OPEN CONTRACT.

Patea Mail, 18 September 1880, Page 2

OPEN CONTRACT.

The tenders for supplying rations to the A.O.’s on the West Coast during twelve months will close on Monday, In throwing this open to public competition, the Government are taking the only right course. It is an unfair and mischievous principle to give contracts by favor in public matters. A Government should place itself above suspicion in all its dealings. Favouritism is not admissible in the public service. Where it exists, it is an abuse of opportunity which shows that the parties concerned are not fit to be trusted. Men of this stamp should be weeded out. We, the public, want and will have our business done fairly and above-board. Those Ministers or servants who stand in the way of wholesome reform will have to be swept aside. They must obey the public will. The people in this colony are realising the severe necessity of taking the management of public affairs out of the hands of a set of professional politicians, who go hand-in-hand with land-jobbers and place-hunters. The whole public administration will have to be reconstituted. The army of servants who eat up our substance and mismanage our business will have to be cut down. Half a dozen public administrators, familiar with departmental organisation, might be put in power to re-constitute the public service on a scale of efficient economy that would cost probably not one-third the present excessive expenditure. Our public servants are eating up the substance of the country. Contracts given by favor, as the price of political support, are a scandal not to lie tolerated. This West Coast contract for military rations was given in the past under conditions never explained. It was given by the late Government; and it is creditable to the present Administration that they are putting it on a proper footing by inviting public tenders. We honor them for it. Whoever may get the new contract, the principle of open competition is the thing the public will have. Mr Macandrew has never explained why he gave a private contract for cutting the bush one chain wide up the Mountain-road from Normanby to Stratford, at 15sper chain; and he has never explained how it was that the work could be done at 7s fid.