A Dunedin View of the Retrenchment Policy.

Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 31, 8 February 1888, Page 2

A Dunedin View of the Retrenchment Policy.

[Bt Telegraph. J (Our Own Correspondent.) Dunedin, This Dat. In dealing with the retrenchment proposals of the Government, the Herald says :—" Nothing can be more naked and unashamed than Sir Harry Atkinson's present proposals with regard to the Civil servants. Not a clerk, not an officer, not a cadet the less is to work in the big wooden building in Wellington. All the retrenchments that we hear of take place in the other three great centres. Lawyers, land agents, and middlemen of all kinds will reap a rich harvest under the new system. All administrative control over our lands will be removed from their immediate neighbourhood to Wellington, and the removal will render necessary a whole army of wire pullers, whose professional skill will be imperatively required to carry out the simplest possible desire. We are not talking of imaginary difficulties that may arise, because everybody knows very well that by the removal of the Chief Commissioners of Land from Auckland, Chriatchurch, and Dunedin a vast increase of authority will be given to the central department in Wellington. In each department of the State the retrenchment policy now being vigorously carried on will reßult in the transference of real power which will gravitate surely and steadily towards Wellington alone.