Evening Post.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 71, 20 September 1912, Page 6

Evening Post.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1912. THE PUBLIC SERVICE The Opposition goes steadily from bad to worse. The Public Service Bill provided its supporters with an excellent opportunity for dealing with a great national question on non-party lines. After the introduction of the Bill had been followed by the report -of the Public Service Commission — a Commission appointed by the Mackenzie Government — which concurred in all essential points with the policy of the Bill, this attitude should have been a comparatively easy one for the party to adopt. It would have been particularly «asy on the second reading of the Bill, when it is principles and not details that are the chief concern. Not merely was the chance missed, but the best possible use was made of the occasion to add to the load of discredit under which the party already laboured. The Bill was attacked with a violence of invective that was even more ludicrous than it was disgusting. If the Government had been a band of political robbers invading the sacred precincts of honesty and efficiency * there would have been some foundation for this lurid rhetoric. But, as everybody knows, the case is exactly the opposite. The Government's Public Service Bill seeks to exclude the political robber, whether of their own colour or of any other, from the public offices; and as the measure will operate in the first instance to reduce their own opportunities for maladministration, Ministers should at least be credited by an honourable opponent with motives thai are above suspicion. Any such magnanimity as this has, however, been entirely absent from the Opposition's criticism. A measure which should have been kept on a plane far above party bickering was assailed on the second reading with all the abuse that the party could command, and the perversity which thus made the Opposition a spirited and united party for the first time this session was carried still further when the Bill was in committee yesterday. The rhetoric was, perhaps, less lurid, but the antagonism to the Bill was just as bitter, and there was the same utter lack of statesmanship on the main line of attack. Nothing paltrier than the attempt of the Oppositionists to exclude the Post and Telegraph Department from the scope of the Bill, or the arguments by which they supported it, could well be imagined. Their main object doubtless was to wreck the Bill by the exclusion of a Department without which the Bill would not have been worth proceeding with. Their principal argument was that a large number oj the employees in this Department desired to be excluded. Has democratic statesmanship come to this— that it must test a great measure of reform by the opposition of a small section whose special privileges may be injuriously affected, and not by its effect upon the general interests of the whole community? Wo urged yesterday that the Minister of Justice was showing himself too complaisant in his desire to meet the wishes of the Post and Telegraph officers, but it is satisfactory to find that his concessions have reached their limit. On this point the combined firmness and patience of the Minister's attitude yesterday will, we are sure, command general approval. He had considered »11 tho m»dn by the ofof. tba flepajftmeat, ho bad iaUo<

duced a number of amendments to meet them, but he could go no further, and he would drop the Bill rather than see the Department excluded. The Minister even ventured to remind members that they were elected to represent the interests of the public, but had discussed the Bill from the standpoint of the interests of a single Department. Members hailing from Christchurch stood in particular need of this reminder. Their frantic efforts in opposition to the Bill suggest a new derivation for the word "wire-pulling." Wire-pulling, as they practise it, consists in wiring messages to a few constituents, selected as representing a special interest, and in producing their wired replies thus spontaneously given as representing the voice of the people. It is a pleasure to see that Mr. Myers dissociated himself from tactics and arguments of this pettifogging description. He expressed the opinion that whatever the effect of the Bill might be it would be wrong to exclude the Post and Telegraph Department from its scope, and that too much attention had been paid to the opinions of the officers of the Department. Mr. Myers also considered that, even the Railway Department " should not have been excluded from the Bill. The Opposition would stand far higher in the public estimation to-day if it could share the breadth of view of the member for Auckland East.