The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1920.

Evening Star, Issue 17454, 10 September 1920, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1920.

It was to be expected that the Hon. C. J. Parr, as a callow Health Minister Minister fired with Flouts His Experts, impulsive ambition, would early show some crudities both in matters of administration and in Ministerial tactics. Such initial weaknesses are always inevitable, and can be pardoned as being nothing more than the minor faults of inexperience. But surely not even those who know him best and are familiar with his “guid conceit o’ himself” tvould have expected him. in defiance of Ministerial precedent, to flout very autocratically the recommendations of his departmental experts on the important question of multiplying hospital institutions and expenditure on an extravagant scale, and almost sneering openly at the policy of the heads of the Public Health Department. Such was the remarkable altitude the Minister of Public Health adopted yesterday- in the House of Representatives during a lively discussion on the Public Health Committee's report on the Bill providing for the creation of a separate hospital district in <South Otago, and the subsequent erection on ambitious lines of a base hospital at Balelutha.

The Minister’s arguments and assertions .were vehement, loose, and occasionally grossly exaggerated. He appears to have been impressed with the necessity {or attacking strongly in order to carry through a palpably weak scheme. The committee reported the Hospital Amendment Bill to the House during the afternoon, and recommended that it be allowed to proceed. The recommendation was immediately,<tfind very properly, challenged by Mr Statham, who moved an amendment to the effect that the Bill be referred back to the committee for' further consideration. The motion #as “ talked out,” the adjournment having been called before a vote had been taken. In ordinary circumstances that would have been a fitting end to the unnecessary measure, which ought to have been a local Bill, as in former sessions; but this -session its object has been taken up by the Government apparently as, a matter of essential policy. It has been unkindly said that the Ministerial backing of what was formerly Mr Malcolm’s Bill is a consoling service. That, we should say, is a malicious exaggeration, for everybody must admit that the Kefcrm Ministry never do anything of the kind. Mr Parr shepherds the Bill in the spirit and with the highest ideals of a passionate champion of justice. He said that the Government had good reason for taking up the measure, for it involved the question of doing fair justice to South Otago. He said, advisedly, that the history of South Otago’s treatment by the Otago Hospital Board showed that their treatment of districts lying 100 miles to the south of Duuedin (which districts?) was a story of , shameful neglect. “Dr Barnett, for instance, admitted that the treatment of those districts amounted to a scandal.” Is not that just a little bit more than Dr Barnett actually said? It has always been understood locally that Dr Barnett said it was a shame that there was not a hospital at Balclutha. " So say we all; but it does not follow that the provision of an adequate secondary hospital should involve the creation of. a separate hospital district in South Otago and'the erection of an extravagant base hospital at Balclutha.

It is scarcely necessary at this advanced stage of the controversy to recapitulate all the arguments for and against separation and a policy of extravagance; but it is necessary to refute a very obvious exaggeration on the part of the autocratic Minister of Public Health. With a blazing scorn Mr Parr asserts that the ratepayers in the counties of Bruce and Clutha “are rated to the extent of £9,400 a year, and had been faying for many years, but getting absolutely nothing worth speaking < about for their money except this miserable little hospital at a coal mine." Surely the Minister of Public Health must know, if he knows anything at all about hospital levies, that his statement is absurd. He has quoted the maximum charges to meet abnormal demands, which are common experience, apd adroitly permits it to be inferred that such high rates have been paid by Clutha and Bruce ratepayers for many years.

But the worst,.feature of the Minister’s vehement outburst about hospital affairs is the sneering manner in which he opposes his. own experts. He regretted to have

to say that the heads of his department were opposed to the views he himself pats forward so energetically. “ I am not going to allow my to lay down a policy which I think to be wrong and against the interests of the country,” he declares, with all the finality of an autocrat. If his officers can only lay down a policy against the interests of the country, Mr Parr, to be logical, must “sack the lot,” and get doctors who are not.at sixes or sevens. Unless the ways of politicians have changed for the better, Mr Parr will probably find, like many of his predecessors and Ministerial colleagues, that when the Government are in a comer the only policy to be adopted is to stand by that of departmental experts. It is true that such a procedure was almost worked to death during the war; but why abruptly abandon it in order to buttress a Bill that should be .dealt with as a parochial measure? The plain duty of members of Parliament is to kill the Hospital Amendment Bill, thus preventing the Government (whose avowed policy when it suits them 1b national economy) from the encouragement and practice of unnecessary extravagance.