AGE LIMIT AND COMPETENCE.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 250, 21 October 1924, Page 7

AGE LIMIT AND COMPETENCE.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —In the correspondence columns of your issue of Monday, October 13, 1924, appears a letter headed "LeJpsided Government" and signed "Anxious to Know." Your correspondent merely touches the fringe of a garment which is decorated with aspects and matter of a very important and highly contentious nature. A3 a matter of fact, I think the whole subject of age and length of service versus competence or incompetence bristles with many difficulties and anomalies, to say nothing of theories which, when compared with actual practice, disclose extraordinary differences and variations. It may be true that tlie same subject, from an administrative point of view,'' is only capable of collective treatment and con sideration. Be that as it may, however, the position is still left perplexed, and not rendered any less intricate; and, moreover, it affects in some degree or other the whole community. Who are the judges as to the merits resulting from lengthy service or of reaching the age of GO years? Are they old, middleaged, or young persons? Who constitutes them judges? Is the system of compulsory retirement after 40 years' service or on reaching the prescribed age of CO, right, just and equitable, or is it wrong, unjust and inequitable? If such a system is right, just and equitable, why departmentalise by applying it to a section of the State services only? Why not apply it uniformally to the whole of the State services, including the Legislature and the Judicature? As a unit of the community, it seems to rue that a great principle is involved in this particular subject, and, moreover, what may be considered suitable sauce for the goose should be equally applicable to the gander.—l am, etc., J. S. PALMER.