The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1886. Civil Service Reform.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1252, 1 June 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna Est Veritas et Prevalebit. TUESDAY, JUNE 1, 1886. Civil Service Reform.

The Civil Service Reform Bill introduced to the House of Representatives by the Premier, Sir Robert Stout, may conciliate those supporters of the Government who were alarmed and partially estranged by the tone of the Financial Statement, but it will not satisfy those economists who demand that some earnest effort shall be made to reduce our Civil Service expenditure. It is commonly reported—with how much truth we do not profess to know’ —that the Bill was hurriedly prepared and presented to the House, merely to make amends for a serious omission from the Financial Statement. Ministers discovered, so the story runs, that even their friends insist upon some material retrenchment; they precipitately withdrew the Colonial Treasurer’s pathetic appeal on behalf of an indefinite number of “ old and well-tried servants,” and substituted a measure which the author “ hopes ” will effect reductions, to the extent of or ,£40,000. This story probably originated in the fertile brain of some imaginative newspaper correspondent ; we can hardly believe that it is a faithful representation of facts. But the character of the Bill, its brevity, and its singular provisions, suggest that it was prepared without sufficient thought, and without the author having had sufficient time to realise the impracticability of various fads which appear on the face of the measure. It is proposed that the Act shall apply to females as well as males, by which - it is intended, we presume, to open our Civil Service to women. We have no objection to raise to this clause and, the provision that persons aspiring to the positions of messengers, policemen, or members of the defence force, shall, before admission to the service, pass Standard IV. of education provided by the Education Act, 1577, is not too exacting. Candidates for

hese services are not likely to have

their careers blighted by over-pressure, nor their heads turned by much learning. The proposal that no candidate shall be appointed to the Civil Service save on the nomination of a member of the House of Representatives, as representing an electoral district, aims to create a system of patronage which cannot be too emphatically condemned. The establishment of an insurance fund by the deduction of 5 per cent per annum from the salary of every Civil Servant, would be fraught with many obvious advantages, and no great hardship would be inflicted if the terms of Government engagements, with regard to notices of termination, were assimilated to those laid down by our large mercantile institutions. Of course any Civil Servant retiring from the service, except for the commission of crime, would be entitled to receive the amount he had subserbed towards the insurance fund. But it is to the concluding clauses of the Bill that the friends of the Government point, and claim that they indicate a bona tide desire on the part of the Premier, at least, to place our Civil Service on a sound and economical basis. As th* se clauses, if the Bill be adopted, will present the only means for material retrenchment, we will quote them in <r.\ ten so :

The Governor, by Order-in-Council, may appoint so many persons as he shall think fit as Royal Commissioners, to enquire and report to him at such time as lie shall appoint during this year, and hereafter at the same time every year (i) In respect of the prc sent year as compared with the year 1S80: (a) Whether the cost of living and of the necessaries of life have become so reduced as to make the salaries

of the present year of comparatively I higher value than salaries of the sain ; amount in the other year aforesaid : and {/>) by what percentage, if any, a rise or t decrease shall he made in salaries vary- ( ing between and and i between and respectively. 1 and in salaries over to assimilate * the respective values of the salaries , paid in this year to the respective values of salaries of the same amount paid in the other year aforesaid ; (2) in respect of the year 1889, and of every third year thereafter as compared with the year of the then last previous report of the Commission, to the same purpor: as in the ’a t preceding sub-section mentioned. On receipt of any such report, the salaries of any officers of the civil Service who may be within the operation of the Act may be reduced or increased according to the tenor of such report, hut in no case to a greater degree than 2% per cent on salaries ranging between and ,£3OO, 5 per cent on salaries ranging between and ,£SOO, and 10 pet cent on salaries exceeding Every such alteration in salaries shall be made by Order-in-Council, to take effect at such date as shall be specified in such order, provided that no such alteration as aforesaid shall take effect at any time previous to Oct. 1, 1886. 1 Now, what need is there fo refer this | matter to a Royal Commission? Surely Ministers and Heads of Departments are in far better positions to judge o! the condition and requirements of the Service than the Commissioners would be after even six or twelve months investigation. We have already had a Royal Commission on this question, and the political fate of the members of that Commission is likely to inspire their successors with a too deferential regard for the power of the Service. Ministers have no right to evade the responsibility and onus of the investigation, and they are entitled to no credit for introducing a Bill which really aims to shift the burden from their own shoulders and make the question of Civil Service Reform an empty name and meaningless farce.