PUBLIC SERVICE CONTROL

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26204, 30 August 1950, Page 8

PUBLIC SERVICE CONTROL

PRESSURE BEING PUT ' ON GOVERNMENT MR J. P. LEWIN’S CHARGE (.Neu? Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON. August 29. An allegation that pressure was being brought to bear on the Government to promulgate legislation empowering tiie Public Service Commission to lorbid political activity of any kind among public servants and to dismiss summarily employees suspected of being “poor security risks.” was made by the president of the New Zealand Public Service Association <Mr J. P. Lewin* at the annual conference’today of the executive council of the association. “It is to be hoped that efforts to press this Government to ta <e these steps will be just as unsuccessful as the efforts mode on the last Government,” said Mr Lewin. “The state of public servants under Government control now is not good.” Admittedly, he said, theie was an inordinately high turnover in the Public Service, and “due to that the morale among the Public Service is not good and the calibre of Public Service officers is deteriorating.” He added: “It must be conceded that the Public Service has fallen from its once proud eminence as a favoured career and is now a workaday machine which unfortunately attracts too many individuals who. after essaying their fortunes in business life outside, are only too glad to hasten into the Public Service.” Mr Lewin said that his remarks were no criticism of the very competent men from industry vho had recently been appointed to Government positions. The explanation of ‘he deteriorating condition of the Public Service lay, he said, in the deteriorating status of public servants. In no other branch of life, in banks, insurance houses, or local bodies, were men being taken from outside to compete with established. trained, and qualified public servants. Yet pressure continued to be applied on the Government to remove what statutory protection public servants had under the Public Service Act. Political Activity Mr Lewin said that other legislation being pressed on the Government was, for example, legislation which would e able the Public Service Commission to forbid political activity of any kind except the recording of a vote by a public servant. Another proposal which was being pressed would enable the commission, on mere suspicion that an officer was not a good security risk, to cut off his career, said Mr Lewin. Those who were anxious to protect New Zealand’s security should watch carefully that, in endeavouring to protect the Dominion from the threat from outside, they did not damage the democracy within, he concluded. Mr J. Eagles (Otago) subsequently gave notice of the following motion: “Owing to the failure of the Government to accept its promised responsibilities to make arbitration and conciliation machinery effective ana generally to implement its promises, this conference places on record its sense of disillusion and loss of confidence in the Government as an employer.” The conference was then closed to the newspapers.