BUREAUCRACY.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 March 1929, Page 7

BUREAUCRACY.

DICTATORIAL GROWTH.”

DH. J. M ACM I LEAN BROWN’S VTEhvS.

Amongst the apologies for absence read ai a meeting or tne canteroury oranon of the i9Xrf Committee was a letter from Jrr. j. Macmillan Brown, chancellor or tiie Lniversrty oi New r ✓.ealand, says tne CHristchurch •Tress.” In this he said:

”1 regret that I. shall not he able to lie present at the meeting on the 2lst to consider suggestions for the prevention or further interference by tbe State in private business; but 1 should like to express my sympathy with the movement. it is time that the citizens of this country should speak strongly on this drift of bureaucratic tyranny and centralisation that lias been gathering strength since the abolition or tbe provinces, -but Ims become overwhelming since tiie beginning of the war.

“During tiie war, as in all wars, it was an essential of success that the Government should be clothed with exceptional authority. But since tbe war it has rather increased than diminished; for it is the natural tendency of power to increase its appetite for power and to. stifle criticism as far as possible, till at last it resents everything that will limit it. And in our democratic governments it is the head ol a Government Department who is slie.Lered from all criticism; the Minister is in trout of him to stand the siege, and it is the Minister that lias to appeal to a constituency and not to a Departmental head, who has to carryout the tradition handed on to him and has all the instruments in bis hand to make the Minister bend to bis will; for the Minister knows he may pass, and lie does pass, while the Departmental head remains in spite or ail criticism and recalcitrance on the part of tbe democracy; in short, this latter is a member of a legitimate dynasty j and knows lie cannot be displaced except in abnormal circumstances; be.be- 1 comes the Mussolini of his Depart-! meat. /

1 • Tlie end of the process of dictatorial growth is that the citizens lose all initiative, and, in short, all liberty; they become infants to be led, and whenever anything is awry they do not form a committee to put it right, but rush to the Government and ask for its interference, and that means i still more increase of dictatorial power in the hands of a Department, and still more futility on the part of the citizens and local boards. If the citizens of New Zealand are alive to the certain end of all this, they will make a. stand and appoint committees in every town to • watch their interests. For the more centralisation goes on, the more expensive government becomes; clerk is added to clerk, inspector to inspector, till the old department or the new becomes a eaiicerous growth.

. “This centralisation may suit the 'programme of Socialism, but it drains I the lifeblood of the people—in other words, their liberty. And what is the ultimate aim or Socialistic schemes? The ostensible aim is to bring in the millenium; the practical aim to is universalise the poor law to extend the dole to everyone in the community, and God help those who have a Government Department to dispense charity to them. And the result we see in most primitive communities on a small scale; the industrious and thrifty being deprived of the control of their earnings and savings will ultimately abandon all industry and thrift, and instead of the millenium, We shall have an inferno in which .the loafers have the best of it, and that will be on the borderland of starvation. If the citizens of New Zealand have any regard for their future, they will combine to call a halt to this downward process.”