NON-POLITICAL ADVICE

Evening Post, Volume XCIV, Issue 27, 1 August 1917, Page 6

NON-POLITICAL ADVICE

We are glad that the Government has seen its way to give publicity Jo the reports of the National Efficiency Board; and we hope that it will apply the same principle to the repor.ts of the Board of Trade. No one expects all these reports to be entirely practicable in the political field, but the public has certainly a right to be allowed the opportunity to form an economic judgment on their merits and demerits, and to arrive at a political opinion, of its own as to how far the Government was justified in accepting or rejecting the advice tendered. A closelyreasoned report has an educative value, even, if the public—or a majority of itdiffers from the conclusion of the advising body; and as, according to Mr. Cradgie, New Zealand is 1 stronger and sounder outside than inside the walls of Parliament, a well-founded puhlic opinion is useful to legislation, even if it is occasionally embarrassing to legislators. As to the possibility of putting a statutory body "in the position of the Government of the country," the public suffers from no near-sightedness in that matter. It knows that a board of experts, acting on purely economic lines and free from political disabilities, occasionally gives advice that a Government^ is politically unable to accept. But the public also knovra that political disabilities are very easily exaggerated, and it naturally desires to form its own conclusion as to whether the advice given by the Board of Efficiency is practicable from the Parliamentary'as well as the economic standpoint. Into the extensive recommendations of the Board on a variety of subjects, which require careful deliberation, we are not at present prepared to go. The main point at the moment is that the publication of the reports tends, so far as this particular body is concerned, to .discount the impression that the advice of Boards like those of Efficiency, Trade, and Agriculture is intended merely to be used when it suits, and to be suppressed when it does not. A nominated . body leading a shadowy existence in the political background does not increase public confidence.