THE FLOODGATES OF BUREAUCRACY

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 15, 12 October 1927, Page 12

THE FLOODGATES OF BUREAUCRACY

Sir,— Probably the personnel of our Civil Service will bear comparison with any, and probably our Parliament is as free from political chicanery as any. But while the power of bureaucracy is widened year by year, the dangerous thing is that members of Parliament seem more eager to praise the work ol the Departments than they are to either protect themselves or the public. 1 called attention some months back to the wrong action of an officer in the Immigration Department publicly castigating a northern M.P. If correction was necessary, the Minister, or any M.P. or any member of the public, other than a Civil servant, could have dealt with him. Io permit a departmental officer, protected as he is from the competition of ordinary life, to publicly attack a people s representative, is an assumption of a power too dangerous to. permit. I wish’now to deal with an injustice of the Railway Department, which bir Joseph Ward mildly hoped would be coireefed. From a paragraph in your paper, it would appear that the Railway' Department is using the precedent ot their pressure on tho bus companies plying between Hastings ana Napier, to sell their established businesses without a penny of goodwill, to exact the same harsh terms in other harsh terms in other places. Personally; I never inquired, and did not know, who wore shareholders in the Hastings-Napier Checker Bus Company. I did take public exception to tho way that company was squeezed out. Before the advent of the bus service, the wretched provision made lor the public who wished to travel to Napier by train, was repeatedly stressed by Uie Hastings Chamber of Commerce. On Wednesday half-holiday. Scores ot people would be waiting tor the eallv afternoon train. Many times it would be half an hour late. The carriages would vary in their degree of unclennnnoss. Only the Department could tell whether it could not enter, or would not cater, for the traffic. Motor-cars began to supply tho wnnt of decent transit. and shortly after two bus companies supplied the need with a considerable number of vehicles of tho latest standard in comfort. As soon as their enterprise promised to be profitable, the Railway Department threatened opposition unless a. sale was made upon its terms. While there was evident hesitancy on the part of the Checker Bus Company to hand over the business it had built up af considerable cost, notices were appearing in onr newspapers Hint the staff would bo retained by the Railway Department. It looked as though all the Department thought it necessary to do. was to say: “Hand over your business on our terms, and clear out.” If memliers of Parliament are too anxious to make complimentary speeches, it is to be hoped that the Press will do some plain speaking. With the multiplication of boards, the entrusting •of dcnortmotiinl heads with further powers, tho time has surely come to ask what actually doos it cost to govern our little over a million nconle. and if the stringency of the times and tho dwindling authority of Parliament, does not warrant n reduction in the salaries of M.D.'s instead of any increase. —I am etc.. H. R. FRENCH. Hastings. October 6.