CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT STORES.

Evening Star, Issue 18045, 12 August 1922, Page 4

CONTROL OF GOVERNMENT STORES.

Tub report by the Auditor-General, tabled in Parliament.yesterday, is calculated to cause an uneasy feeling among people who maintain the old-fashioned standard in the maiterof honesty. A distinct lowering in that standard is pretty generally recognised as having been one of the legacies of the war. One of its strongest manifestations was the wholesale pillaging of goods in transit by land and by sea. ■Mr Campbell’s report suggests that something of the same kind has been, going on in respect to Government property. Under what they term “beating the Government ” quite a number of people are prepared to commit actions which, if perpetrated at the expense of private individuals, they themselves might even consent to place in the category of fraud or theft. Evidently there are &om^. ; mnn)h£^-

of the Public Service who hold similar 'ideas. The manner in which, they interpret their responsibility as custodians of Government property is altogether peculiar. It is no new thing, perhaps, but it is brought to mind afresh by the schedule attached to the Auditor-General's report showing that Parliament will need to write off nearly £50,000 for deficiencies in cash, stores, etc., last year. Considering the amounts of these handled by the big spending and commercial departments, the percentage may nob bo alarming, but the amount mentioned is evidently not the lull story in respect to this kind of dishonesty or laxity, according to whether the person .benefiting therefrom is inside or outside the Public Service. Mr Campbell states that “ stores have been written off without sufficient inquiry and without the authority of Parliament. . . . Insufficiency of chock and the ease with which .articles can be written off open the door to theft.” He is striving to introduce reforms, and his report indicates that there is plenty of room for them. In the first place he finds it necessary to give a little lecture on elementary ethics. He reminds Government servants that “stores are the equivalent of cash; but many public officers do not seem to have recognised this fact, nor have they been called upon to observe the same care and attention with regard to accounting for public stores and property as have been enforced in regard to accounting for public moneys.” Therefor© lie fears that very considerable losses have occurred which have remained undetected. Judges of the Supreme 'Court have lately been drawing the pointed attention of the public to tho frequency with which they are called on to sentence public servants for irregularities in respect of cash. If there is far more laxity in tho supervision of stores than of cash, together with a much more elastic code of honesty in the service in respect to tho.former —though the Public Revenues Act makes no distinction—there can remain little reason for doubting that tho Auditor-General has placed his finger on something very grave. As remedies ho proposes to tighten up tho present loose system of checking stores, and to make that system uniform and straightforward instead of confusing because of the “ promulgation of multitudinous regulations and instruction” —seemingly a hopeless tangle of red tape. Something in the way of improvement and check is also hoped from the institution of a Stores Purchase Beard in place of separate .purchasing by the various departments. The operation of this now system has not sg far greatly impressed outsiders, but it is evidently impossible to form a judgment without «a knowledge of things from tho inside. It is no great feather in the cap of tho present Administration that, while it has been preaching economy and bewailing the fast-growing expenditure necessary on tho Public Service, it has been allowing to go on under its very nose the waste, and worse, which the Auditor-General finds to exist within that service. Hero surely is a case for tho metaphorical axe. A business man would say on© was badly needed if there had been cases where stocktaking had been a formal farce.