Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1921. GOOD RESOLUTIONS

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 51, 1 March 1921, Page 6

Evening Post. TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 1921. GOOD RESOLUTIONS

The Minister of Public Works, Mr. Coates, began his career by announcing, in the Parliamentary arena, a policy of concentration of effort on lines of effici-ency-cum-economy. He has now followed up, in' the administrative sphere, with a policy of departmental re-organisation. Whether his'reorganising effort will succeed remains to be proved—and t3ie same remark applies tojm ideal of concentration—but he hag abeady definitely established one pdint, and it is no mean point: he has shown a desire to take the public into his confidence in the matter of principles of organisation, to disclose his opinions and aims, and to provide the people with, ilhnnq|pting sidelights on the methods of one of their greatest spending and constructive departments. Bnreaocr*cy has a fatal tendency not only to raMape, but to a silence that is complementary to red-tape, and the purpose of which is to hide the faults of red-ta.pe. The attitude of bureaucracy mn-to-seed is always oracular; and to make the figure talk and reveal itself is the first step towards correcting its faults. This revelation of the workings of a public service to its public masters is peculiarly the duty of the Minister in charge, for he is less bound than are permanent officials by muffling regulations. It is the Minister's privilege and duty to be the interpreter of his department to the people who pay the bill, and who have a right to know, to a reasonable degree, what is being done and how it is being done. How can a department expect to receive the valuable support of a sympathetic public opinion unless it explains itself to the public?

For years now such interpretation has been a dead-letter, and Mr. Coates's departure might well be copied by some of his colleagues, including the Prime Minister. From time to time The Post has had occasion to criticise the Railways Department and the Public Works Department. It desires, and has always desired, that its criticism should be constructive. And it would like to have sufficient data to make every criticism complete, and to praise as well as blame. But for some years past the ostrich-like tactics of Ministers and departmental beads—with i certain exceptions—have made criticism difficult and appreciation uncertain, and have sacrificed repeated opportunities for creating an informed and probably favourable public opinion. We hope that Mr. Coates will succeed in cutting the knot. Perhaps the Government as a whole 1 will find in this connection mnch help from its new publicity organisation; so that, ultimately, the work not only of the Public Works Department, but of, other constructive departments, may—to use Mr. Coates's phrase—" be brought more into touch with the man in the street."

The conference of Public Works Department engineers which Mr. Coates opened yesterday to assist him in his reorganisation—and which he wisely used as an occasion for providing the people with the valuable information published in. yesterday's issue—has an order of reference so wide and so important that several articles would not exhaust it. Equally important with internal reorganisation of the Public Works Department is the* co-operation of the Department with the local bodies and the co-ordina-tion of their respective activities. When confronted with grave under-spending of public works votes allocated to the southern part of the North Island—an underspending shown by the CenWal Progress League's figures, compiled by Mr. Mitchell, to be comparatively much worse in the South than in the North— the Minister replied by blaming the local bodies. As the local bodies collectively are generally inarticulate—if there is a Counties Association, or a Municipal Association, their executives are seldom or never heard from—the Minister <had a walk-over. But does not the conference provide him with an occasion for showing specifically the defaults of the local bodies, for indicating generally the weakness of the system, and for offering a definite scheme calculated to secure a real co-operation between the Public Works Department and the local bodies, and to eliminate "dud" votes? Constructive— and instructive^—criticism, whether applied to departments or to local bodies, is generally useful; at the least, it provides a safety valve, and is far preferable to the common departmental plan of shutting up "like an oyster or of sitting tight behind an unproved generalisation. As usual, departmental reorganisation raises the centralisation v. decentralisation issue. 'The Minister states that he is not a slave to Head Office opinion, and ho goes some distance towards proving his claim by the encouragement he gives to decentralisation methods, and by the value which he places on district engineers' initiative. Much might be written on this point, but the value of decentralisation is demonstrable in deeds rather than in words. In two distinct departments, with differing needs and different personal factors, an identical constitution might produce opposite results. We like Mr. Coatea's candid way of focussing the issues and of setting out his tentative policy* and we hope that he will succeed in "getting things done. Though tentative, his reorganisation policy Is much more definite'than his public communications on " concentrnfcteoi" A t?mt) deal mat* IntottpttUng veaftins to he done.