Public Service Appointments

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23972, 12 June 1943, Page 4

Public Service Appointments

We gave some reasons recently for saying that appointments to the staff of New Zealand representatives oversea ought not to be reserved from Public Service Commissioner control, making the Minister of External Affairs solely responsible, as they are by clauses 8 and 10 of the new act. A further consideration cannot be overlooked. This provision will give fresh dissatisfaction to a Public Service winch in the last decade or so has seen one after another of the higher official positions fall to men whose training and experience have been gained outside the service. Public servants may well feel that this is a bad state of affairs, because it

must lead ultimately to a decline in the standards of their service. Young men and women of ability are not likely to find much attraction in the service if most of its plums go to outsiders; but if public servants are wise they will not spend too much time blaming this Government or previous governments for the eclipse of their profession. Instead, they will ask themselves frankly whether they themselves are not largely responsible. In the 30 years or so since the Public Service Act rescued the Public Service from the evils of political control, the functions of the State have been vastly increased and diversified. This change, which amounts almost to a silent revolution, has demanded of the Public Service a new conception of its responsibilities and of the sort of training necessary for them. The service, through a disastrous failure of foresight and imagination, has not responded. The Public Service Association has used its considerable power, not to ensure that the service moves with the times, but to protect the promotion rights of the great mass of its existing members. To almost every proposal for giving more able members more rapid promotion and a more varied training, it has been at best indifferent. It is now paying the price of its obstinacy. The Public Service, lacking men with the qualities of leadership and resourcefulness needed by the modern State, is less important in the councils of the nation than it has been at any time since 1912.