Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922. NON-POLITICAL CONTROL

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 144, 21 June 1922, Page 6

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922. NON-POLITICAL CONTROL

The Reform Party has now been nearly ten years in office, and is about to face its third General Election since its long term in Opposition was brought to an end by a narrow majority as the result, of the General Election of 1911./ 11l luck had persistently dogged the footsteps of the party before that date, but it 'has had no reason to complain during the last ten years. The party has'had ample compensation for its previous misfortunes. The bad luck has been .transferred to the anti-Reform forces, whose divisions not merely brought the party into power but, by continuing and extending, have kept it there. But the Reform Government has had merit as well as luck to keep it going./ The very name of the party was at first ridiculed even more heartily than that elaborate, polysyllabic, and uninspiring title which has recently been adopted by the present Opposition. What right had those who for twenty years had been blocking the great reform programme of the Liberal and Labour alliance to call themselves a Reform Party? Yet it was with a genuine programme of reform that the then Opposition faced the electors in 1911, and about threefourths of it was directed at abuses which had. been developed under the long regjme of their opponents. The principal items in that programme were the concession of the right of purchase to Crown tenants, the reform of the Legislative Council, and the emancipation of both the Public Service and the Public Works administration frbm political control.

In this very solid programme of reform the only item that could be said to savour of reaction was the first. The wide extension of the Crown tenant's facilities for dbtaining the freehold was a^reversal of one of the traditional principles of Liberal land policy, but the Liberals themselves had violated /the principle so freely, and were so divided in their attitude to the Government's policy, that its success was inevitable. The most fundamental reform of all—the decentralising of the Public Works administration— appears to have been hardly given a serious thought throughout the ten years. The other two items id the Reform programme were promptly tackled. Against the opposition of the Liberals and the Legislative Council, a Bill making the', Council elective.was passed, but as a term of the party truce which brought the National Government into being during the war its operation was postponed. Nearly three years after the termination of the truce this state of suspended animation still continues, and whether arid when this condition is to cease are questions on which presumably some light will be thrown during the coming session. With. Sir Francis Bell—the only Minister who has shown" any enthusiasm in support of the measure—absent from New Zealand its prospects are not bright. . The last of the reform measures on which, the Government came into power reached the Statutei book during "its first session. The ( Public Service Act. of 1912 established the principle of which Mr. A. L. (now Mr. Justice) Herdman had been the leading exponent. So grossly had Ministerial patronage been abused that the country was glad to see. the control of a large j part of the Public Service placed I -jn the hands of Commissioners who, by their tenure of office and the pettaltiej) imposed mi political inLeiiertince, wer,e> made indepeadeiii; |

of the Government. The weakness of the measure was the limitation of its scope. Large parts of the Service—the Railway Department, for instance —were excluded from its 'operation/ It was a disappointment to the genuine reformers, among whom Mr. Herdman himself was to be included, but it seemed certain that, after it had been tested by experience, so excellent a principle was bound to win its way to a wider field. Despite the complaints of politicians whose perquisites were interfered with, and of some others, the general success of the experiment was undoubted. The success was so clear that, before the Coalition had ran its course, Liberals who had opposed the passing of the measure testified to the excellent results of its operation, and it was not made a party question at the last General Election.

But, while the' principle of nonpolitical control was thus making new friends; the zeal of its old friends seemed to cool with the disappearance of Mr. Herdman from politics.* Instead of extending the principle, the National Government gave it a grievous blow in 1918 by excluding the Post and Telegraph Department from 'the Commissioner's control. As the annual report of the Public Service Association reminds us, another blow of the same kind was attempted by the present Government in regard to' the appointment of District Public Trustees. "If the Government had persisted," says the report, " it' would have undermined the | principles in the Public Service Act to such an extent as to render it semi-worthless." The Public Service Association is to be congratulated on its successful opposition to this attempt, but the danger still remains. Addressing its conference yesterday, Mr. W. M. Wright, the president of the association, expressed the fear that the power taken by the Government to mate certain appointments* in the Kailway Service under regulations issued last week might be extended to other Departments, and the fear cannot be pronounced unnatural. The Government's record is one of progressive weakening on the great principle of non-political control, and the steady whittling away of the Act in which it was embodied ten years ago. The loyalty of the Service itself to the principle is absolutely conclusive evidence of its success, and we trust that the resolute and uncompromising declaration dt yesterday's conference will avert the threatened danger. It is time that the Government faced the: matter 'squarely, and 'answered the apprehensions of the Service with a plain Yes or No..