should be consulted?

Were you not here while the Railway debate was in progress? Our policy is the same as it was then.

But it was during the Post Office debate that you made these important statements. After all, if you are a shadow Minister and are thinking of terms of Ministership, you should start displaying that responsibility right now, so that you should at least reply frankly to such elementary questions. What I am asking the hon. member is, after all, a very simple question. Our standpoint is that we consult the trade unions and the staff associations whenever we effect any changes in the labour set-up. Is that also the United Party’s attitude?

You know what the answer is, and I shall give it to you again. Mr. Speaker, may I give the hon. the Minister an answer to his question?

No.

It is merely a question of saying “yes” or “no”. Now, if I put the following question, it might be easier to reply to it by way of a “yes” or “no”. These are not difficult questions. The questions I am going to ask now, are in regard to those matters which we have been discussing here year after year and which are well-known, almost like that King Ur business to which the hon. member referred. The third question is as follows: One of the pillars of our labour policy is that we do not allow a White person to be replaced by a non-White person in his sphere of employment. Is that also the United Party’s policy? I see the hon. member for Florida shaking his head. He is the deputy shadow Minister. Is that not your policy? Say “yes” or “no” now. After all, you are saying that I have taken over your policy. Let us get clarity now on what I took over. Our policy is that we shall not allow a non-White person to replace a White person. [Interjections.] Is that your policy or is it not? [Interjections.] Sir, there is no getting away from it that one has to struggle with this United Party, but in due course we shall get them where they ought to be, and that is in the dock, where the truth will have to come out. But perhaps the hon. member will find the next question easier. [Interjections.] This is an important matter. The hon. member said that we had taken over their labour policy in toto. Now, surely, we should know what we have taken over and how close we are to each other. I want to tell the hon. member that another cornerstone of the National Party’s labour policy is that we shall allow no mixed working conditions in the same work situation. I want to ask the hon. member for Orange Grove whether this is also their policy? No, all we are getting, is silence. Perhaps we shall in that case, make more progress in regard to another cardinal point of the National Party’s policy. Our other point is that we do not allow a White person to work under the authority of a non-White person. Is that also the United Party’s policy?

May I ask a question?

I think the hon. member for Maitland is courageous enough to answer. What is the answer, “yes” or “no”? [Interjections.] You see, Sir, the United Party is like a tooth which is very deeply embedded, but we shall extract this tooth of truth in due course. Let me say that the United Party’s policy is such that for us in this country it is heading for one thing only. As against our policy of controlled employment, the policy of the United Party is heading for simply one thing, and that is that the flood-gates should be opened to the uncontrolled influx of Black labour. [Interjections.] If you do not want to accept this statement, you should at least have the courage to reply to these questions which I put here so categorically, but that courage you do not have. Therefore I repeat that the United Party’s policy is such that if it had to be implemented, the flood-gates in South Africa would be opened to the uncontrolled influx of Black labour. For that reason I want to say that there is no question of a take-over of policy. What is relevant here, is to ensure that this party and this Government, with its policy of protecting the White worker, will remain in power at all times, and the White workers, the Post Office workers, will see to it that this is the case.

Question put: That all the words after “That” stand part of the motion.

Upon which the House divided :

Tellers: J. E. Potgieter, P. C. Roux, M. J. de la R. Venter, and W. L. D. M. Venter.

Tellers : H. J. Bronkhorst and R. M. Cadman.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to and Bill read a Second Time.

Committee Stage

Schedule 1, Operating Expenditure, R280 676 000, and Schedule 2, Capital Expenditure, R139 815 000 :

Mr. E. G. MALAN : Mr. Chairman, let me immediately refer to the final part of the speech by the hon. the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs. Let me begin by reading out a statement which I made and which covers part of what he said. After that I shall elaborate further. My statement was this—

I stand by that—

†Obscurity which the Minister has done little to remove—

I added this—

I am not going to praise the Minister for all the tortuous little ideological adjustments which he will have to make in order to save his face with some of the personnel associations. Let me tell him that our policy in regard to the employment of non-Whites is absolutely the same with regard to the Post Office as it is with regard to the Railways. We had a very full debate on that. Let me again repeat what we said then : We do believe that there must be controlled employment.

