The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1944. National Development

Press, Volume LXXX, Issue 24370, 23 September 1944, Page 6

The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1944. National Development

In the discussion over the vote on the Estimates for the Organisation of National Development the Opposition treated the Government and its indistinct policy with great forbearance, and was wise in doing so. The organisation may become all that the Government promises. The lime to test the promise is not yetso far from it, in fact, that on Mr

Fraser’s showing and Mr Sullivan’s the organisation as a whole has not yet come into being. Only one of the two main committees has yet been appointed; none of the ancillary ones has been appointed. Criticism cannot bite on anything so amorphous, and should not try. But there are questions to be asked, and the Opposition asked some of them. The Government should know what it is about and be able to explain; but the Prime Minister’s answers, though careful and obviously sincere, deserved no more than the qualified approval of the member for Remuera, who said, in effect, that he was prepared to wait another year and see. They deserved, perhaps, rather less. The best thing Mr Fraser said was by way of definition: the organisation was to “ co-ordinate, with a minimum of “control, the development of the “ State departments and of indus- “ try ”. This is very like Mr Churchill’s notable statement, early last year, that post-war Britain would need and must generate a great expansion of enterprise, both public and private. It is the essential doctrine, the imperative truth of which discountenances the pointless brawling between the friends or fanatics of private enterprise and the friends or fanatics of socialised enterprise, It is interesting and it is to be hoped it is significant that Mr Churchill, leader of the Conservative Party, and Mr Fraser, leader of New Zealand Labour Party, should agree so closely. But as Mr Fraser went on he produced neither evidence nor ideas to develop this conception of what the O.N.D. can be and is meant to be. For example, he appeared to be trying to explain the primary purpose of the organisation when he said that “ existing State departments, “ if they continued to function with- “ out co-ordination, would some- “ times frustrate each other and “ collide with each other’s activities”. But clearly, however dire the need to bring department and department into close working relations, both in the forming and in the administering of policies, O.N.D. is not the instrument for that. The problem Mr Fraser described is one to be solved by reorganisation within the Cabinet and among the higher officers of the Public Service. Whatever 0.N.D., is, it is not an executive or administrative body. All its proposals pass to the central (official or inter-departmental) committee, from there to the committee of Ministers, and from them to the Cabinet. If O.N.D. is first and foremost a device to improve the machinery of policy making and administration, it is far too elaborate, too indirect, and uncertain. The last three stages of the device are the only ones at which it can begin to become effective; and at those stages no positive and sure improvement is introduced. Second, in this statement of the need for the organisation and of its function the Prime Minister lost sight entirely of the link between public and private enterprise in his constructive definition. To tune the jangling departments is well, and the sooner the Government screws them to concertpitch the better; but this does not touch private enterprise, either in point of its function or in point of the kind and extent of control under which it is to be expanded. Curiously enough, the Opposition did not, ask how the purposes of O.N.D, are to be reconciled with the use of the industrial powers created in the Rehabilitation Act, Part II; nor did the Prime Minister offer any explanation. The want of one, the vagueness of Mr Fraser’s account of 0.N.D., and his and Mr Sullivan’s disclosure that it consists, so far, of half the foundations and some scaffolding are three reasons for suggesting that the Government is making heavy demands on patience.