Local Bodies.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19158, 15 November 1927, Page 8

Local Bodies.

It is at least interesting that the Legislative Council has twice discussed Sir Robert Stout's District Council proposal without, getting everything said that it intends to say. Whether it is significant as well as interesting we do not know, but the discussion has already done good. Very few people realise that the cost of the present, system in salaries alone is eighteen million pounds a year—a tax of about five shillings a week on every man, woman, and child in the Dominion. It is indeed difficult to realise a fact like that even when it is plainly stated, and the functional side of it is almost as extraordinary as the financial. For no one can possibly believe, after taking thought, that all these Boards, and staffs, and buildings, and prerogatives are entirely necessary and entirely independent, or that such overlapping as exists is worth paying for. The evil has simply grown from year to year and now seems too big to be grappled with—complicated as it of course is by every kind of local and personal vanity, and by the most extraordinary political factors. Even Sir Robert Stout does not now advocate a return to the old Provincial Councils, which, though they still have their advocates, are gone for ever; but he does want something very like them. A province is only a district spread out a little, and it would be very difficult to arrive at divisions large enough to be economical, and still small enough to keep local interest alive. There is, of course, a big difference between provincial or district Parliaments, and provincial or district Boards of Works, and if there were some known means of preventing little Boards from growing up under the big onea—they would begin is

Special Committees, then grow into Standing Committees, and one night while we slept become separate organisations—Sir Robert's plan could be recommended with reservation. It can still be recommended for very earnest consideration, though one curious result it has already produced was the attack, during the second day's debate, on the system of Commissioner control of the Public Service. Unwieldy though the Public Service now is, it would no sooner be returned to Ministerial control than it would begin growing faster than ever. And so far as the control of Parliament is concerned, it is a little astonishing that a man who has been Prime Minister should say that the appointment of Commissioners robbed Parliament of its " grip "on the Service. Parliament can keep as tight a hold as it likes on the Service, but the designing politician has lost his grip, which is wholly in the public interest.