WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 October 1921, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

MINISTER’S LUOK. ADVANCE IN WOOL PRICES. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, Oct. 17. “Sedaon’s luck,” which was proverbial during the great Liberal leader’s term of office, seems to have become “Massey's luck.” While all the experts . were shaking their heads dolefully over the wool position and predicting three or four years of low prices, the present bearer of Mr. Seddon’s cloak held firmly to the belief that a revival was at- hand and that very shortly all would be well with the “sheep men.” At the beginning of last week at one of the many public receptions that have been thrust upon him since his return from the Imperial Conference, he expressed afresh the faith that was within him and, lo and behold, the very next day came across the cable conveying glad "tidings of an advance of 15 per cent, in the prices' of wool in London. Whether it was pure luck or uncanny prescience that enabled Mr. Massey to anticipate by twenty-four hours the course of the market does not matter very much, but the fact itself must add very materially to his reputation for commercial astuteness. It is by such fortuitous happenings the mana of the politician is maintained. SAVING IN HASTE. Mr. J. R. Hamilton, the successor to Sir Joseph Ward in the representation of Awarua in Parliament, has been cutting something of a figure this session, perhaps thinking the return of Sir Joseph to the Dominion makes it desirable he should be putting his best foot foremost. On Friday night he seized with both hands and a not unready tongue an opportunity to dilate on the need for economy in the public service, a very safe subject in the House just now. if the susceptibilities of the Labor members may be disregarded. His ideas on retrenchment, however, are a little crude. He would cut 10 per cent, off the salaries and wages of the civil servants all round, thereby saving, so he said, a clear million, and he would curb the avarice of the labor unions, which, he averred, were extracting conditions from the employers and the general public which were utterly unfair. Tie was satisfied that nine-tenths of the civil Servants anti all the reasonable workers would approve of his scheme, and that its -adoption would save the country from disaster. And so the way of reform proceeds ! AN INSISTENT DEMAND. But though Mr. Hamilton’s ideas of effective retrenchment may be a little crude, both iq conception and in presentation, they reflect, more or less accurately, a great volume of public opinion that has grown up here during the last month or two. Wellington, of course, is alv. ays a little more diffident than any other part of the Dominion in dealing with the Civil Service. It is the home of many thousands of civil servants, and there is scarcely a resident in the city or suburbs whose personal sympathies are not in some way associated with Government employment. But the stern facts of the situation have compelled even Wellington to join in the de_mand for retrenchment. The local pub- ; lie is prepared for very drastic steps inideed towards the desired end, and is not inclined by any means to accept Mr. Massey's first instalment of “savings” as an adequate appreciation of the gravity of the position. The demand is for actual savings, not merely for the discontinuance of butter and wheat subsidies, and the spending of borrowed money on public works. Everything but efficiency, as a business man put it today, must be sacrificed in the interests of economy.

DEFALCATIONS. Tn his annual report on the public accounts, which was laid on the table of the House on Friday, Colonel R. J. Collins, the Controller and Auditor-Gen-eral, who is retiring from office this year, protests,, against “the impression "of special iniquity on the part of public servants which has been created by the industrious circulation of particulars of all cases of defalcation or like irregularities which have been disclosed in relation to the Public Service.” The Colonel denies strenuously that irregularities of the kind he has in mind are more common in public than they are in private offices. De attributes the popular delusion on this point to the fact that while offences discovered in the public offices are always followed by a prosecution, those committed in private offices are frequently saved from publicity. This explanation, doubtless, is correct. But so far as one can gather it is not so much the average integrity of the Civil Service that is called in question as it is the quality of its bookkeeping. This is said to be archaic in its methods and to present all the means to do ill deed that make ill deeds done.