AFTER THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 111, 6 November 1941, Page 10

AFTER THE WAR

CONTROL OF AFFAIRS

RETURNED MEN'S INFLUENCE

HOPE OF LIBERTY

(0.C.) INVERCARGILL, This Day. Were we in New Zealand equipped to meet the new conditions which would inevitably arise after the war? asked Mr. Gordon Fraser in his presidential address to the Associated Chambers of Commerce. He suggested that weaknesses which might well undermine the whole stability of the nation, unless they were corrected, had appeared in the radical social and economic changes that had taken place in recent years.

With many another New Zealander, he said, he had watched with intense interest the recent strides this country had mads along the social and economic roads. With much of the journey he was in accord. In tackling most difficult problems this Government had at least shown initiative which was sadly lacking in some of its predecessors. But the major determining factor in the country's policy and outlook at the conclusion of the war! would be the attitude of the soldiers who came back from the war. NATURAL REACTION. "Many of tnese returned soldiers," he continued, "will return vastly changed in outlook. During the years of army life they will have been subjected to rigid discipline, suppression of individuality, ' and obliteration of the right of self-expression. Their one desire will be to put these years behind them, and they will chafe with fierce restlessness under the controls and ineptitudes that they will find if we continue our present course. Their opinion will be dominant in the country. Will they tolerate some of the conditions they find?

"First and foremost, will they tolerate the dead weight of bureaucratic thought in which New Zealand is steadily becoming enmeshed? By its very training and the circumstances of its work the Public Service tends to become cautious and conservative, always playing for safety and drifting towards the green slime of a stagnant backwater. Experience has shown that you cannot run industries successfully

from Government offices. You cannot get things done. Real leadership is squashed under a mountain of red tape. There is little incentive for virile achievement. Must we not organise our business and our Government not for stability but for continuous and deliberate change? Will the returned soldiers not demand that we be dynamic instead of static? DANGER AHEAD. "Indeed, will not the returned soldiers with the experience they have gained abroad be justified in thinking much harder things of the steady envelopment of New Zealand-in bureaucratic control? There is no more dangerous instrument than newly acquired power. As those people know who have read Paul Einzig's recent books on Germany the assumption of control of business by the State has been followed by abuses far worse than those existing under private enterprise. Importers, exporters, and manufacturers vie with one another in cultivating State officials, for in their, hands, and in their hands alone, lies the granting of licences for this, that, and the other. They can make or break a man in a day. Human nature being what it is the fruits tend to go to the highest bidder, with the result that in Germany favouritism is commonplace and graft is rampant. We who know the Civil Service of New Zealand say that this does not and cannot happen in New Zealand. But are we logical? May not such dangers arise here if we continue to follow this path? And what a path are we following! Today the civil servant not only orders when and where and if we are to buy our goods, when and at what price they are to be sold, but now he has assumed the absolute right to say whether the position of a debtor warrants further credit being given and whether that debtor may give security for debts already incurred. "ACTUALLY BEING DONE." "I am" not just citing to you powers conferred on the Civil Service, but telling you what is actually being done. It is hqt even cloaked under the nominal instruction of a Minister of the Crown. "These men arrogate to themselves knowledge of business for which they are unfitted, both by environment and training. "If there is one thing ■ more than another that the soldier will long for on his return to New Zealand is it not the private liberty from which he has been parted since he left these shores, and the justice which in many cases he has found incompatible with life in the Army? Will he not revolt against the assumption. by Ministers of the Crown and their officials of powers which in a liberty-loving country should be held only by the Court orby Parliament? Will he not demand an immediate return of the fundamental right of appeal to the law courts when he feels he has not received justice, and will he tolerate government by masses of regulations ! which have never been authorised by (Parliament, and which in a democratic country should essentially be subordinate rather than supreme, specific instead of general? INITIATIVE CRUSHED. "All these factors have had and will have a deep influence on the life, work, and well-being of the business community. From right and left, above and below we have been subjected to control by a vast Government autocracy which has dimmed initiative, crushed, incentive, and often spelt utter ruin to the man or firm concerned. Primarily, as I have already indicated to you, I think the answer will be found by a new body of mass opinion headed by a hundred thousand returned soldiers, but business rr*3n must themselves assist towards the realisation of a satisfactory new order. For the remainder of the war there is no escape from rigid Govern-1