MINISTERIAL CONGESTION

Evening Post, Volume C, Issue 23, 27 July 1920, Page 6

MINISTERIAL CONGESTION

On lOtb July the Prime Minister was requested to receive a deputation of the Building Trades Federation and certain employers on a proposal for their joint co-operation, along with the Government, in a scheme for building in Wellington 500 dwellings in permanent materials. On 12th July Mr. Massey replied that pressure of work made it " quite impossible " for him to appoint an early interview, and suggesting instead a deputation to Sir William Herries as Minister for Labour. Next day, in a letter to the Prime Minister, the request was renewed, emphasis being placed on the fact that the project was even more a finance than ? labour matter, and that the deputation would like to see Mr. Massey as Minister for Finance. Three days later Mr. Massey wrote repeating the impossibility of his, receiving a deputation,* and stating that an . interview had been arranged with Sir William Herries. This incident strongly reinforces the argument for less overloading of Ministers with portfolios arid less of the deputation craze, which evidently leads to smaller things crowding out greater 5 for it is difficult to see how the Prime Minister could possibly have had before him any business more important than a concrete agreement between employer and employee for the building of five hundred permanent houses. Economically, industrially, and socially, this movement, if it succeeds, will be a landmark. And as the spade-work has been done not; by the Government but by the employers and the employees, the least the Government could do was to speed the negotiar tions by lending an attentive ear at the required moment. That a really big project should be delayed by matters relatively unimportant seems to be one more proof of the wasteful inefficiency ov the political machine.