*Controlled employment is necessary, of course. What organization would be so unwise as to employ people in an uncontrolled way? Of course it is a basic point with us that the staff associations should be consulted in all these matters. That is our policy. We shall, however, negotiate more effectively than the hon. the Minister did when he negotiated with the Post Office Staff Association. When he negotiated with them the chairman of the Post Office Staff Association got up and said that even if there were 2 999 non-Whites in White posts and only one remaining White postman, they would still be opposed to the Minister’s policy, or words to that effect. He was poor as a negotiator. He discovered a moral background to his policy only in August last year. Only then did he start asking whether it would be justified morally to carry on as he is doing today. There is the basic answer I give him. I am not going to participate …

Order! The hon. member should refer to the hon. the Minister and to any other hon. member as “the hon. the Minister” or “the hon. member” and not as “he”.

I beg your pardon, “the hon. the Minister”. We are having such a pleasant conversation and we are sitting so near each other that it has nearly slipped my mind that that is what I should do. I think in that respect I have replied to what I was asked by the hon. the Minister. I am not prepared to participate here in Black peril propaganda. I am not prepared to say what the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration announced here the other day in that regard as well.

†The hon. the Minister raised some other matters. When he started he said that I had said that I would whip the Government into some form of convulsive activity during its last years in this debate. I am sorry I failed. I could not whip them into any kind of activity. They simply remain what they are, dead and dying politically. I failed and I am sorry. But, Sir, I am afraid there were some convulsions and they were convulsions of laughter on our side.

[Inaudible.]

The hon. the Minister asks where this clear-cut policy was that was going to be put to them. Did he listen particularly to the speeches of the hon. members for Florida and Benoni? Let me tell the hon. the Minister that those two hon. members have studied certain proposals that were made to them here in Cape Town and Johannesburg for many days. They were in contact—and I was in contact on occasion too—with the very top people in private industry and electronic industry in this country and in the world. These proposals came from some of the most prominent people.

Who are they?

I would advise him to study these proposals. I would advise him to study the constructive use of private enterprise which was proposed by the hon. member for Florida. I would advise him to study the new connecting system which was proposed by the hon. member for Benoni. A deep study was made of those matters. Does he know that this new system has been in operation in countries in Europe for years and years? It is ten times as effective as the present one. I am going to try to find out from the hon. the Minister how much obsolete equipment he has at the moment. I want to know how much obsolete equipment he has in his stores; how much obsolete equipment is not being used and how much obsolete equipment he is going to use in trying to expand his exchanges during the next couple of years. He knows that that is what he is doing today. He knows that and he cannot deny it.

*We on this side have never hesitated to discuss policy for the Post Office. We were the first ones to come forward with the idea of a larger degree of independence for the Post Office. And now I am coming forward with something once again.

When?

Prior to 1968. Now we ask the hon. the Minister to establish also a Post office Service for the Post Office itself, just as there is a Public Service for the public servants. I ask him to come forward with legislation in this regard this year. We shall support the principle. We cannot say that we will support all the details thereof.

†The hon. the Minister accused me of reading his remarks last year about tariffs and tariff adjustments during the next five years in an unfair way. I am quite prepared to read what he said. I have his Hansard in front of me. I will now read the one sentence which he did not read. It is the very next sentence, in which he said this—

What interpretation could one place on that, other than that he was planning to see that those tariff increases would not be necessary again within five years? He thought that, and surely he must have had a basis for thinking that. Let me ask him now: Does the hon. the Minister still think that he will not have to increase tariffs?

That remains our aim.

The hon. the Minister said that he thought it would not be necessary to increase tariffs within five years. Does he still think that today?

I did not know that the monetary situation was going to be.

Oh, there you are. He objected to the fact, or felt sad, that we did not praise him for the increase of 80 000 telephones, but did I not point out to him that he had promised 100 000 telephones and that he had only provided 80 000? He spoke about 280 000 new services. I will not reply to him, I will let the Postmaster-General reply to him as he did in Rapport. Mr. Rive said the following—

280 000 telephones were installed. The hon. the Minister calls it a new telephone service when a telephone is transferred from one flat to another or from one house to another. What about all those which were cancelled? 200 000 were cancelled, leaving a net increase of 80 000, while the Minister promised a net increase of 100 000. The most amusing remark of all of course was the remark by the hon. member for Sunnyside. He discovered why the boom on the Stock Exchange started; we know now that it started on account of the Post Office Budget introduced yesterday! I trust I interpreted him correctly?

