Manawatu Daily Times New Ministers not to be Worried.

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6803, 5 January 1929, Page 8

Manawatu Daily Times New Ministers not to be Worried.

gIR Joseph Ward and his colleagues evidently are going to take their own good time in unfolding the details of the policy they indicated during the election campaign. The Prime Minister himself has taken no serious notice of the gibes that have been levelled at his "seventy million loan” beyond correcting flagrant misstatements in regard to his financial proposals. It was impossible for him, of course, to foresee all the difficulties that beset his predecessor in office, or to overcome them by a mere wave of v the hand; but he has reiterated his assurance that all will be well with the finances of the Dominion, and, to his credit, he has cast no unworthy reflections upon his political opponents. The coincidence that the Minister of Finance who negotiated the larger war loans is now in office to deal with their maturity is a matter of repeated comment in financial circles and generally one of satisfaction. Labour The Hon. W. A. Veitch, the Minister of Labour in the new Government, who entered the House just seventeen years ago as a labour member and subsequently found the Liberal policy sufficiently progressive to meet his immediate requirements, also has let it be understood that he is not going to rush into reforms forthwith. On his return from his short Christmas holiday he stated in the course of a brief chat that he was not contemplating any revolutionary changes in the policy and administration of the Labour Department. He had found the officers of the department eager to obtain the best possible results from their efforts and thoroughly acquainted with the details as well as with broad principles. He could not say offhand how the work of the Industrial Conference of last year would be continued—several very big problems remained for solution—but both the workers and the employers might rely upon the best features of the effort being preserved. Called to Service No one is more entertained than the Minister of Health is by the various interpretations that have been placed upon his recognition of his appointment to the Ministry as a “ call to service.” He grudges his criics none of the humour they have extracted from the phrase. As a matter of fact, however, Mr. Stallworthy does regard the portfolio of Health as a very important trust, since it aims at promoting, in a greater and still greater measure, a clean, wholesome, virile people to edrry on the best traditions of the Dominion and to become an example to the whole world. Of course, all this is in the language of the idealist, who often talks over the heads of the crowd; but Parliament for some years past has been ill-supplied with imagination and vision and if the new Minister of Health can amend its defects in these respects he will not have rendered. an unworthy service to the State. Decentralization Wellington is still a little alarmed lest the Hon. W. B. Taverner, who has replaced the Right Hon. J. G. Coates as Minister of Railways, should take it into his head to administer his great trust from Dunedin. There has been talk of ministerial offices being set up in the three big centres away from the capital city—Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin—and Mr. Taverner, it seems, has had the hardihood to keep his home in the southern-most city of the Dominion and so give it something of a residential flavour. People who know the new Minister at all well, however smile at the idea of Dunedin being made the administrative centre of the railway system. What probably set the story afloat was the statements made by Mr. Taverner during the election campaign to the effect that closer personal attention should be given to all public services by those in authority and that Wellington should not be the only centre of inspectorial activity.