Manawatu Daily Times Ministers at Work

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 6918, 23 July 1932, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times Ministers at Work

"With the Right Hon. J. G. Coates, Minister of Public "Works, Minister of Transport and Minister in Charge of Employment, and the Hon. W. D. Stewart, Minister of Finance, Minister of Customs and Attorney-General, attending the Ottawa Conference, while the Prime Minister is snatching a few days of a veil earned partial rest at his own homo in the South Island, the remaining members of the Cabinet are having a busy time. It must not be assumed, however, that Mr. Coates and Mr. Stewart are simply enjoying a holiday jaunt. Mr. Coates already has had to deprecate a story put about by the Canadian press to the effect that this country’s chief industries are “unemployment riots and financial extravagances,” and to dissipate other absurd stories concerning the conditions of this Dominion. Mr. Stewart has paved the way for the Now Zealand delegation in a material measure and his association with Mr. Bruce, the leader of the Australian delegation, can but bear satisfactory results

The Prime Minister himself has taken over temporarily the portfolio of Finance for the term of Mr. Stewart s absence, which it is scarcely necessary to say, will be as short as possible. Mr. A. Hamilton, one of the younger members of the Cabinet, already burdened with Post and Telegraphs, Labour, Internal Affairs, Tourist and Health Resorts, Publicity, Statistics, Audit, Museum and Advertising Departments, has been laden with the Department of Employment, probably the most tiresome load that could befall a Minister of the Crown at the present time. That the comparatively young man from Southland is shaping uncommonly well under his expanding responsibilities is admitted by all the parties, even by Labourites and Independents, though these sections of the House, of course, arc not committing themselves further. The temporary Minister of Employment, whatever his party leaning may be, can be trusted to see that honest workers receive such assistance as the Government can reasonably provide. No more than this could be honestly expected.

Just as Mr. Coates’s locum tenens is striving to keep eager workers in honest employment, Mr. Ransom,'the Minister of Lands, is striving to keep farmers on the land and to increase their number. No Minister since the days of Sir John McKenzie, has done so much for land settlement in this country as Mr. Ransom has, under difficulties which none of his predecessors encountered, and it is to be hoped that whatever may be the fate of the Coalition Government in the near or distant future, the services of so capable a land administrator as Mr. Ransom has proved himself to be will be retained. The policy of the present Government is not merely to place men on the land at any cost, as was done immediately after the Great War, but, having proved them as capable husbandmen, to keep them on their farms in preparation for the better times that surely are at hand.

As much may be said of Mr. Forbes’s colleagues, perhaps the association of parties tending toward maintained effort. Sir Apirana Ngata, not so very long ago merely a representative of his own race, is now in charge of half a dozen portfolios, giving them exemplary applications; Mr. J. A. Young, Minister of Health, Minister in Charge of Mental Hospitals and the Printing Department-; Hon. R. Masters, Minister of Education, Minister of Industries and Commerce and one of the best informed members of the Legislative Council; Mr. J. G. Cobbe, Minister of Defence, Minister of Justice, Minister of Marine, Minister in Charge of Pensions, Police and Prisons, one of the most assiduous workers in the Cabinet and one of the warmest regarded in both chambers, the list concluding with Mr. C. E. Macmillan, the latest appointee, as Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Mines, and one of the most personally popular. The

Cabinet on the whole has fully justified the spirit of Coalition.