You have no confidence in this Government.

Are you serious?

He is serious, I assure you, Sir. That is the reason why we are having the boom, according to the hon. member. Obviously one cannot reply to an argument like that.

What about the British Budget?

Of course it was the British Budget, which has led to a sudden inflow of capital in the share market. We all know this. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, today we have again witnessed a scene to which we have be come so accustomed. Today we have again had an opportunity, as we virtually have day after day in this House, to see the difference between the United Party and this National Party. These differences we see and experience every day. Here on the one side we have a National Party that has succeeded in creating unparallelled prosperity and progress for this beloved fatherland of ours over a period of many years. On the other hand we have a United Party that is constantly engaged in a process of discrediting everything. If I have to type the United Party today, I will have no option but to say that there are two labels hanging very plainly around its neck, i.e. that of the anti-South African attitude it displays—we have seen that very clearly here today—and the other is that it blows hot and cold all the time. I am not going to dwell on this matter for very long but I just want to conclude by saying that it is very clear that South Africa cannot afford to return a party like the United Party to power. It is a party that makes it its object to try to propagate everything which is anti-South African and everything which goes against the grain of this country. Someone once said that if one listened to the United Party one would swear that every single South African hen laid bad eggs.

I want to proceed with my argument and avail myself of this opportunity to convey my thanks and appreciation to the hon. the Minister and to the Postmaster-General and his staff who have succeeded in providing us with a very highly effective service in the midst of all these problems and with the means they have at their disposal. This staff, on a voluntary basis and without additional remuneration, has rendered service which we have noted with appreciation.

With regard to my own constituency, I should like to advance a few ideas today. The Post Office facilities in both the towns of my constituency, Edenvale and Kempton Park, are inadequate. The extensions and the high growth rate have caused Edenvale and Kempton Park to grow too large for the existing facilities, buildings and accommodation offered there by the Post Office. The lack of proper buildings and the telephone shortage as well as the overtaxation of the service have become one of our major problems in that region. Today, however, I should like to bear testimony here to the cordial co-operation I have received from the department. With the co-operation of the Postmaster-General and his staff we have already succeeded in meeting and solving some of these problems. On behalf of the public I want to express my appreciation for the expediency with which temporary buildings were erected to meet our emergency. These temporary buildings contributed largely towards alleviating many of the bottle-necks for the public and for the staff. The handling of mail and the provision of additional post office boxes deserve mention too.

In the second place I should like to deal with the telephone aspect, which is a very big problem and which has also arisen as a result of the phenomenal growth and development in the Kempton Park/Edenvale area. Because we acknowledge every person’s right to have and to use a telephone, and because we do not regard it as a luxury, it is also the desire of the department to alleviate these bottle-necks. I am grateful that I am able to say that the prospects in this field are very good today.

In the present Estimates provision is made for the Eastleigh exchange with 2 472 additional lines. The cost is estimated at R206 000. There is the Birchley Post Office, which has already been put into service, as well as an exchange which is being installed at the moment and which makes provision for a further 3 065 lines. Furthermore, building work on the Chloorkop exchange has started at an estimated cost of R190 000. The Kempton Park exchange has been extended by 1 646 lines, and already a start has been made with the construction of additions to the building which will come to a total amount exceeding R151 000. Add to these Bonero Park with 2 435 lines and the 3 531 lines of the Isando exchange, and it gives one some idea of the tremendous scope of the problem, but also of the determination of the Department of Post and Telegraphs to solve these problems.

