THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 1908. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9049, 26 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 1908. CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED.

The committee of the Wairarapa District Hospital Board appointed to consider and v eport upon the proposed Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Bill are to be congratulared upon the very thorough manner in which they have gone into the matter, and the exhaustive series of conclusions at which they have arrived. These will be found in another part of this issue. Bad as the present law is, the new measure would only make confusion worse confounded; and in pointing out its many defects and suggesting amendments the committee have done good service. The final conclusion which they have arrived at after a full study of the bill, is practically that to which we 1 came some weeks ago when dealing generally with its provisions, viz., that the objects the framers of the measure appear to have had in view are to deprive the existing Boards and Trustees of many of their present powers, and much of their usefulness, and to place the supreme control of every institution in the hands of the Minister, who is given power to compel Boards and Trustees to comply with his sweet will by holding over them a threat of stopping the subsidy. There is scarcely a salient feature of the bill to which exception has not been taken by the committee, and their criticism has been fully endorsed by thi Board. A conference of delegates from all the Hospital Boards and Charitable Aid Trustees .! in the dominion is to be held in Wei- I lington during the first week in June to deal with the bill, and it is to be ' hoped that this measure, which is j

little short of in ; quitious in some of its features, will be set aside in j favour of something that will really j meet the necessities of the case, while at the same time leaving the | control of district expenditure in the hands of those who contribute towards the support of thdir own sick and poor. The committee aver that "the only possible way to secure economy would be to cast all the expenditure upon the contributing looal authorities—both in respect of hospitals and the distribution of charitable aid. Each nistrict should take charge of its own sick, and relieve its own poor. Every district could easily distribute its own aid, while those districts which are not financially, or otherwise, strong enough to support hospitals of their own, could send their cases to such hospital as they thought proper, and pay for their treatment and maintenance at a schedule rate." This is a suggestion which if brought before the general conference ought to receive able consideration. I