“RUBBER STAMP” MINISTERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1025, 16 July 1930, Page 1

“RUBBER STAMP” MINISTERS

GOVERNMENT MEMBER’S ATTACK BOOKMAKERS’ ACTIVITIES IN AUCKLAND THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter WELLINGTON, Tuesday. PROTEST against “rubber stamp’’ Ministers and the autocracy of heads of Government departments was voiced in the House of Representatives today by Mr. F. Lye (Waikato), a United Party member, in his speech during the Address-in-Reply debate. He said he was absolutely against this and appealed to Ministers to control their departments. He mentioned bookmakers in Auckland who had unlisted telephones, and yet had urgent collect betting wires sent to them by telephone, while a woman whose husband had been convicted once of bookmaking was prohibited from having a telephone in her house by the head of the Post and Telegraph Department.

Mr. Lye said that he was not going to mention names, but he thought that the heads of departments in some instances were running the country, and the Ministers. He was not going to put up with that. As an instance of government by the heads of departments, he mentioned that recently a constituent of his had been convicted of bookmaking —a first offence, coincident with the time that the Auckland Post and Telegraph employees were dismissed for discussing races over the telephone. This man had run a billiards saloon, and the telephone was taken away from the saloon, and then from his private house, where his wife had to stay alone all day because the husband’s business necessitated long hours. She was a delicate woman and needed a telephone badly. The woman had no sympathy with her husband's bookmaking activities, but the telephone was refused her. The police evidence showed that at no time had the house telephone been used for bettipg purposes. Mr. Lye had appealed to the head of the Post and Telegraph Department to have the telephone reinstalled, but he had been turned down, the departmental head saying that the woman had not advanced her real reason for wanting the telephone. The present Postmaster-General, the Hon. J. B. Donald, said Mr, Lye, was not Postmaster-General at the time. Mr. Lye said that he had a particular friend who had been dismissed from the Post and Telegraph Department simply because he discussed over the telephone the form of certain horses that were to run at a meeting. Yet in Auckland there was a bookmakers’ association of men with several convictions, which had three unlisted telephones in Auckland. He had the number of one telephone and the names of 20 men in the association. On race days dozens of urgent col-

lect telegrams arrived in Auckland and were read out to the association’s office over the unlisted telephones. THE POINT OF THE BAYONET The speaker had had the right information, and he was at length able to persuade the department to let the woman have the telephone. She had it now. but got it at the point of the bayonet. He was not an informer, and he would not give the number of that unlisted telephone in Auckland, nor the names of the bookmakers, but he was not going to stand for the state of affairs which debarred a woman from having a telephone and yet permitted bookmakers to carry on as they were. “It seems to me,” said Mr. Lye, “that if a member of this House —a representative of the people —goes to the head of a department, or a Minister, and he has not got the right stuff, he does not get anything.” A Member: You had the right stuff. Mr. Lye: Yes, I had the right stuff. He went on to say that he did not suggest that the Ministers simply attached their signatures to documents, but he did suggest that they should make an effort to control their departments. It was a shame, a disgrace, and a travesty of justice for the Post and Telegraph Department to take away the living of six employees simply because they discussed the form of racehorses. All Mr. Lye wanted was reasonable and fair treatment.