I want to address a serious appeal to people to exercise patience in the knowledge that these matter are receiving serious attention and will be solved in due course. But for us the best news of all is that our post office is going to be built now at an amount exceeding R1 million. The situation of this post office will be wonderful. It will be an extremely modern building of which Kempton Park may rightly be proud. The public of Kempton Park has waited for long enough. If the building work is still going to be started this year, as has been promised, it will be a great day in the history of this town. I want to thank the hon. the Minister and the Postmaster-General for the assurance that the building work will be proceeded with in spite of the economic and financial problems. I want to trust that the same precedence will be given to the post office of Edenvale as well, the costs of which are estimated at a further amount of R450 000. I have made special mention of these facts merely for the sake of pointing out to this hon. House the tremendous scope of the work, and that in respect of one urban constituency only.

I want to make haste; my time is short. I should like to bring the following few matters to the friendly attention of the hon. the Minister. I want to ask for a further extension of the twilight and week-end services. A large percentage of subscribers would be perfectly satisfied with an evening and week-end service as thousands of them, husbands and wives, work during the day on the Witwatersrand and in other areas. Such a service would meet their requirements in full.

In the second place I want to plead for more public telephones for that area. I am aware of the tremendous damage which is done to such telephones but what I have in mind in particular is the installation of such public telephones at buildings such as flats, cafés and other places at which there is a degree of supervision. Some of them employ night watchmen so as to ensure in that way that serious damage will not be done.

In the third place I want to make a very friendly request. A very serious need for telephones exists on the plots in my area. I have wondered whether it is not possible to investigate the position and to erect a few of these movable exchanges on a temporary basis there so as to meet the needs of these people, who really have serious complaints. Many of these people are poultry farmers and manage some business undertaking or other. There are no prospects for them in the immediate future. I want to plead with the hon. the Minister to make an attempt to help these people.

In conclusion I should like to address an appeal in connection with the overtaxation of our telephone service, especially to our people on the Witwatersrand and in other areas which have similar troubles, to use the telephone more judiciously and to avoid long conversations so as to try to prevent such overtaxation in that way. In addition I want to make an appeal to people who work during the day to lock their telephones so as to make it impossible for the servants to use them unnecessarily. All these things would contribute to reducing this overtaxation.

Then there is another matter I should like to bring to the attention of this House, and that is the tremendous losses we are suffering through theft. In the report we have in hand, reference is made on page 9 to the theft of telephone apparatus which amounted to as much as R72 742 in one year. [Time expired.]

I do not want to react to the speech of the hon. member for Kempton Park except by telline him, as regards his allegation that the United Party allegedly is anti-South African, that that old horse has been ridden to death. That old horse is never going to run again, not even in Oudtshoorn; it is as dead as a doornail.

I listened attentively to the reply of the hon. the Minister to the Second Reading debate, and I was surprised at the fact that he had the audacity even to mention the patriotism of this side of the House. I want to tell him that it is very easy to be a fair-weather patriot and in the same breath I want to ask him where he and his party were when South Africa was in deadly peril? Did they not commit sabotage at that time and did they not stab South Africa in the back?

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the remark that they committed sabotage and stabbed South Africa in the back.

No, Sir, they did not stab South Africa in the back; they were not saboteurs.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw it.

I withdraw it, but I say that they were too rotten to do it themselves. They incited young people to do it. They have no right to question anybody’s patriotism.

[Inaudible.]

Order!

The hon. member for Sunnyside was very concerned about the impression being created that they had taken over our policy. They will never, of course, admit it. So let us say that they are correct; they have not taken over our policy; they have simply made complete departures from their policy, and that is why things are going better, not only in the Post Office, but also on the Railways. The hon. members for Harrismith and Sunnyside both asked us how we would provide the better service we should like to have in the Post Office. Sir, under very difficult circumstances the United Party …

Made a proper mess.

… provided very efficient postal services and facilities, and it did so without the assistance of that side. Our Post Office services were so good that we were still able to provide the necessary services even after they had blown up a lot of our post offices.

May I put a question to the hon. member?

No, that hon. member is ignorant; I do not have any time to waste on him. The hon. member for Sunnyside went so far as to appeal to the loyalty of the citizens of South Africa to support the Post Office. That was quite unnecessary. The Post Office has a monopoly and we must use those services whether we want to do so or not. Things would go very well with the Post Office if it could provide all the necessary services. Therefore it is not necessary to appeal to the loyalty of our citizens. Sir, I was surprised to learn from the new enlightened member for Rissik that there were no difficulties with the telephone services. Coming from him with his cleft stick mentality, I can quite understand it. He has probably never tried to dial a Pretoria number from Johannesburg, or vice versa. That is why he talks such nonsense.

