GOVERNMENT APPOINTMENTS

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16485, 26 February 1914, Page 6

GOVERNMENT APPOINTMENTS

It is not very difficult to imagine the special qualifications that have won for Mr Wilson the appointment of President of the new Board of Agriculture, but the formation of that body has attracted so little attention that probably the public will not be greatly interested in the personality of its head. Just what the Board is going to achieve no one, at this stage, appeal's to know, and for our own part we are bound to be sceptical concerning tho practical value of a body so peculiarly constituted. At the moment we are inclined to regard it as another of the Reform devices for relieving Ministers of their responsibilities. But whatever the Board may ultimately achieve it has already served one useful purpose, in that it has provided the Government with an opportunity cf honouring one of its warm friends. Political appointments are not necessarily bad appointments, and Mr Wilson may be, for all we know to the contrary, the very man for the post, but no one will believe for a moment that he would have been singled out for the position now offered to him if it had not been for his activity on the political side. The Reformers used to be fond of making capital out of the Liberal Government's appointments, but their own Ministers are not making many mistakes concerning the colour of the people whom they delight to honour. Some of their selections have been flagrantly political. There was tho removal of Mr Gibson from tho Canterbury Land Board, for example, an utterly unjustifiable change in the representation being made solely, so far as we have observed, for the purpose of honouring a friend of. the Reform Party. The failure to reappoint Mr Boyd to the Marlborough Land Board was another case in point. There was probably not in the whole of New Zealand a more capable or more conscientious member of a Land Board than was Mr Boyd. If the appointment had depended on popular vote his candida-

turo would have had a unanimous endorsement from the Kaikoura people, and as he had nerer been prominent in party politics there was not a shadow of justification for passing him over when his term expired. But ho did not happen to be of the right colour, and his place has been filled by a gentleman who has no interest in the Kaikoura district proper and of whom the Kaikoura people know nothing. Wo are not at all concerned with the political effect of these appointments, but we aro concerned with the administration of the country's affairs, and it is on broad grounds of public interest that we protest against this persistent application of the party test in the selection of men for public offices.