The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1929. A ROUGH-HEWN CABINET

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 801, 23 October 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1929. A ROUGH-HEWN CABINET

FOUR epithets have become almost polite expressions among Labour politicians in Australia. These pleasantries are: “Putrid scoundrel,” “filthy-minded leader,” “rotten-hearted comrade” and “Ananias.” A former Victorian administrator recently heard all four during an afternoon in the New South Wales Legislative" Chamber, and, according to his confession later in an Australian journal, was astounded and pained to find that each epithet was hurled at a real gentleman, Premier Bavin, from the benches of the Labour Opposition. To a scholar and excellent political critic from Melbourne such talk could not be otherwise than disgraceful, but the visitor, in reality, experienced rather a quiet debate in the dingy House on Macquarrie Street. Quite clearly on the occasion Labour’s adjectives were taken out of cold storage. When the party’s epithets are hot, even bishops are driven to protest and prayer. Fortunately for the Commonwealth, Labour is- less lurid in expression at Canberra. There, Mr. Hughes is the master of invective and blistering epithets. But he has not been taken into the new Labour Ministry which has been established in party triumph as the result of the characteristic role of “Little Billy” as a wrecker of Governments and parties. It might he said fairly, however, that the Labour team would have promised a better administrative career than anything it is likely to achieve if Mr. Hughes had been received again into the Labour fold. He still is the ablest politician in the Commonwealth, and by far the best political spell-binder and fighter. But Mr. Hughes at least has promised to give the Labour Government moral support. This may be worth something, for it is better to have his “impish talent” with a party rather than against it. Those who have had some close-up knowledge of the personnel of the Federal Labour Government under the leadership of Mr. J. 11. Scullin will not enthuse over its ability or promise of notable administration. The Ministry is in every way a rough-hewn Cabinet. This need not be interpreted as a slur on its composition and character. There is a great deal of strength in its roughness. Five members of the Scullin Ministry are competent politicians and should develop with hard experience into capable administrators. They are the Prime Minister, Mr. Scullin, the Treasurer, Mr. Theodore, the Attorney-General, Mr. Frank Brennan, the Postmaster-General, Mr. J. A. Lyons, and the Minister of Health, Mr. Anstey. And Mr. J. E. Fenton, as Minister of Customs, should do good work, particularly in the direction of promoting Labour’s policy as to safeguarding and developing the Commonwealth’s manufacturing industries. He has a sound knowledge of industry and business, but is not an effective debater. The remaining members of the Ministerial team may have great talent locked up in their present immaturity, but the key to it has yet to be found. One of the outstanding weaknesses of the new Government as a whole is the fact that more than half of its number has a great deal to learn, while two or three members among the remainder have much to forget. This is conspicuously true of Mr. Theodore, whose reputation as a former Labour Premier of Queensland is much closer to notoriety than to administrative fame. His position as Deputy-Leader and Treasurer in the Scullin Administration is such as to cause many observers of his political career to shudder with apprehension, but he has promised to he a good soldier and to follow his less precocious leader. It is to be hoped that his more cautious colleagues will curb him with more than ordinary disciplinary force. It would be a foolish mistake on the part of those who have no personal knowledge to base their estimate of Mr. Scullin’s ability on the biographical fact that he began his working life as a grocer’s assistant. It is true that he is not much to look at, but his head is as good as many a professor’s, and probably better filled with general knowledge. The best merit of the Prime Minister, however, is his judgment. He is not a wrecker. Everything considered, there is no valid reason for anyone anticipating economic disaster as a result of Labour’s triumph in Australia. The Government will learn quickly enough that if it interferes with the machinery of national progress the machine will maim the Administration. In any case, the Labour Party lias won the right to rule, and should be given a fair opportunity. DISC ON TENTED CIVIL SERVANTS THE pathetic part about the Government’s refusal to restore the civil service salary cut is that the one great department which has more claim than any of the others to an improvement of the status of its employees is being- severely handicapped through the gross overloading of other State services. The effect of the Prime Minister’s pronouncement can only be an intensification of the grave dissatisfaction that already exists in the staff of the Post and Telegraph Department. To members of the general public this dissatisfaction may not have been manifest, but within the service there is no doubt of its existence. The department is peculiarly constituted. A large section of its staff carries out what the department is pleased to classify as lower-grade duties, and this fact is at present being used as a somewhat lop-sided argument against restoration of the wage-scale to its former level. The concessions being offered instead of a general restoration will do little to mitigate the feeling within the service. Briefly they provide for a selection of the more deserving officers for a higher rate of pay, and the offer of slightly widened facilities for transfer and promotion. But in a service where the duties of the staff are on such a uniform level the selection of men of outstanding talent will be difficult, and can only provoke the most acute disappointment among the men passed over. Furthermore, it is not a just principle that, while the existence of a grievance is recognised, it should not be corrected except for the fortunate few who happen to have attracted the attention of their superiors. The difficulty—there is a difficulty, for the Government could not possibly contemplate the restoration over the whole of the civil services at the present time—could be overcome as far as the P. and T. Department is concerned by treating it, one of the few departments that is paying its way, on a business and by applying the same stringent principles to some of those other branches which are merely the overstaffed and costly legacies jjf some transient political enthusiasm. The general complaint against the Civil Service as it stands at present is not that the employees enjoy too high a standard of wages, but that there are too many employees to share the wages now paid. In any case, this accusation does not apply to the Post and Telegraph Department, which closed its last financial year with a net profit of £20.000. That return was partly obtained at the expense of some of the poorly-paid employees in the lower ranks of the service.