The Public Service

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 February 1947, Page 6

The Public Service

yi-IE Report on Population issued last year estimated the number of State employees as 100,000, or about one-fifth of those persons gainfully employed in New Zealand. This means that four-fifths of the working population have to accept, as a first call, on their labour, the responsibility of -assuring the living standard of the other one-fifth. They have to provide the revenue from which the host of State employees is paid and the staggering increase in the number of those employees in recent, years is just one more reason for the sharp rise in the burden of taxation for civil purposes.

There are, however, other implications. Speaking to the Manufacturers’ Federation conference this week, the Minister of Industries and Commerce, Mr. D. G. Sullivan, expressed his concern at the increasing difficulty faced by essential industries and undertakings in obtaining labour. There are something like 24,000 notified vacancies waiting to be filled. The task, of course, is a hopeless one so long as present conditions are permitted to continue. The State is a strong competitor for labour. While the Government expresses concern at the inability of industry to obtain the labour required for the production of essential goods—no one need be in any doubt as to the seriousness of the position arising from shortages—it at the same time takes steps to increase the drain on the supply pool. Boys and girls of 15 and 16 years of age are being recruited for the clerical, staffs of the State departments we are told that there is <c a steady flow” —at starting rates of pay and on .conditions with which average commercial and industrial undertakings cannot compete.

Xo one would wish to see State servants paid at a rate not commensurate with the resources df the country, but the lack of balance in this country’s economy at the present time is obvious. It is essential, of course, that the administrative machinery of the country should be carried on efficiently, and it is necessary to this end that there should be a constant intake of recruits of good standard. Commonsense alone, however, should dictate the calling of a halt to the expansion of the Public Service. The Government seems intent on developing still further its socialistic policy of making more and more people dependent on the State, regardless of the added ‘burden this places on the. remainder of the community.