MR. SCRIMGEOUR

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 85, 27 April 1937, Page 6

MR. SCRIMGEOUR

One oi Highest-Paid Men in Civil Service SOUTHLAND COMMENT • Some pertinent comment upon appointment and his salary of £1509 a year as Controller of the National Commercial Broadcasting Service is made by the Southland Times in its editorial columns. The article is as follows: — The more that is known of Mr C- G. Scrimgeour's appointment as controller of the Natiohal Commercial Broadcasting Service, the strauger it appears.' In the f .vt place the position, thougb it has since become one of the most valuable in the civil service, was never advertised. It was given arbitrarily to a man who&e calling scarcely seemed

I an exceptional qualification for the running of a commercial advertising service ; and the first the New Zealand people heard of his appointment was through an Australian paper. Mr Scrimgeour's salary was then fixed at £590 a year plus 7i per eent. of ad- | vertising revenue, though this arrangerangement, according to the Prime Minister, was to be reviewed in three months' time. Yesterday — not three months, but witliin a few days of six months, since the appointment was made — it i was announced that Mr S-firageour would be paid, as froiri April 1,' a straight-out salary of £15C0 a year. In other words, he is to become one of the three or four highest paid civil servants in the country, with a salary equal tb that of tiie General Manager of Railways and greater than that of the Director-General of the Post and Telegraph Department. j Hero are the salaries of some of the principal officers in the civil service. with Mr Scrimgeour's added for com'parison

Secretary to the Treasury 1650 General Manager of Railways 15C0 Director of Broadcasting 150 o Mr Scrimgeour 1500 Dir-Gen. P. and T. Department 1400 j Controller of Customs 1300 I Controller and Auditor-General 1300 Director of Education 1250 Director-General of Health 1250 Director-General of Agriculture 1200 Commissioner of Taxes 12CO Comunssioner of Police 950 U nder-Secr etary Jnternal Affairs 950

ln the Government's eyes, it appears control of a radio advertising service is only slightly less important than tlie highesfc financial position in the State; as important as the management of an undertaling in which •: 60,000,090 oi public capital is invested and 17,000 employees are engaged — the railways; as important as the management of the whole national broadcasting service • and more important than ihe management of the post office (10,000 employees), the country's educational services and the country's health serviceg— to | take only three of the lesser-paid positions. ; It is quite tlear from this comparison that Mr Scrimgeour is not being paid on the basis of his worth to the State. On what basis, then, is he being paid? Why does the Government feel so particujarly indebted to Mr Scrimgeour that it not only presents him with a job, not only pays him a salary that is, by comparison with those of other State officers, quite exorbitant; not only gives him complete freedom to broadcast political speeches from Government radio stations; but on top of all that allows'him to tell even its own Ministers their business. Questioned at Dunedin after Mr Scrimgeour's abusive tirade aguinst the New Zealand Press, tbe acting Minister of Broadcasting, Mr Jones, said that a full inquiry would be made into the circumstauces of the attack. "I expect the truth is Mr Jones had to mabe such a statement out of courtesy to

nis mquirers— it was his dut.y as Minister," coramented Mr Scrimgeour' in an interview at Auckland. "I have nothing to fear from an inquiry," he added, explaining that Mr Savage had given him a definjte assurance that "my activities as an individual, and the message I had, would not be orejudiced." The more his ''message" is full of political gall, the better the Government seems to like it. But the Government would do well to remember that Mr Scrimgeour's very handsome salary is provided, not by the Labour Party, but by the taxpayers of New Zealand ; and that in tace of tbis particular kind of political manoeuvring there comes an end to the patience even of taxpayers.