The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1907. DECEIVING THE PUBLIC.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3769, 20 August 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1907. DECEIVING THE PUBLIC.

After all M’s.H.R. have their uses. One of them called attention in the House the other day to the fact that a Government expert whose salary is set-down at £ BOO , so that all the people may see has been getting ,£I3OO or so a year for nineteen years. The last /500 ‘ ‘ travelling allowance ’ ’ the people of bourse knew nothing about, nor apparently would they have ever known anything about it if it had not been that some honest politician blundered on the truth. No one is going to blame an expert for drawing thirty shillings a day travelling allowance for nineteen years, whether he travelled or no, but everyone should blame rank dishonesty, the shameless mendacity which allows the people for nineteen years to be

ignorant on such a matter. The Chief Customs expert has, during nineteen years, received ten thousand odd pounds over and above his salary, and the Government of to-day says that Sir Harry Atkinson authorised it. This, of course, may be true, but no one will b fc able to see that because one Government or a member of it did something he may have wished to keep from the people that for nineteen years successive Governments should have done the same thing. We do not know whether a year is a fair thing for the services of a customs expert, and we don’t care. We believe that every man should be paid well. But we do say that to take thirteen hundred pounds out of the pockets of the people, while telling, the people that only eight hundred pounds has been taken, is mean despicable fraud. Even if the - Government has not been guilty of theft, it has been guilty of lack of business ability, and it is sincerely to be hoped that members will keep their eye lifted for other cases of misrepresentation. Where there is one case of this kind there are bound to be others. We. admit that during the reign of the present Ministry the House and the people have been let into the financial secrets of- ; the' country as they had not been during the regime of the Premier’s predecessor-. It is good for- the- people; and good for politics that the minutest details of Government expenditure should be freely given. It is almost appalling that the Government- should ever refuse the humble prayers of the backblccks for the expenditure of a few pounds in necessities that often mean the saving of life, when it is supine enough to permit drains on the public purse of the kind mentioned. It is - a little disgraceful that the hardest worked men in the public service who are receiving from a-thirteenth to a-sixth of the wages of this expert, who, of course, is not called upon to work very hard, should have had the hardest row to hoe to obtain a trifling rise in wages on account of the ever upward tendency of living —a tendency due without question to a previous Government with an appetite for gain, which it whetted by increasing the price of the land, and by huge taxes on the people’s necessities. It is, of course, to see that , the people are duly bled through the customs that a Chief Customs expert with two salaries (one of which the people knew nothing about until lately) is necessary. In order to adequately rob the people it is necessary indeed to keep a huge staff of highly ornamental sinecurists going in this country. We do believe that the Government on the whole is trying to be as honest as it knows how, but we do also believe that it lacks alertness when it permits a scandal that has existed for nineteen years to continue. The public perhaps won’t mind if the expert gets two thousand pounds a j r ear and has more holidays and house allowance and the use of the telegraph service and free tobacco and a motor car. But the public likes to be dealt with honestly. Thirteen into eight won’t go. There are other large numbers in connection with the public service which won’t go into smaller ones and it is to be hoped that politicians with keen eyes and noses for figures will dig into this matter and discover all the public servants who are receiving double salary, while but one amount is entered in the public legder.