THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1903. THE PUBLIC NEED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12190, 9 February 1903, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1903. THE PUBLIC NEED.

» It is very evident from the strong unanimity now pervading the local bodies associated in the infectious , diseases hospital question, and the ] public at large which they represent, that the Point Chevalier scheme is generally regarded as uncalled-for. But although this may be taken as reasonable proof that the hospital proposed is not a public need, it is in our opinion still greater proof of an imperative public need in a different direction. While we are criticising the extravagant demand being made upon overburdened local bodies and agreeing that the time has arrived to resist the unjustifiable encroachments of the bureaucratic and irresponsible Health Department upon our local autonomy, it is as well for us to remember that there has been no misrepresentation on the part of the Departmental officers. At the conference at which the objectionable scheme was agreed to by representatives of local bodies, the estimated cost was clearly set forth and the class of cases to be treated was in no way concealed. Indeed, it was from its proceedings that there arose the very common impression that every back-country settler's child laid up with the measles was to be brought by road, rail, sea or river, to a scientifically • organised concentration camp at Point Chevalier. It was not until the local bodies began to realise to what they had committed themselves, and how it would affect their funds and what the public would say, that their clamour arose. It is correct to say that they agreed to the Health Department scheme under " a misapprehension," but if we have no pressing public need for a Point Chevalier hospital we have a very real and apparent public need for improvement in the business capacity of our public bodies Whether the delegates at the former conference were over- ' awed by the technical phraseology of the Health Department officials or whether they were naturally incapable of calculating quickly and correctly the effect of the proposal upon their constituents, we do not know. But we do know that the conference should not have adjourned upon the agreement which they had arrived at and that in the approaching elections it would be extremely beneficial if only men of experience, acumen and reputation in the affairs of private life were returned to manage the equally intricate affairs of public life. It is ail the more desirable that we should remember this pressing and paramount public need of capable and businesslike civic representatives, because if unbusinesslike and incompetent local bodies are peculiarly liable to be browbeaten by imperious Premiers and unduly influenced by confident officials, they are not less liable to swing from boundless subserviency into the opposite extreme of unlimited' obstinacy. The broad and profitable middle course, which avoids extra- j vagance on the one hand and parsi- I mony on the other, which neither i squanders wealth and energy in fits of childish panic nor grudges every ■ improvement in the blind reaction : from such insufferable frenzies, is j the course which should be unfalteringly and uninterruptedly pursued. Yet we cannot hope to even approximately pursue it unless we remember at election times that we should never trust our pub-

— ; 1 7 .1 lie business in the hands of any man ; to whose integrity, energy, shrewdness and perception we would not ; entrust our private and individual '■[■] affairs. Only by seeking for a high and efficient type of representative and by overcoming the reluctance of suitable men to concern themselves with public life, can we expect a, satisfactory solution of any public problems. This is glaringly manifest to-day in the hospital question. It is all very well for the Hospital and Charitable Aid Board to say that unless Sir Joseph "Ward does this or that it will refuse infectious cases. This is the swing-back of the pendulum from a melancholy obeisance to every official dictum to an equally melancholy retort. For they are Auckland's sick and distressed, not Sir Joseph Ward's. They belong to us, not to the Health Department. It is our own local self-government which should protect us against local and ordinary risk of infection, not a bureaucracy over whose doings and actions wa have not, and cannot have, control. Similarly, it is easy to say that all minor infectious cases can be provided for in the present hospital grounds—as we heartily agree they can— but can the public have any very great confidence in a hospital management which had a veritable epidemic of infection raging within its own jurisdiction not so long ago 1 We have an extraordinary drug bill to pay this year, but what can we show for it ? The average man has little appreciation of drugging, but Ihe has a very strong feeling that when, in a hospital, the well become ill instead of the ill becoming well, something somewhere is fundamentally wrong. And if the public is unanimously agreed that there is no need to accumulate taxes upon its shoul- . ders and to waste its funds in un,needed hospitals and superfluous staffs, it is equally agreed that the management of the Auckland Hospital could be improved and will welcome any intelligent suggestion by which this improvement can be economically effected. We have had of recent years in Auckland a sufficiently educating lesson upon the* ease with which finances can be arranged and credit balances accumulated by the simple process of stop-* ping even necessary expenditures.* We hope that neither the City Council nor the Hospital and Charitable Aid Board's constituents will resort to that most primitive method. Nor will they if the Auckland public returns to represent it in its local governments men who fill the crying public need for economical, capable and efficient administration. %