What is a “cleft-stick mentality”?

From the nature of the case the Post Office is the one Government department, unfortunately, with which the public comes into contact most frequently. That is why it is necessary for very good services to be provided and that is why such strong criticism of the Post Office is expressed.

Tell us about your acts of heroism.

Today the Post Office has to serve the public, in many cases from antiquated buildings, in many cases with obselete and overloaded equipment and with a large shortage of staff and funds. Sometimes one wonders how the officials can still succeed in rendering the services they do render under these difficult circumstances. Far be it from any of us not to pay tribute to the Post Office and its officials for the service they render under the circumstances in which they have to operate. This department which is charged with telecommunications, moves in a field of technical development which is not to be found in any other department. It has to keep abreast of this technical development and the modern extensions. One would have expected to have at the head of such a department a Minister with brilliant ideas of his own, a man able to plan, a “with it” man. But unfortunately the poor Post Office has had to contend with ultra-conservative members of the Cabinet, whom one may virtually call verkramp, during the past 15 years. That, unfortunately, has been the fate of this department during the past 15 years.

Sir, I should like to express a few ideas concerning what is happening in our smaller post offices today. These smaller post offices have to provide services under very difficult circumstances in parts of our country in which large post offices do not operate. In the first place, we hope that the plans which the Minister is formulating at present to employ non-Whites in jobs for which Whites are not available, will bring about a major improvement in these smaller post offices. Everywhere in these smaller post offices one finds that they have a tremendously large shortage of trained people. One finds that it is usually Whites who work behind the counters to serve both the Whites and the non-Whites.

That has always been the position.

Shut your trap, man!

Order! The hon. member must not use language like that; he must withdraw it.

I withdraw it. In these cases we find that White officials have to serve both the Whites and the non-Whites. The concessions the Minister is going to make now, are most probably going to eliminate this problem. I hope he is not going to drag his feet again in this regard. There is no reason why non-Whites cannot be served by their own people from behind the counters in the Post Office. That would be much better for those people themselves, and there most certainly are many of those people who have the necessary qualifications to do that work. I know the excuse in the past was that there had to be alternative facilities. I do not know of a single post office which does not employ non-Whites today. Consequently those facilities must exist and therefore it is possible to overcome this difficulty. When the non-Whites are employed, as has been proved on the Railways, it can only contribute towards improving the position of the Whites in the Post Office.

†Now I would like to ask whether the administration and the organization in these post offices are not rather outdated. Are these post offices organized according to modern business methods and are they applying business practice? So frequently one goes into a post office and you find two or three or four people serving the public at the counter, but at the back you find as many people writing furiously, writing letters and filling in forms. They are terribly busy and not loafing. It seems to me that some sort of streamlining should be introduced to cut out some of the clerical work, so that those people can be used to better purpose, for instance to serve the public at the counters. At these counters one finds that a tremendous amount of time is wasted and a tremendous amount of manpower is wasted. [Time expired.]

In this Committee Stage you will pardon me, Sir, if I do not follow up the arguments of the hon. member who has just sat down. I think I can make better use of the limited time I have at my disposal by referring to a press release of 9th December, 1971, by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs in which they announced for the first time a new postage stamp policy for us. As this policy is a wide and broad as well as a political one, I should like to dwell on it. It covers not only the Republic, but also South-West Africa, although I want to confine myself, for the sake of argument, to the Republic of South Africa only.

What we are concerned with here in the first place is the ordinary definitive series of stamps we have, i.e. the postage stamps we use day after day. The set we are using at present was first issued in the early days of South Africa’s becoming a Republic just over 11 years ago, and I think a period of 11 years is already too long for such a common set of stamps to be used. I think the time has arrived when we should issue a new series. Now I may say that a new series has been designed, and that this will be a very beautiful set of stamps. The reason why it has not appeared and has not been put on sale at the Post Office as yet is simply that the printing processes change so rapidly today. The Government Printer has purchased the very latest printing machine available in the world, and after it has been installed, it will be used for printing the new stamps, and as far as quality and standard are concerned, they promise to be as good as the best in the world. It will take a bit of time for the technicians to master these complicated printing machines, but when they have done so, we shall have a set of stamps by means of which we shall present our flowers, our birds and our fishes—an image of our wild life—to the entire world. With a postage stamp one has the advantage that it will penetrate to the remote corners of the world. There is no place which a letter will not reach. In point of fact it is a propaganda medium which one is given free of charge. It costs one nothing. On the contrary, the public still buys that propaganda from one and one is actually paid for it.

