CUSTOMS ASSESSMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVII, Issue 221, 16 August 1927, Page 6

CUSTOMS ASSESSMENT.

We cannot congratulate the Minister of Customs upon his reply to the request made by the Palmerston North Chamber of Commerce that arrangements should be made at our Chief Post Office for the assessment of Customs duty payable on postal packets. How far the Minister has made himself acquainted with the position we are not able to say, but the text of his reply suggests that he has merely made inquiries from officials in Wellington and has accepted the practice of the latter as the correct even though it means that the public are to be unnecessarily inconvenienced and the delivery of overseas pax-cels delayed by the adhesion to a slavish practice. The Postal Department has indicated that there are more officers than one on the Palmerston North staff who have had experience in handling overseas parcels at branches where Customs examination and assessment take place; but, apparently, the Customs Department does not consider them of sufficient intelligence to assess the duties, and so a Customs officer in Wellington must be called on to determine the duty payable. That does not matter so much in the case of a city like Wellington, where such officers are always available, but it is a distinct handicap to a town like Palmerston North that it. should be regarded as necessary for parcels, addressed here from overseas, to be held in or sent back to Wellington for Customs assessment. Mr Downie Stewart appears to have fallen into the unfortunate habit, developed by so many of his colleagues, of accepting the guidance of his departmental officers, rather than using the sturdy commonsense, which is regarded as one of the Minister’s attributes, in deciding a matter upon which most people would think the Customs Department adopts a wrong attitude. The trouble with some departments is that they are too wedded to precedent, and the traditions .and customs of the past to move with the times. It was said of one department, some years ago, that, whenever suggestions were made for improving its services or modifying conditions in the public interest, its chief officer always had any number of precedents to demonstrate how, and why, such improvements or modifications could not be carried out. Things have improved somewhat since then, but the Customs Department is seemingly a law unto itself, trusting nobody but its own officers, and fearful of losing even the sixteenth part of an ounce of its pound of flesh, by allowing experienced men in the postal service to deal with overseas parcels received through the post office. We are sorry to find that, in his present state of mind, the Minister appears as unprogressive in his ideas as the. department over which he. presides, but which appears to dictate the policy of which he becomes the official spokesman.