The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1925. GOVERNMENT STORES.

Evening Star, Issue 19023, 19 August 1925, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1925. GOVERNMENT STORES.

Three years ago the Auditor-General reported to Parliament that it would need to write oft nearly £50,000 for deficiencies in cash, stores, etc., for the financial year 1921-22. Presumably the leakage was considerably greater, because bo reported that stores had been written off by various departments without sufficient inquiry and without the authority of Parliament, adding, commenting on this, that “insufficiency of chock and the ease with which these articles can bo written off open the door to theft.” No business man needs to be reminded how important a part accurate-stock-taking plays in the annual ascertaining of the state of a business’s affairs. The present Audi-tor-General is fully alive to the great importance of a rigorous audit of Government stores and property. He is a reformer. His reforms arc being adopted, but slowly. The inertia of Government departments is proverbial. They were long ago requested to draw up sets of rules governing the receipt, custody, disposal, and accounting for Government stores and property under their control. Delay and confusion arose. The cause was the usual one in Government departments—conflict of authority. It was found that different regulations had been published by the Public Service Commissioner, the Stores Control Board, and the Treasury relating to the control of stores. However, this difficulty has been overcome, and the Auditor-General reports that steady progress is now being made in introducing a sound system in most of the departments. Some of them prepared their rules, submitted them for approval, and put them into operation at once. Others are dilatory. The Auditor-General’s report of the methods of stores accountancy in the twenty departments of State mentions the Public Trust and Defence Departments as having a good system in operation, several others as having a new system in operation or being inaugurated, others again as having rules under revision or being drafted; such important departments as the Hallways, Post and Telegraph, and Public Works being in that category among the backward' ones. Of tho Public Works Department it is stated that there is “ some delay in drafting of rules to meet present requirements ”; while of the Lands and Survey Department it is written: “ Apparently no attempt yet made to comply.” Tho Auditor-General complains that “ the door has thus remained open to peculation and extravagance.” And it is not merely with the adoption of tho now system of accounting that tho door will be closed. For “ some departments have been satisfied with a more superficial record of the receipt and first issue of stores, and have adopted no sound system of following them after issue so ns to ensure that they have been actually devoted to tho purposes intended,” which, as Mr Campbell points out, is really no check, as it is after the first issue that peculation and losses generally occur. And there is another loophole. In some departments tho full quantity of stores issued has not to be accounted for, and, owing to the frequent fluctuations of prices of stores, it is not difficult for the values to be manipulated, and tho accounts presented for audit may balance monetarily ' without disclosing disappearances.

During the past financial year the Audit Office examined 140 store accounts belonging to various departments, and many of them disclosed much waste and other serious irregularities and abuses. A number of instances are cited, some of dishonesty and some of gross carelessness. One particularly glaring case was of collusion between tho purchasing departmental officer and an outside supplying firm, a process which went on for years. The firm only partially executed the buying orders, and the shorts ago was made up on paper by tho departmental officer issuing the goods marked at excessive prices, these excess prices covering up the deficiency in the deliveries. Other practices are the unauthorised gratuitous issues of stores, etc., to departmental officers, sometimes accomplished by improper charging as a cloak, and illicit sales of Government stores. The Auditor-Gen-eral’s contention is that, if proper records were kept, and a proper system adopted, these things could not occur without immediate detection. His duty is to cure and prevent dishonesty and extravagance in the Public Service, and the community, members of which often discern or gravely suspect cases of these in their own experience of dealings with the Government, will surely be whole-heartedly behind him in his consistently and persistently high conception of that duty and efforts towards discharging it. Therefore it comes as something of a surprise to find the Prime Minister bringing forward in Parliament yesterday what is in effect a statement of rebuttal of the AuditorGeneral’s report tabled in Parliament three weeks ago. Mr Coatos possibly found himself impelled two different ways in two different capacities. As leader of Parliament he has to conserve the interests of the people—of the taxpayers who provide the money for Government stores. As head, or past head, of the three departments which control the greatest amount of stores in the service—Railways, Public Works, and Post and Telegraph—he found it

incumbent on him to defend his departmental officers. It was in the latter capacity that ho chiefly appeared yesterday, though, after his minimising of the Auditor-General's strictures and his defence generally of tho departments, he did remember his obligation to the country by sotting up a select committee to inquire into tho charges. Mr Campbell mentions that in tho three departments named the systems of controlling stores have hitherto been far from complete; hut ho adds that in each of these departments tho urgency of improving their methods is fully recognised, and “ doubtless a more complete system will he introduced in each department cro long.” There has been time enough over such introduction, and it is to be hoped that the result of tho setting up of tho select committee will he an appreciable speeding up of that reform, and not tho inauguration or perpetuation of any feud or friction between tho Auditor-General and the Government or Parliament. In such an office a meticulous inflexibility is infinitely preferable to any suspicion of laxity.