The Press. FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1909. THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 13377, 19 March 1909, Page 6

The Press. FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1909. THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

The figures we publish in this issue regarding the growth of the departments of the public service in personnel and expenditure, deserve the most carefuj consideration of every taxpayer. They set forth in the clearest possible manner the state of things against which, the Opposition has inveighed for years past—a condition of things -which only a Government more concerned aßout patronage than economy and a public whom prosperity had rendered indifferent, would hnvo permitted to arise and to continue for 8- number of years. Every Opposition member, every Opposition paper, has declared time after time that the Government administration was marked by the grossest extravagance and that the day must come when, if retrenchment were not voluntarily undertaken, it would be forced upon the country by circumstances which would permit of no alternative policy. For ten years the country has been canving an annually increasing burden of official expenditure. Department has been added to Department, officials have been multiplied beyond all reason, and with them has come an enormous increase in. the cost of government, until at last the Government themselves have become frightened and, unless all indications are false, have come to the conclusion that retrenchment can no longer be delayed. We admit, of course, that the administrative, expenditure of a growing country, in which the work of development has been going on steadily and must continue, cannot remain at one level. As population increases there is an inevitable increase in the annual cost of government. The progress of settlement involves an extension, on the part of almost every Department of the State, of the duties and responsibilities which every well-organised State must undertake. But making all duo allowance for the growth in expenditure rendered necessary by the growth of the Dominion, thero is no excuse for the way in which it hoe been piled up year after year. Practically every branch of tho service, big or little, shows the effect of the spendthrift policy that has been pursued during the last decade. Whatever valid excuse may be made for the additions to the staffs and salary lists of the Post and Telegraph Department, the Agricultural Department, Prisons, Police, Railways, and others—and these undoubtedly are affected by the growth of the Dominion —it is difficult to Believe t that any' excuse, valid or otherwise, can be made for the advance in cost of the Printing Office, three tunes what it was ten years ago, of the head office of tho Education Department, more than three times greater, of the Electoral Department, which has risen from £600 to over £3000, of the Labour Department, which now employs eeventy-five officers as against twenty-nine, and pays them over £11,000, instead of the £2200 that sufficed ten years ago. One result of the Government's experiments in State Socialism is seen in the number of de-

partmental officers employed and the salaries paid to them, in Departments that did not exist in 1898. The individual amounts may so{ be great, but they all help to swell a total which is far beyond what the Xew Zealand taxpayer ought to be compelled to pay.

It seems to be accepted that the Government intends to prune New Zealand's overgrown "Pagoda tree." Retrenchment is apparently to take the form of amalgamation of Departments, and the proposals of the Government in this direction have already been indicated with a degree of precision which tho Premier is not prepared to endorse. If, however, the Government have not yet decided on their action, the theories put forward by tho "Wellington papers sound like a very intelligent anticipation of coming events, and in denying their accuracy, as ho did yesterday, Sir Joseph must have forgotten that two nights previously, in his speech at Marton, he announced that the Tourist Department was to be made a branch of another Department. All the changes that have been indicated could be made, we believe, without any loss of efficiency, and with great advantage to the taxpayer. If the Government's apparent conversion proves to be genuine, tardy though it is, it will be most welcome, and Mr Massey and his followers, who have striven so hard for retrenchment and reform, will have reason once more to congratulate themselves on the Government's adoption of the policy which the Opposition have so long advocated.