HOSPITAL MATTERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 11, 10 May 1912, Page 5

HOSPITAL MATTERS.

COUNSEL BY MINISTER FOR INTERNAL AFFAIRS. fPer Press Association.) Palmerston, May 9. The Minister for Internal Affairs gave a most interesting glimpse of the Government’s mind in his address to the Hospital and Charitable Aid Board to-day. He said that few realised the magnitude of the work done in assisting the poor. Last year old age pensions cost £335,000, the hospitals spent £237,000, .and charitable aid £116,000. Of these two last amounts the ratepayers provided one half and the Government the other. The magnitude of these figures indicated the necessity for prudence in their administration on the part of those locally responsible, and the care exercised by the Chief Officer, Dr Valintine. There was an undoubted tendency to establish in connection with charitable aid a pauper class. Watchfulness on the part of the boards and the Government was necessary to prevent a person making a system of living on charitable aid. This should be made impossible if legislation and watchful administration could secure that end. The figures given indicate that about 15s per bead for the entire population of a million of people was being spent on hospitals and charitable aid and pensions. - That was a very large sum for a country, with a virile and healthy people. Wherever he went the need was impressed on him for the necessity of providing settlers in the hackblocks with medical assistance, and, where medical men were not available, with trained, nurses. Above all things it was impressed upon him that they should provide maternity nurses for those women who go out as pioneers of civilisation into the backhlocks. It was their duty to push their nursing ■system to such a state of efficiency that they would he able to send nurses outTrom such a centre as Palmerston, which was the hospital for a large district. Here it was possible immediately to establish a St. Helens Hospital. They should have a maternity ward at the general hospital to help maternity cases and to train maternity nurses to go into the backhlocks. He wanted also, with the assistance of the hoards, to establish an energetic campaign against tuberculosis. He proposed to establish a scientific library dealing with the disease at the Cambridge sanatorium, whore they had an enthusiastic scientist and student of the disease in charge. The literature could then be sent to inform the boards as to the up-to-date methods of dealing with the scourge. Fulmer-

ston would perhaps bo the leading inland city of the Dominion, and the hospital a centre for a large district. He hoped the board would bear in mind the necessity of papers on the most scientific lines. Dr Valintine and the Department would be always ready to assist them in this. Tha Local Government Bill. Speaking on the Local Government Bill, the Minister said that the Bill had been handed down to the present administration by its predecessors, and so far as the subjects were concerned they wore going to make a determined effort to place it on the Statute Book. There were between GOO and 700 local bodies operating in New Zealand for one million people. In ‘many of these bodies the cost of management reached 25 to 35 per cent of the rates collected. In some cases the cost of management exceeded the rates. It would be puerile to allow such a state of things to continue. The Government had no desire to take away any rights and privileges, but to increase the power and responsibilities of local bodies. They had no desire to shunt the responsibility of Parliament, as far as finance was concerned, on to the people of tiic country, but tho time had come when Parliament must not continue to be regarded as a milch cow, to which; any body of individuals could go to obtain what they wanted. There should be some sound systefn of finance, and there should be some responsibility placed on the locality that got the money. He hoped that the day of the roads and bridges grants and subsidies to local bodies, without responsibility would cease. Mr J. G. Wilson: How will you fix education ?

Mr llussell said that it was not Intended that there should he any difference as to primary education, in ■that the locality should supply any funds for primary education, hut when they came to the large demands for technical education they were on another class of subject. While the entire responsibility of primary education must be maintained in the State, the responsibility for technical education and “embroideries” of that class must he shared by those people who wanted them, and by the State. There were extravagant demands being made in large cities for huge technical colleges at the expense of the State. The present Government did not necessarily pin itself down to all the details of the Local Government Bill as introduced by the WardGovernment.Tbey desired to see simplification, economy and measured efficiency, and a sense of the responsibility on the part of the committees for the working of local government. Nothing had been more subject to criticism than tne roads and bridges grants, and there had been no one more persistent in retaining thorn than the gentlemen who preferred to lie most opposed to flic Government. He could name members of the Opposition who obtained thousands and thousands of pounds more for their districts than gentlemen on the side of the Government. The system was bad. The conference ..at Wellington on May 21st would comprise gentlemen who could bring to hear experience of local government. It was a conference of advice, or “round the table talk” on local government reform, and what reform it wanted. A great number of offices would he abolished, and perhaps theca so wiped out would object, hut it was for the people of New Zealand to say whether the present expensive and ridiculous multiplication of local bodies should continue. If the people did want it to continue, they must accept the inevitable and let it go on, hut it represented a great waste of power an I of money.