The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1912. THE CIVIL SERVICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 97, 10 September 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1912. THE CIVIL SERVICE.

The Civil Service Commission, which reported to the Government last week, is another of those dreadful organisation'! set up by Mr. T. Mackenzie, against wLic.'i the present Government raiie.i | roundly before it came into office. But the sane and comprehensive report whi-.I: it has submitted is so much in keeping with the professions of Mr. Massey an'! hs colleagues that it ought surely to find something more than a sympathetic ear. A great deal has been said.of the frequency o" political patronage and of what practically amounts to the value of "graft" in the administration of the civil service by the successive Liberal Governments during the last twenty years, but it has to be remembered that Mr. Ballance, Mr. Seddon, Sir Joseph Ward and Mr. T. Mackenzie, so far as the civil service is concerned, were simply administering a legacy that had been left to them by Sir Harry Atkinson and his predecessors. But the question | is not one that should be made the subject of political recrimination at all, and we regret to notice that several of the prominent newspapers of the country arc making the report a text for political capital. Personally we are not a little bit concerned whether Tom Jones or Bill Brown is head of the Government when the question of the civil service is under consideration. What we want to see, and what the country has been wanting to see for many years, is a system under which merit alone will count when the question of advancement arises. The ciyil service ought to he open to every man and every youth in the country on the sole qualification of individual ability to till any position that is open, irrespective of whether the candidate s father once dug the garden of an aunt by marriage twice removed of the member for the Back of Beyond, or whether his elder brother once laid his coat in the mud in order that the Hon. Mrs. (jolightly might cross the road dryshod. The system of preferment by political patronage, or through pure length of service kills all initiative in the service and makes it-, members so many automata who know that two and two arc four and that the day after tomorrow will be Thursday, but who have not the faintest idea of organ Nation and who would shudder themselves into a, bad attack of measles if an enterprising Minister were to ask their opinion upon some suggested amendment of the ordinary departmental procedure. They are the sort of persons who must be released promptly at 1 o'clock for lunch, lest some modern Nero should start fiddling while their joints burned, and their lives and their administration are one long vista of a colorless and rule-of-thumb content. Such a system is nei-

ther of use to the country nor to the service itself. It kills ambition; checks initiative and simply puts a premium on the ability to hang on with the least possible expenditure of energy compatible with doing sufficient routine work to occupy an eight hours day. The system is an insult to energy, a tax upon thrift, and the murder of natural ability. If Billy Jones, who has been working the lift for two days at 10s a week is a' better auditor than the Hon. FitzJames Hugh Clarence Montmorency, who lias been in the Department for 47 years 10 days 4 hours 11% sees., at £IOOO a year, the two should reverse positions, provided that their ascertained values are definite. Of course, the one way to remedy this is the way suggested by the Commission—the appointment of a board of management, composed of three men, the head of which is to be drawn from the Government service, whose duty will be to administer the policy of whatever Government may be in power, particularly with regard to salaries and promotions. Such a board could do a great deal towards removing existing anomalies, and already the prospect of the adoption of tlje Commission's report has been hailed with acclamation in the service. The task of the Board will not be an easy one, for it is common property that many of the Departments are only preserving a quiescent armed antagonism where, their respective duties and in- | terests meet, but it will at least have a very ample field for the exercise of its administrative ingenuity.