The Dominion. FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1909. RETRENCHMENT IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 472, 2 April 1909, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, APRIL 2, 1909. RETRENCHMENT IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE.

When he speaks at Upper Hutt tonight, it is understood, the Prime Minister Will make an important statement with reference to the poliey of retrenchment which the misgovernment of the country during the past dozen years has rendered necessary. Ever since the first hint of retrenchment was thrown out by the Prime Minister there has been much anxious discussion of the situation in Civil Service circles, and the unrest and anxiety have been intensified by the growing conviction that the Government's plans embrace much more than the retirement of officials who have passed the age limit. Keports have reached us, indeed, of a character strongly suggestive . of something like demoralisation in the s Departmental offices, arising out of a " general uncertainty as to whose turn for o dismissal is to come next. The Prime - Minister will probably supply in his | speech to-night some grounds for this unrest. The Government, it is understood, 2 contemplates a general reduction of the " Departmental staffs, coupled with the roil arrangement of tho service in a much - smaller number of Departments, as was a forecasted in The Dominion some time - ago. There is reason to believe that the Government is meeting the position created by the follies and waste and abuses of the Liberal regime in anything ,r but a calm and far-seeing spirit. Some 0 of its decisions in respect of the retired 0 officials have borne evidences of haste, if not panic. We should bo the last to maintain that there is no need for retrenchment, and J9 retrenchment of a deep-cutting character, T in the public service. The service is enormously over-staffed and over-stuffed, and is costing the country anything up to .j half-a-million a year more than can be - justified. But while the national interest I. requires that the cost of government shall be reduced to a normal figure, the national interest requires also that tho rc- |(] duction shall be brought about along safe and proper linos. If the Government intends to cut the service down by one «_ stroke of tho sword, it has determined upon the worst possible way of meeting the position. If, in addition, it intends, in re-arranging and grouping the Departments, to make one official do the so work of two wherever possible, it is aiinn" ing a blow at the efficiency of the scr--01 vice. In short, a groat deal of harm will

result if the policy of retrenchment is to mean a sudden rush from one extreme to the other. Even if a sudden order of wholesale dismissals did not impair, temporarily but seriously, the efficiency of the work of the Departments, the Government has no right to cause the manifold hardships that such a policy would entail. Retrenchment there must be; but not precipitate and panicky retrenchment. The wise policy will aim at bringing about the desired end with a minimum of disturbance and hardship. The times arc not good; the community is not so buoyant that it can sustain any large burden of dismissed State officials. We are not recommending "caution," as caution is generally understood when used in a case like the present one. There must be no hesitation or delay in making a beginning with the retrenchment that the Government's own misdeeds have forced upon it, but equally there must bo no blind haste in a panic-strickcn desire to reach normality all at once. A word is necessary upon a feature of the situation which would make specially discreditable any ruthless and violent action by the Government. The disease to ba cured is a disease of Liberalism's own making. If the present Government and its predecessor had not freely used the public service as a machine for the bestowal of rewards upon their friends, the present necessity for retrenchment would not exist. Sooner or later the existing situation was bound to arrive, but the Government has put off dealing with the matter until it is driven ilito action by the public's uneasiness and the pinch of circumstance. Until November last the Government and its friends denied that there were any abuses calling for remedy; the elections over, they began to talk freely and shamelessly of the ' necessity for removing the very abuses the existence of which they had denied up to the day of the poll. The Government, therefore, cannot avoid the charge that its policy of retrenchment is a vote of censure upon its own past. The discharged Civil Servants can fairly be regarded as the victims of Liberalism's cynical indifference to principle and to political honesty. The service has been used to the utmost to keep the Liberal party in" power. ,We can only express the hope that the retrenched officials, over and above those retired on the score of age, will not bt innocent victims of the Government's political misdeeds. For it is possible, and even likely, that a large system of retrenchment may result in the dismissal of others than those whose appointments for party purposes have necessitated the policy which is the most damning exposure possible of the methods of Liberalism and the fullest justification possible of those who for years have been warning the public, in defiance of the fiercest and most intemperate denials by the Ministerialist press, of the waste and corruption upon which Liberalism has been sustained in power.