NON-POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1398, 26 March 1912, Page 4

NON-POLITICAL ADMINISTRATION.

Nothing, in our opinion, is so important in the plattovm of the Help rm Tarty as the assertion of the general principle that express provisions should be made whereby the administration of the public' services shall be purged of the blight of political control. The drift of .J-rfuera legislation has been objectionable, and the financial policy r ' Liberalism" more objectionable still, but the root evil has been the ieree clinging of "Liberalism" to a system of government that subjects the administration of affairs to the political necessities of the party in power. In a country like New'Zeaanc, Radical legislation is peculiarly damaging—it is a gin diet for infants; but the corruption of the public conscience is in a young country far worse than the infliction of material economic damage. That is why we have always given first place amongst the needful reforms to the purification of administrative methods. The control of the Civil Service, the expenditure o money on public works, and the management of the railways—these are three great brandies of government in which the need for non-poli-tical control is peculiarly urgent, The evil of political control conies, in each one of them, to the same thing; the remedy must be the same for alt The Reform Party is not as yet satisfied as to the wisdom of applying to the railways the principle of independent management, hut we anticipate that the logic of the case will in time erase the lingering vestiges of a sort of traditional and mechanical, and wholly unjustifiable, hostility to the Railway Commissioner system. At the present time the Commissioner system is under review in South Wales, and is being I abundantly justified. Any reversion to theold system of Ministerial control is unthinkable; although, as the Argus points out, in the excellent article we reprint op another page, "Commissioner-baiting is a favourite sport amongst politicians in Australia," The Argus's article is very instructive, and 'to those who may fancy that it is merely a very Conservative opinion we can say that the Age, the greatest democra-tic-progressive journal in Australasia, and one of the most effective progressive newspapers in the Empire, has_ emphatically declared, even in the midst of its most furious campaign of criticism against the Victorian Railway Commisioners, that nobody would dream of abandoning the Commissioner system. The dispute between the Chief Commissioner of the New South Wales Railways and the New South Wales Government ended in a moral and material rout of the caucus-ridden Premier, Mr. M'Gowen. Mr. M'Gowen, under the dictation of the little knot of agitators who rule the Labour movement in New South AVales, insisted on having the new engines built locally. Me. Johnson, the Commissioner, dissented, and proved that the traffic could not bo coped with imless the new engines were imported. Mr. M'Gowen also "instructed" Mr. Johnson to institute an eight hours clay throughout the Service and to pay a minimum wage of Bs. a day. Of course Mr. M'Gowen was merely looking for votes, and a general election is pending. Tho Argus states a valuable practical truth in its defence of the Commissioner's refusal to accept the Government's "instructions":

Tho Commissioner, if ho is worth his salt, must not consider political exigencies. 110 is .in his position to do his best for the country as a practical and expert administrator, and must, if he thinks it necessary; resist the pressure by even a hib'h-minded Labour Ministry which wishes to catch votes. Political bribery with public money is the thing which above M others commissioners are trusted by the public ti> prevent. Thero is a Wages Board which deals with the Hallway Service, nnd in three- years concessions have been mado to the wage-earners which cost the Stnto .£514,000 per annum. If n Ministry could now, with a general election pending, step in and cause further largo nnd costly concessions lo bo made, uoii-polttical management would bo a mere sham, !ii;d the CoMmissiouer, appointed to stand between tho people and tho politicians, would prove a recreant to liis trust.

We especially commend to our politicians that paragraph in the Argus's article which pictures the demoralised politics of the pre-Com-missioner era, because it is exactly the politics of the present in Jfew Zealand. The Argus is only expressing the universal opinion in Australia when it, says that "the improvement, effected by Ihe change from political to coniinew'iiil iiianngfinruL —■under direction uf L J iii-liiiiii<.-nt- n$ 1.0 hu'Ki! (iHcslions of policy-h,™ ljcen .so conspicuous thai; no JlinisliT would now dare to propose to rcvort to tha old method," Of course .the ittovftuifiut lor nfla<,spUticai km*

trol of the public services in this country will still have to oiictumtt-v lor some limp the cry of tin; uneaudid beneficiaries of Ministerial despoLism that it is "undemocratic" to havo_ "irresponsible Tsars"; but the public is already prepared to receive such pleas nt tlieir true value, and to understand the motives behind them.