NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 251, 17 July 1920, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

In this country tho deputation nuisance is a natural outcome of conditions in which Parliament and the Government are loaded down with detail duties which they cannot handle in any effective way, and which ought to bo relegated to subordinate authorities. The amount of time that Ministers aro required to give up to deputations interferes, however, to such a serious extent with their more important duties that it i? obviously necessary to find sonio remedy. Ministers in these strenuous days, and especially those Ministers who are constantly being approached by deputations, are overtaxed in any case, and if they are required day by day to /C\v and answer representations on a';l iftts of important and unimportant subjects, the efficient performance of their essential duties becomes a physical impossibility. It is bad business for tho country as we.ll as unfair to hard-work-ing Ministers to allow'such conditions to continue' and develop. Since it i» unlikely to yield to gentler treatment, the deputation habi; would no doubt bo dealt with most effectively ■by hard and fast regulation. One step in the right direction would, be to copy British practice by insisting that all deputations concerned with purely local mutters must bo content to interview their local member instead of a Minister. *' * * *

Mr. Massey is wise in his decision to unload as muck as possible of the work of receiving deputations on to other Ministers There are ether directions also in -which the Prime Minister could vory well ask other members of the Cabinet to relievo him of some of his burdens. Th« ideal Cabinet organisation would be for the head of the Government to be free from routine Departmental duties and with leisure to devote himself to tile development of the national policy as a whole. Human endurance can only get through a certain amount of work in the twenty-four hours, and with our Prime Minister overloaded with the day-to-day immediate calls of Departmental control that cannot wait, the tendency always has been for tho larger aspects of policy to be pushed relatively into the background and considered at disjointed intervals and necessarily often when the mind is jaded after the daily press of business. The result has been seen throughout our political history in tho dispersal of effort over' a multiplicity of objects, and the resultant slowness in progress of all.

'» * * * One or two Canterbury members who interviewed tho Minister of Public Works tho other day found themselves unablo to agree about the relative importance of different railways in the provincial district from which they hail. Such incidents emphasise the necessity of establishing some rational and systematic method of determining and dealing with the claims of compoting works. Of the two railways whose merits were debatedon the occasion in question, one must be more imporiant than the other, and economical and efficient public works methods will only bo feasible when such questions aro fairly examined and definitely settled. The gain to a given locality which secures an allocation of public money that might be spent to belter advantage elsewhere is problematical. The loss to the country in general as a result of such methods is enormous. This loss, of course, everywhere completely overshadows tho transitory benefits that are gained in some places by a policy of eager asking, adopted without regard to the broad merits of the case.

The Government ought to .have littlo hesitation in acting on the suggestion of the Hon. G. M., Thomson that it should

"inaugurate , without delay a definito policy for tho development of tho fishing industry . . . lii order to provide a supply of cheap food for tho people and manure for the land, and in order, also, to build up a fishing population on which the Navy might rely in case of emergency." Parliament took an initial step in this direction last jear when it passed the Fishing Industry Promotion Act, which allocates a sum not exceeding £25,000 per annum to be disbursed in loans for tho establishment of fish storing or preserving plants, the purchaso of boats and equipment, etc. Some increase in this allocation may be advisable, but there is little doubt 1 that it Is open to the Dominion to secure a great expansion of its fishing industry without milking any very heavy financial outlay, oven temporarily. At all events, it would lie well worth while to instruct the immigration authorities to make it widely known throughout fishing communities in Great Britain that although

the coastal wa'-ors of the Dominion teem with fish the tables of it 6 people ar« veil' poorly supplies with this excellent food—in other words that thero ar« splendid openings in this country for enterprising fishermen. Although tht> fisher folk of the United Kingdom are tit a conservative tendency, a fair proportion would no doubt bo induced to emigrate. Some, very probably, would bring their own capital. Organising their industry on lines somewhat similar to those followed by dairy farmers, and with a measure of assistance from the Government in the shape of advances, such immigrants would speedily attain a position of settled prosperity. Apart from tho gain in hardy population, tho Dominion would thus obtain better and cheaper supplies of fish and of the !syproducts of the fishing industry.

It is nofc,.unnatural that the Yorkshire manufacturers should express concern at the Australian scheme for manufacturing Australian wool into cloth before export. Vested interests in Yorkshire will bo adversely affected by this step, but it is one that was bound to come in lime. The long-headed North Country manufacturers have recently been rf/ported as cannily buying up wooller. factories on the Continent to tako advantage of the favourable exchange rates and facilities for cheaper production, and they may be relied upon as being quite shrewd enough to realise that the oversea Dominions will not always export raw wool to Yorkshire and buy it back again in woollen goods. Altered wage levels in Britain have removed a principal handicap to local manufacture in Australia and New Zealand. Already in New Zealand we have new woollen mills projected, and existing ones have largo extension schemes. Possibly if local enterprise 13 not capable of filling the whole field, it would not need a great deal of encouragement to bring some of the more enterprising Yorkshire houses to the point of carrying out their operations on New Zealand wool in New' Zealand, instead of thirteen thousand miles away.

Mr. Coates is asking for some one to tell him of a system to take the place of toll-gates. The Dominion' has betni doing its best for some timo past to urge that what New Zealand requires is not an eruption of toll-gates on its roads, but a Main Roads Board and a motortax, or, to be precise, a tax on motorcar U6ers on some equitable basis. With the general introduction of modern methods of road construction' that would follow unden the supervision of a Main Roads Board and the revenue that would accrue from motor taxation, we should soon have a vast improvement in our roads that not even toll-gates to every mile of them would bring about. This is tho line on which Britain haa solved .her roads policy. Victoria adopted the principle, and now has tho best roads in Australia. In Now South Wales the new Minister of Local Government is imitating the Victorian scheme, which fact represents a sound testimonial from nn adjacent State. It is depressing to fiud so usually enterprising a Minister as Mr. Coates still seeking in vain for some substitute for that Burvival from tho dark ages of postillions, post chaises and highwaymen, tho toll-gate.

| What should a father aim at in tho preparation of his children for the battle of life? This question is suggested by the directions for the education of his sons embodied in the will of the late Dr. Morrison, Political Adviser to the liepublic of China. Dr. Morrison was nn Australian, the son of a distinguished schoolmaster. After an adventurous and daring youth he adopted journalism as his profession, and became the leading authoritative source of information on China for British newspaper readers. He has lived detached from Ins countrymen in the Fnr East throughout tho greater part of his life, in contact, however, with men of distinction of all. nationalities. ,His views on education should bo unbiased, and tho programme ho outlines for his sons is—an English public school, -Oxford, a later course nt M'Gill University or Harvard, and n final course at a European university. This means that first of all he desires his sons to be passed through the English mould, that, whatever its- defects, docs above all things turn out courageous and -upright gentlemen—that gives England her solid backing of character, and tradition. But much as Dr. Morrison might admire these characteristics of English education, he evidently desired above,all things for his boys a breadthi of outlook unknown to those who see life only from one unchanging angle. After England the New World, and after the New World the Old. ' Few fathers have the means to educate their sons on this Scale, but. the Morrison programme has a lesson for all.