COSTLY RETURNS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9174, 25 August 1908, Page 4

COSTLY RETURNS.

The refusal of the Attorney-General to furnish the return asked for by the Hon. J. T. Paul relating to the amount of money annually spent on the lease of premises for Government offices in the four chief centres was productive of at least one outspoken utterance. Every session all sorts of possible and impossible returns are asked for. Some of them concern the veriest trifles; others, owing to their complexity, are incapable of being made without a great deal of expenditure and time to very little purpose. The Hon. 0. Samuel, in general reference to the returns furnished to Parliament, said in the Legislative Council that many of them were absolutely purposeless. It was not only a question of cost of preparation and printing, but the dislocation of office work, and the delay thereby occasioned in the carrying 4l out of essential service. He knew of cases where officers engaged in the preparation of plans and maps for such things as roads had to put aside their work in order that some return rpight be furnished. "We have in the past," he said, "been too ready

in asking for these returns, and the Government have not been ready enough in opposing them."