The second matter mentioned in this press release, was the matter of the regional stamp. It held out the prospect of those Bantu homelands which have self-government, obtaining their own regional stamps which may be sold in those territories and which will then represent those territories. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to give us a little more information about this matter, which has major political complications. If this possibility is used in the right way, it may mean a great deal to our image abroad. It may mean a great deal to our image if, for example, we were to send stamps of the Transkei all over the world so that people may see that there is in fact such a country as the Transkei, a country which issues its own stamps by means of which it presents its own image to the outside world. If these possibilities are used in the right way, we shall be able to convince the world by those means of our sincerity and our consistency as far as our homeland policy is concerned. I should like to learn from the hon. the Minister further details as to the implementation of this policy.

Commemorative stamps are mentioned in the article too. Hon. members know that when an event, either in the distant past or in the present, is of national importance, the Post Office does its share too by issuing a stamp to commemorate it. In this way the Post Office participates in the national life and events. The most recent series we had, was that of the Hendrik Verwoerd Dam. Three stamps were issued in this series and by means of them we told the world what the Verwoerd Dam was, how large it was, etc. The stamps were accompanied by a small card on which the following interesting particulars, for example, were furnished. Many members of this House, and particularly children who are interested in these matters, have a great deal to learn from what appears on these stamps. The card said that the South African agricultural production could be increased by R14 million p.a. by means of this scheme, and that it would create 9 000 new farms. It went on to say that the Verwoerd Dam cost R60 million and that the entire complex would eventually cost R1 000 million. The entire dam would grow into a lake 37 400 ha in area, 150 km long. 25 km wide, and with a total shoreline of 520 km. If the particulars are correct, this must be about the fifth largest dam in the world. What the Post Office is doing in this regard, is that it is presenting this knowledge to the outside world, and this most certainly is something which is worth a great deal. In the coming year, the Post Office will also promote the protection of animals by issuing two stamps related thereto. This publicity medium is perhaps of more interest as far as our wool industry is concerned. Several times requests have been made to the effect that the wool industry should enjoy better publicity on our postage stamps. Although a wool stamp was, in fact, issued once before, I may just say that it was not of a very special standard. However, two beautiful stamps have been designed which will do a great deal to make our wool industry better known not only in South Africa, but also all over the world. The stamps which will depict these wool motives are the 4 cents stamp and the 15 cents stamp. These two stamps will be incorporated in the definitive series until such time as it is replaced by the new series which we may possibly get at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. The wool mark, too, will be reproduced on each of these two stamps and it ought to be an excellent advertisement for our wool industry. When it comes to commemorative stamps, there are so many events one should like to have commemorated. There are so many requests in this regard that one is in fact tempted to issue a little too many of these special issues. I now want to make an appeal to the Post Office. When we are faced with the problem of whether or not we should issue a stamp to commemorate a specific event, we should rather remain on the conservative side. If we were to have too many issues, we would be killing the goose which lays the golden egg. Hon. members know that collectors—there are approximately 35 million of them throughout the world— will not buy the stamps when they realize that they are issued in order to make them spend money. When these stamps are in fact issued so as to meet the needs of the Post Office and when they truly are a necessity, the matter is in order. The moment exploitation takes place, the country which has a multitude of issues, is simply ignored and its stamps are no longer in demand. Once one has a bad reputation among these people, one can never escape from it altogether. I may also say that one of the few fields in which the United Party did not err, but to which it actually contributed, concerns the integrity of our issues of postage stamps, because there is no country in the world which is rated as highly in this respect as the Republic of South Africa in fact is.

