THE VALUATION DEPARTMENT EXPOSURES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 872, 19 July 1910, Page 4

THE VALUATION DEPARTMENT EXPOSURES.

| There is an aspect of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the charges made against the two officers of the Advances to Settlers Office and Valuation Department which it is the duty of Parliament to inquire into very thoroughly'.' We have already expressed our views on the general question and need not recapitulate our ' opinion of the gravity of the findings of the Commission or of the imperative necessity for fuller disclosures as to the nature of the charges which the Prime Minister has announced his intention to keep secret. Our intention now is" merely to direct attention to the unsatisfactory manner in which the Commission's report deals with a very grave feature of the charges made. The portion" of the report referred to as follows:,

It .is admitted that in respect of this mortgage [,£l2OOl Mr. Heyes, on two occasions, took advantage of the rebates allowed for prompt payment of interest, although the interest was not paid in due time. We think that by thus evading the payment of a sum of money lawfully due by him to 'he Department of which he was the head, Mr. Heyes again utterly failed to realise the responsibilities of his position. The rebates have since been paid.

The full" seriousness of the transaction here related does not appear to have occur reel to the Commissioners. What the public is first of all entitled to know is how this condition of- things became possible. It must be assumed that the Department conducts its business on systematic lines. "VVe have been constantly told of the splendid state of efficiency attained under the control of Mr. Heyes, and if. those statements are correct a proper record must have been kept of the dates at which payments were made. . What do the books of the Department show regarding the particular payments referred to in the Commission's report 1 'If incorrect enti'ies were made in the office records in order to enable these rebates to be claimed, I who made them; and if rebates could bo claimed, despite overdue payments of interest, without the necessity for making incorrect entries, what sort of system must prej vail in this important Department of the State? The fact that the rebates improperly made have since been paid appears to us a trilling thing compared with the larger question involved. The Commission's report dismisses the matter with the ■remark that "Me. _ Heyes again utterly failed to realise the responsibilities of his position." It must surely appear to the public that this is an astonishingly mild manner of disposing of the matter. It is quite possible, of course, that the Commissioners made. some general observations and recommendations which are included in the portions of the report suppressed, scKfar as Parliament and the public are/concerned, by tho. Ministry. All there is to go oil, however, is what the Government has seen fit to publish, and on that there is ample justification for insistence on tie disclosure of the full facts. It may be that, the Government has met the requirements of the situation in calling on the two officers to send in their .resignations, but even oil the facts published this is open to question. We are quite aware that there is always a strong disinclination to press home investigations of this nature, but members i must not permit any false sentiment ! to turn them aside from their duty. Parliament has to'consider the public interest, not the feelings of individuals; and 'the public interest demands that the full extent of improprieties or irregularities in any Departments of the State should be .made known, and such penalty meted out to those, responsible as will act as a warning and a deterrent for all time. The public, wc are confident, will be quite as ready to display its resentment at any suspicion ol misplaced leniency as it would of any attempt to perpetrate injustice. •