The public Service

Taihape Daily Times, 14 January 1918, Page 5

The public Service

SOME PLAIN SPEAKING BY SIR SIR JOSEPH WARD. CHRISTCHURCH,, Jan 12. Speaking at the Post and Telegraph Officers' Reunion last night, Sir Joseph Ward said the Government within the last three years, as the outcome of the war, had creator! and had to provide for a number of employees (soldiers) ten times numerically greater than the whole of the Public Service, and nearly six times greater than the number in the Railway Department. It was idle and futile for anyone to believe that in view of this the Public Service, as It existed in normal times, could be carried on as easily by the Government as some people imagined. It could not be, and that for the reason that the men and women from end to end of the Dominion wanted to win the war. They wanted to win the war before anything else, and for that reason the Government was not undertaking the construction of any public building in any portion of the country that could possibly be put off till after the war. As to the postponement of the classification of the Post and Telegraph Department, Sir Joseph Ward said it could not be done separately. If it were to be done the whole of the Public Service would have to be reclassified. That could not be done except on one condition, one that would not be agreeable to them, and that was the withholding of bonuse'S He Delieved it was better for them to ; have the present condition of affairs rather than the introduction of a state of affairs which might result in heavy retrenchment and large reducffShs. He said in all sincerity they must not try to drive things. If they did try to drive thrings, then he, for one, would not yield unless he could see that it was safe. It was because the Government wanted to get the country straight and right for the people that some of the things they had been pressed to do "had not been done.

"In the course of a short time," continued Sir Joseph Ward, "the people of this country will be called upon to provide another ten millions to enable our war payments to be made —during June or July next, at the latest. Then if this war is unhappily going on after this period, we will have to ask the country to provide many more millions than it will have provided this year. The telegraph messenger and the humblest man in the service is as much concerned in the preservation of the country after the war is over as the oldest and most responsible in New Zealand. It is the afterwar conditions that have to b e looked forward to by the Government and Parliament. Those conditions will be without, parallel as far as this country is concerned, and you men in the Public Service, sharing your portion of responsibility, have got to be ready to face it with the view o*f seeTh'g that the prosperity of the countrv continues." Sir Joseph Ward went onto say that this country had fo have small land settlements and an enormously increased number of people on the land in order to provide an enormously increased value of exports to bring an enormously increased amount of money into the country, so as to meet our obligations without having to resort to crushing taxation.