The Gisborne Herald IN WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE TIMES." GISBORNE, TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1949 TOO MUCH TRAVELLING TO CONFERENCES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22942, 10 May 1949, Page 4

The Gisborne Herald IN WHICH IS INCORPORATED "THE TIMES." GISBORNE, TUESDAY, MAY 10, 1949 TOO MUCH TRAVELLING TO CONFERENCES

jgCARCELY a day passes without mention of Ministers of the Crown, officials or the heads of national organisations travelling long distances to or from conferences. On Saturday it was announced that a delegation is to attend an international forestry congress in Finland and will subsequently visit Sweden and Norway. On Sunday the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser, returned from Britain, via North America, and the Minister of Finance, Mr. Nash, flew to Auckland to meet him. The same day the chief engineer of the New Zealand Broadcasting Service returned after attending a conference in Mexico City. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr. Parry, recently arrived back from Australia, and the Minister in charge of State forests, Mr. Skinner, is at present in Canada. All these conferences indicate the increasing part that New Zealand is taking in international affairs. Few countries, if any, proportionate to size, are as active. It. is reported that no fewer than 150 conferences have been set down for this year, to 50 of which New Zealand has been invited. Not all these involve journeys from this country as many are attended by officials already overseas, but. for all that, they occupy time and cost money.

Mr. Fraser, as Minister of External Affairs, was strongly criticised in the House last September during the discussion of the Estimates which revealed a sum of £60,000 for travelling expenses. The Prime Minister said New Zealand had repeatedly informed the British Government that it was not going to be represented at different conferences and had been specially requested to attend, lie added that some of the meetings could certainly be dispensed with, but the problem was to decide how many.

Conferences so far attended this year have dealt with constitutional questions, finance, trade, social work, relief, protection of war victims, aid to starving children, migration, trusteeship, radio and communications, aviation, forestry and the Far East. Those yet to be held include world health, Red Cross work and education while a variety of other subjects will be discussed at the General Assembly of the United Nations. It is true that many of these questions are of vital concern to New Zealand. For instance, it was essential for the Prime Minister to attend the recent London talks on India, but it is hard to understand why officials on the spot could not have performed the tasks of Mr. Parry and Mr. Skinner in Australia and Canada. The size of some delegations has often been frequently criticised. If business men on their visits overseas took with them staffs comparable in size to official delegations, which sometimes include wives, they would soon be taken to task by their shareholders and would probably be replaced by persons who could attend to the companies’ work unaided. The affairs of State, admittedly, do not constitute an exact parallel but there is room for more economy. The total bill to the taxpayer for travelling must be enormous. It is difficult to ascertain without a close analysis of the expenditure of all departments, but a reduction is necessary. This will involve further consideration of the whole question of overseas conferences, together with representation, and the application of a more severe test to determine those which are really worth-while in view of the expense to the taxpayer.