THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 871, 18 July 1910, Page 6

THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

o It will occasion no surprise that the Prime Minister has informed Mb. Hebdjian that it is not intended to set up a Ko.yal Commission -to investigate and report upon the Public Service of the Dominion. Nobody expected that the Government would at this date give any countenance to a suggestion that the working of the vast machine which can now be put to such useful party purposes by Ministers should be closely investigated with a view to removing it from the reach of those undesirable political influences with their inevitable accompaniment of waste and injustice. Still less did anybody expect that the reply would offer, any good ivnisoji for refusing the request of the member for Wellington North; but even so, the irrelevance and absurdity of the reply is quite extraordinary. What, possible bearing upon the case has' the ■ fact that a Royal Commission appointed many years ago "proved to be useless as its report was never acted upon"? None at. all, unless the Government means that even if it did appoint a Commission it would disregard any report that might be made. Nor, in view of tho enormous increase'in the cost of fcho service, and the frequency of administrative scandals, is anybody likely to believe that "the present Public Service as a whole is a credit to the Dominion." The public must bo familiar by now with the case for the establishment of a Public Service, Board. That case has been made out over and over again in recent years, and it has never been upset. The arguments employed by the upholder' ,, of the existing system, have never really touched the overwhelming case for the removal of the soi'vice from complete Ministerial control. In nearly every other country tho evils of political control of the Public Service are recognised by all responsible statesmen and feared and proclaimed by all responsible journals. . That is the i'act which the public will not consider disproved by tho irrelevances of the Prime Minister a;id the unsupported assertions of men like Mr. Hanan and Mil. Laurenson, who, it is quite apparent, have never troubled to study the question, but who appear to say anything that comes into their heads at the moment. Mr. Herman's speeches in Hansard in 1004, 19C5, and 1909 set out expert opinions upon the importance of non-political control of the Public Service. Australian statesmen are unanimous in saying that independent Boards .. responsible only to Parliament give the only security for honest and economical administration. The very positive opinions of the Premiers of Western Australia and Victoria, and the State Treasurer of New South Wales are to be found in Hansard ■ of last year. And what do the Government and ita friends say against the almost universal opinion of statesmen outside New Zealand? Simply this: that the Public Service is "a credit to the Dominion" and that nobody will be allowed to test the truth of this assertion. The personnel and cost of the Public Service have grown, in a manner without example in tho history of- constitutional government, and this largely because it is necessary for the Government to find "billets" for its friends and the. friends and supporters of the Ministerialist members of Parliament. The very fact that the Government wishes to retain the present extravagant and degrading system of patronage, with its resultant lowering of public morals and waste of public money, should warn the country. The greatest desire of a clean and honest and sincere Government would be to free -itself* and to" free members of- Parliament from the pressure of billet-hunters. It was hardly necessary for the member for Wellington North, in order to emphasise, the true character of the Government's refusal to permit an investigation of the Public, Service, to quote the fact that on issues incomparably loss important the demand for a Royal Commission has boon granted, while Royal Commissions have been set up without even, be'ing asked for. For tho present, of course, there is no chance of success for the advocates of non-politi-cal control of the Public Service, the Railways and the Public Works Fund, but it must not be supposed that the case, for uon-political control is hopeless. It is only a question of time when the Government, to save its skin, will back down on this question, as it has backed down on others, or it will be replaced by another ■ Government with a more real regard for the true interests of the nation.