SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1899. THE PREMIER'S PERVERSION.

Evening Post, Volume LVII, Issue 112, 13 May 1899, Page 4

SATURDAY, MAY 13, 1899. THE PREMIER'S PERVERSION.

No wonder , the Premier is enraged with the Auditor-General ! That officer has ac tually dared to fulfil his duty, at the risk of reminding Mr. Seddon of an amusing comedy in which llie Right Honourable gentleman played a very sorry part last session. It is quite in accord with the naturo of tilings that the " uncrowned king " of New Zealand should resent, as all monarohs do, any effectivo supervision of his accounts. It frets his masterful soul that any servant of the State should have been so lost to respect for its ruler as to consider the law before the Premier It is apparently beyond Mr. Seddon's conception Ujal a man in a responsible posi tion could be so foolish as to do his duty simuly because it was his duty Hence lie hurls at the Auditor-General charges of partisanship, and of attacks upon tho Administration. What is the use of having an Auditor-General, or any other such statutory officer, unless he car riot 1 . ouL his supervising work in strict obe dionce to law and in complex 'I & regard

of persons? Once ayam the Premier, as Colonial Treasurer, has sought to act illegally, to sat his own actions above Parliament and Constitution ; but, fortunately for the welfare of the colony, ho has found that there is a check to the exercise of his .arbitrary will. He is naturally veuy angry, and in his customary Avay tries to attach opprobious epithets to tho public officer who has been rash enough to beard him. What are the facts of the case? The story goes back to the stormy debates last session upon the Premier's invidious attempts to undermine our national system of education. The Technical Bill of the previous session was hung up in consequence of Mr. Seddon's refusal to remove from it all taint of denominationalism. Ilis conduct in connection with the Bill aroused the suspicions of those members who aro anxious to safeguard the secular system that has worked so well. Among the items on the Estimates for the current financial year was one of £25,000 for technical schools, buildings, apparatus, etc. In the cour.se of a long debate in Committee of Supply, ineffectual efforts were made to obtain from the Premier a promise that none of this monoy should be allocated to schools other than those under the control of Education Boards. At last, Mr. Seddon, in what appeared to be a fit of pique, suggested that the controversy should be ended by striking out the vole altogether. As the Hou.se failed to obtain a satisfactory assurance against the grant being used for denominational purposes, Mr. Montgomery, the member for Ellesmere, moved tha.l?, the item be struck out, and the motion was carried by one vote, Mr. Seddon himself voting with the majority. During the period that had elapsed between the ,close of the 1897-98 financial year and the passage of the Estimates, the Government had made two grants — one of £1500 to the Wellington Technical bchool and the other of £911 to Dunodin. The first of these sums was issued under section 3 of the Public Revenues Act, Amendment Act 1896, and therefore required to be included in the Estimates and Accounts for the year, and embodied in the Appropriation Act. This was not done, probably because the Premier was afraid to face Parliament on the question after his previous action in respect of Technical Education. The grant, as issued, was therefore never validated, and the Auditor- ■"* oneral would have been remiss in his if he had not called the attention of Parliament to the subject. As for die Dunedin grant, that was issued under the authority of Imprest Supply, but was not sanctioned specifically by Parliament, as required, during the session when the Imprest Supply was passed. In short, both grants, desirable and proper in themselves, were not made under the authority of Parliament. The Premier exercised in the matter an illegal extension of power, and arrogated to himself functions which free nations always reserve to their representative assemblies. Was the Audi-tor-General acting as a "partisan" in emphasising the wrongfulness of such procedure? Was he not rather performing the proper functions of his office', and duly safeguarding the rights of tho taxpayer? yVhat is the Premier's defence — in addition to his unseemly onslaught upon the personal character of the Auditor-General? He says that Mr. Warburton should have known that he, the Premier, had taken Parliament into his confidence with reference to the two grants in question, and should therefore have passed the Public Accounts without the "tag" which has revealed the true character of Mr. Seddon's financial operations. We can see no obligation upon the AuditorGeneral to act wrongly simply because the Premier had informed Parliament of his own wrong-doings. If Parliament had expressly condoned the Premier's action it would have been another matter. Mr. Seddon gave the House no opportunity of doing so, he refused point blank to place auy technical education grants upon the Supplementary Estimates, and it was his own vote that turned the, scale in striking out the item from the original Estimates. But we would go even further, and point out that there was every, reason for Mr. Warburton's not knowing that the Premier had so far taken Parliament into his confidence. During the debate which culminated in striking out the Technical Schools grant oi £25,000, the Premier carefully refrained from mentioning the fact that he had dlready paid out the two grants to Wellington and Dunedin. It was not until the next day — that is, after the item was struck out, not before, as he wrongly stated at Masterton — that Mr. Seddon said, in reference to certain new olauses he proposed to introduce into the Technical Education Bill, "I might say that £1500 has been paid to the Wellington Technical School, and £911 for Dunedin." This hardly seems like taking Parliament into his \ confidence betore the Technical School .grant was struck out. But still, such inaccuracies on Mr. Seddon's part are too frequent to excite more than passing notice. Few intelligent electors can acoept his statements without careful verification. The episode is not creditable to the Premier. By his own vote ho invalidated certain grants he had already made, he then refused to give Parliament an opportunity of discussing and approving those grants, and finally, when the Auditor-General, in pursuance of his duty, objected to this unconstitutional procedure, Mr. Seddon turned round and abused him. The whole and sole cause ot the trouble is Mr. Seddon's determination to penalise the friends of technical education, unless they consent to denominational subsidies.