WIDE GRASP

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 89, 12 October 1937, Page 10

WIDE GRASP

THE PUBLIC SERVICE

FROM CRADLE TO GRAVE

"The Public Service is with us from the cradle to the grave," said the At-

torney-General (the Hon. H. G. R.

Masqn) at the opening of the annual conference of the New Zealand Public Service Association today, in illustration of the, tremendous breadth of scope of the 36 departments under the Public Service Commissioners, excluding only the police, the railways, and the P. and T. Department. There was no phase of the ' community's life in which the Public Service was not concerned, said the Minister. The Health Department was interested in everyone who was ushered into the world in New Zealand, and the Child Welfare and Education Departments and the Denial Clinic branch took care of them as children. The Lands Department might find them a farm when they left school and the Agriculture Department might show them how to work it. All the time the Air, the Defence, and the Navy services guarded them against outside enemies, and the Crown Law Office, the Courts, and the Prisons Department guarded them from internal marauders. If' they wished to travel in comfort the Government Tourist Bureau would take care of their arI rangements, and their safety 011 sea and in the air would be seen to by the Marine Department and the civil branch of the Air Department respectively. In business the Primary Products Department bought and sold butiter and cheese, the State Fire Insurance Office provided against most busi-

(ness risks, and the State Coal Department supplied coal .ior industry, while the Land and Income Tax Department prevented an over-surplus of net profits. The Labour Department reguSated business, procedure and provided tfor people in the event of unemployment, and the Native Department saw to« it that the benefits obtainable by the were also there for the Maori. TJ»e Government Life Insurance and e Pensions Departments safeguarded people in their old age, and the Registry ir-General was interested in both thipir births and their deaths. It was a possible comfort to realise that even aft£>r a person's death the Civil Service reratained interested, for the Public Trust would attend to a deceased person!; affairs for the benefit of his family, i and the Stamp Duties Department woiild.take steps to see that a portion of hlis estate went to the Treasury. Nqt as a member of the Government but as a private citizen, Mr. Mason exto the conference his personal thanks to the Public Service for the invariable courtesy he said he had received from its members of all departments, and of all ranks.