RED TAPE.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 September 1915, Page 8

RED TAPE.

IN THE DEFENCE DEPARTMENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.)' Wellington, Sept. W. Tie transport Tahiti, -which reached Wellington on Saturday morning ■with invalided New Zealandera, is still lying at the wharf here owing to trouble in connection with the manning of the stokehold, and the southern men, who should have left for their homes on Saturday night, are getting away today aboard the Warrimoo and the Monowai. The Minister for Defence (the Hon. J. Allen), made a curious admission when this matter was mentioned in the House of Representatives to-day. He said that the men should have gone south by last night's ferry steamer, but nothing was done owing to his own absence from Wellington on a week-end trip. Do the wheels of the Defence Department cease to revolve when the Minister is out of town? It has been suggested more than once in Parliament this session that excessive centralisation was the cause of some of the troubles that have beset the Defence Department, and your correspondent's own observations have led him to believe that the Department would be benefited greatly by the burning of a whole lot of red tape.

The Defence Department's besetting Weakness—a rigid regard for forms and rules—was illustrated on Saturday in connection with the arrangements for the admission of IPress representatives to the Tahiti. The steamer was going to remain in the stream all the morning, and the reporters naturally wanted to get aboard in order that they might gaferr the men's stories 'before the rush nvA confusion of the landing. It may ?)e assumed that the whole country was interested in getting through'the newspapers the stories that the men had to tell. But the Department imposed an arbitrary limit of twelve reporters, the number originally proposed being much smaller. More than twelve newspapers were represented in Wellington, and it was obvious that the hundreds of men who lined the bulwarks of the Tahiti all the morning would welcome a chance to talk to anyone from the shore. The Department did not suggest that, say, twenty reporters would be a nuisance. But somebody in authority had said that there should be twelve Pressmen and twelve there were. Apparently, from the military point of view, the conditions should adjust themselves to the order, not the order to the conditions.