ABOLITION OF THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 82, 27 December 1884, Page 5

ABOLITION OF THE SURVEY DEPARTMENT.

Wellington, December 19. iou may or may not have heard of the contemplated reforms in the Lands Department. The probability is that you have not been supplied with any details. The Minister for Lands has been for some time considering a scheme cf reform whereby a very large sum of money will annually be saved to the colony, and a department which has been allowed to cjrow until it has assumed enormous proportions will be swept almost entirely away, without the least danger Of any ill results to the colony. I allude to the Survey Department, which is now little short of a training school for teaching the sons of politicians and sons of politicians' friends a profession. This Department is maintained at a cost of something like one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a year, and is engaged for the most part in the performance of work that might well be left to private enterprise. Mr Ballance is therefore of opinion that it will be a wise step to dispose of this huge Department almost entirely, and save the expenditure of so large a sum annually. The Department will therefore be swept away, and the few officers retained will become officers of the Land Department. Mr Bullance is of opinion that surveys are not of immediate necessity, except where the land surveyed is fit and ready for settlement, and a lot of unproductive work now being done will therefore be discontinued. Such work, however, as the triangulation of the King Country will be carried on without delay ; but a deal of work now being done for municipal bodies, etc., free of cost, will in future be charged for by the officers of the Department. By this disbandment of the Survey Department, the Minister of Lands hopes to relieve the Administration of the care of a huge and unwieldy branch, to make room for private enterprise and a healthy competition among professional men, and to save the colony over a hundred thousand a-year, without in the least depriving it of those professional services necessary to the settlement of land.

Dr. Rouse, who has just died from the effects of an accident at Lyttelton, arrived by the ship Roman Emperor in 1860. The Wellington "Post" suggests that prises should be given for the original words and music of an opening cantata for the Industrial Exhibition to be held next year. It is proposed that the works of New Zealand authors and copies of all the newspapers of the colony should be shown at the projected Industrial Exhibition. Here is a clever anagram on the title Sir Roger Charles Doughty Tichborne, Baronet. The letters transposed read, " Yon horrid butcher Orton, biggest rascal here." A miner named McDonald was on Wed* ne*day killed at the " diggings" in Manitoto County, Otago, by a fall of earth. Civil Service reform appears to be tackled in wxaest by the Government^