The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943. WASTE IN THE SERVICES

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 183, 4 August 1943, Page 2

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News The Echo and The Sun. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 4, 1943. WASTE IN THE SERVICES

for the first time, the taxpaying public has reason to be glad that in the Controller and Auditor-General it has one servant who cannot be removed from office by ordinary means, but only upon an address to the Governor-General by both Houses of Parliament. Few other men in this Dominion to-day, however responsible, could have made statements such as he has made in his report on the control of Army, Air Force and Navy stores, without danger of their publication being, by one means or another, suppressed, or, if they were published, of accusations that they were "harmful to the war effort." But it is the persistence of the conditions disclosed by the Auditor-General, and not his disclosure of them, that is harmful to the war effort. His report says that the methods employed by the three Services in checking and accounting for stores are inefficient; it implies that in consequence of the inefficiency much money taxed by or lent to the Government has been wasted and is still being wasted. That this should be said is no new thing. Criticisms of the same kind have been made continually, in private, both by men inside the Services and others outside them, for years past. Of this, and of the fact that the criticism had a sound basis, though sometimes it has been exaggerated, the Government has not been unaware, nor has the House of Representatives; but the Government has failed to act, and the House has failed to force it to act, to remedy the conditions.

In reply to the condemnation it will be said that the danger to this country after Japan entered the war was such that the military administration was over-strained and errors, even large errors, we're unavoidable. This contention has much to justify it, but not enough. Even at the height of the emergency time and energy and money were used •for purposes less essential, if judged even on narrow military grounds, than the establishment of a proper system of accounting for stores. However, it is less the existence than the persistence of the conditions which the Auditor-General has now publicly revealed that is so disturbing. What is to be done to end them? This country, by huge expenditure, of money and effort, and after long and anxious waiting, now has a colossal quantity of defence material of all kinds. The people are entitled to be certain that it will not be allowed to rot and rust and disappear, but will be maintained and preserved in constant readiness for the purposes for which it was supplied. After these disclosures of the Auditor-General the public will have little confidence that this is being, or will be, done. It is incumbent upon the War Cabinet to set up a commission, one of unchallengeable independence and competence, to investigate all the Services and advise it upon the measures needed to end inefficiency and avoidable waste. It should set up the commission now, and it should act upon its advice, without delay, and long before it makes another appeal for a Liberty loan. •