I also want to point out that today we may still affix to a letter a 2½d postage stamp issued in 1910. More than 60 years after the issue of that postage stamp, the Post Office still honours its contract and the person who bought the postage stamps over the counter at that time, may still use it today. That this is to be discontinued, unfortunately, as from the end of this year, is due only to the fact that we have a new currency and that we no longer use sterling. [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, I am sorry that the hon. member for Walmer was not himself present in the House to react to the suggestion made by the hon. member for Mossel Bay with regard to the wool mark being placed on a postage stamp. I think he would have appreciated that suggestion very much. I hope the hon. member will excuse me if I do not react further to what he has had to say. I want to direct my remarks to certain aspects of the Post Office’s capital expenditure and the policy which the hon. the Minister is adopting to finance that expenditure.

First of all, I would like to say that I regard the Post Office and particularly the telecommunication services as being such an important part of the infrastructure of the country that they should not be starved for finance for their capital expenditure. I believe that for this purpose their finance should be given the highest priority in competition with the needs of other departments of the Government. Good communications are absolutely essential for businesses if they are to be run efficiently and productively. I do not think that under present circumstances we can claim that our telecommunication services do provide the standard that is really required for efficient and productive business.

I was disturbed recently to read the report of the chairman of a large public company which supplies the Post Office with some of its requirements. He reported that on account of the Government’s cutting back on its expenditure programme, a tender for porcelain insulators, which is normally placed regularly every year, has been deferred for quite a number of months. The company concerned is Cullinan Refractories. I hope that this is not an indication that the hon. the Minister or the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is back-pedalling on its programme. I think that would be a grave mistake.

It is because I regard development of the telecommunication system as being so important to the infrastructure of the country, and because I regard it as so important that it should not be starved for finance, that I want to examine the hon. the Minister’s policy of financing its capital expenditure. His policy seems to be following the recommendations of the Franzsen Committee that 50 per cent of capital expenditure should be financed by way of borrowing and 50 per cent by way of internal resources. Those are the rough, guide-lines laid down by the committee. To judge the merits of this policy I think we need to look at several factors. The first is what the effect of this policy is on the tariff structure of the Post Office, and to what extent tariffs will have to be increased in order to carry out the policy of generating internal finance for capital expenditure. If we look at the relationship between the total capital expenditure of the Post Office and the total expenditure on Revenue Account, we find that over the past four years this has been a fairly steady relationship and that capital expenditure amounted to approximately, on an average, 50 per cent of revenue expenditure. If we were to apply to these figures the formula of the Franzsen Committee, we would find that tariffs have to be approximately 20 per cent higher after taking depreciation into account than what they would have had to be had they not been required to generate any capital to cover capital expenditure.

Could the hon. member please speak up?

I would suggest that if the Post Office were in the competitive world of private enterprise, they would not be in a position to jack their prices up by 20 per cent in order to provide, not replacement capital, but capital for expansion. I also put the question whether it is right and wise, in today’s conditions of inflation and stagnation in the economy, that today’s consumers should be required to pay 20 per cent more than is necessary to cover the cost of the services to them in order to provide amenities for consumers and different consumers of tomorrow.

The second point I think we should take into consideration is the capital structure of the Post Office. When you take into account the fact that its main source of finance has been loans, I do not think you could say that the Post Office is in a heavily borrowed position. In fact, its loans in relation to its assets are not at all heavy. At the end of March, 1971, the latest balance sheet available to us, the Post Office had assets of R427 million and loans of only R296 million. This position of course has radically improved as the result of the capitalization of R199 million of the loans. It can also not be said that the loan requirements of the Post Office are in any sense a drain on the Treasury. Between 1969 and 1973 the loan expenditure of the Post Office increased from R88 million to R140 million, whereas the loans required from the Treasury have been at a fairly static level over those four years of R45 million, R47 million, R60 million and R46½ million. I do not think it can be said either that the interest which the Post Office has to pay on these loans is a burden on the Post Office. In the last three years, 1970, 1971 and 1972, the percentage which interest bears to the assets of the Post Office, in total was 4 per cent in 1970, 3,7 per cent in 1971 and is likely to be a lower figure in 1972. In other words, this is the return on capital which the Post Office has to make—low return—in order to pay its way. To use yet another measure, one can say that interest as a percentage of revenue, which is the method used by the Franzsen Commission, has been more or less static in the past three years, in 1970 being 7,7 per cent, in 1971 7,4 per cent, and 6,6 per cent in 1972. This compares very favourably with the ratio of 14 per cent in the Railways and the 30 per cent of Escom. The Franzsen Commission recommended that a larger proportion of public corporations’ financial requirements should be financed out of revenue sources, and gave as its reasons for that, firstly. … [Time expired.]

