MINISTERIAL MISTAKES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXV, Issue 10713, 5 September 1913, Page 4

MINISTERIAL MISTAKES.

Most people will agree that the Hon. James Allen made a mistake in ap-. pointing Mr Boyd Garlick as Physical Instructor without inviting applications for the position. • They will also agree that the Hon. F. M. B. Fisher made a mistake in appointing Mr Simpson to the Westport Harbour Board without, making sufficient inquiry as to his past career. But, after all, these are only trivial mistakes that can have no harmful effect upon the* dominion. The Opposition is quite entitled to draw attention to these matters. It is, however, rendering itself ridiculous by striving to make party capital out of every littleerror in judgment on the part of Ministers. - Did the Continuous Ministry never make mistakes? Was not the whole twenty years of its existence characterised by patronage of the, most objectionable form ? It comes in very bad grace from a party with a record such as that of the "Liberals" to be continually magnifying the faults of others.' We can never hope to get a Government which is infallible. But we may, we think, expect a few less administrative "c dais" from the Reform Party than have blackened the pages of Dominion history during the past couple of decades-.