Mr. Chairman, there is just one matter on which I agree with the hon. member for Constantia, and that is where he said that telecommunications were one of the most important aspects, as regards the establishment of the infrastructure, for our economic growth. As for the rest, I cannot agree with him, and I am sure the hon. the Minister will reply to him on those points.

If there is one thing I once again realized very thoroughly this afternoon and tonight, it is again that South Africa should be very grateful that the United Party is not governing and has not had the Post Office in its hands, and especially not in the hands of the hon. member for Orange Grove. This afternoon and tonight we once again had here a lot of contemporary statements on matters of policy, principles, and so forth. The questions put by the hon. the Minister to the Opposition were not answered, nor have they ever been answered. The hon. the Minister and his predecessors have been struggling for years to get answers from the United Party; so far their attempts have never met with any success. For two years I have been struggling with the hon. member for Maitland so as to get him to furnish me with replies to questions I put to him two years ago.

Put them again.

Some of those questions are questions which were put here tonight by the hon. the Minister himself, i.e. questions such as what the United Party’s policy is in respect of labour. And then the hon. member for North Rand accuses the hon. the Minister of having had the audacity to accuse the United Party of not being very patriotic. When is a person patriotic? One is patriotic when one does not indulge in nothing but disparaging tactics and expressing destructive criticism. When one is patriotic, one comes forward with a positive statement of one’s policy; one does not merely tell the governing party that they are acting wrongly, but also what the alternative is. That is something we have never heard from the hon. Opposition.

The hon. member for North Rand also said that there was a total deviation on the part of the Government from the labour policy of the National Party. I want to emphasize with conviction that the National Party has not yet deviated one single inch from its old policy. The National Party has always believed in having controlled employment. That is what is involved here. The National Party has never said that the non-Whites or the Bantu will not get this or that job or will never do it. However, the National Party has said that it will protect the Whites in their employment. I challenge the United Party to tell me tonight that, arising out of this announcement made by the Minister also as far as the Post Office is concerned, this is now a deviation from the National Party’s policy and that it will jeopardize the position of the White worker. They should state this case here; they should prove in what respect the White worker has been offended. The cardinal point is that we say we shall protect the White worker. On account of the fact that we are protecting them, we are automatically protecting the Coloureds as well, and the same goes for the Bantu.

I want to tell the hon. the Minister that it is with the greatest measure of appreciation that we have taken cognizance of his methods of handling matters. Furthermore, it is with the greatest measure of appreciation that we have taken cognizance of the fact that the staff association of the Department of Posts agrees with him and cooperates in this respect. Like other hon. members on our side of the House. I want to pay the highest tribute to the Post Office workers for the patriotism displayed by them. Heaven preserve the Post Office workers if they should have to work under the U.P. !

I want to come back to another point. Actually, this point concerns my constituency. The Lady Selborne area, which was evacuated a few years ago in that the Bantu had been resettled, finds itself on the eve of development. The bodies concerned are at present engaged in planning Lady Selborne as a residential area for Whites. It is 385 morgen in extent. Approximately 1 200 dwellings and approximately 3 000 flats can be erected there. Then there are other areas for township establishment, areas such as Bergbries, Bergbries 1, as well as one or two other areas that are about to be developed into townships. Apart from these, there is also an area that has been zoned for service industries. At the moment we already have the problem that it has not been possible for all the people in the Sandfontein/Wesmoot area to get telephones. Now I want to take the liberty of bringing this matter to the friendly notice of the hon. the Minister, i.e. that in the near future the department will have to give consideration to devising plans for providing that area with telephone services, since it will not be long before township development will take place there for the benefit of the lower and the middle-income groups of our population.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23.

House Resumed:

Progress reported.