THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 1, 1925. THE NEW LEADER SPEAKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19032, 1 June 1925, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, JUNE 1, 1925. THE NEW LEADER SPEAKS.

fx his first public statement as Prime Minister Mr. Coates strikes an admirable note. In its directness, simplicity and freedom from rhetorical flourishes it is typical of the man whose views it expresses. Superficially viewed, it might be accused of lacking idealism. Yet underlying the uncompromising exposition of the business sido of government is a very high ideal, that of service, the best, most efficient and least costly service that hard work, zeal and whole-hearted personal devotion can achieve. New Zealand is the poorer that there are not more idealists like the Prime Minister in public life. The country will respond gladly to this clear statement of the principles which will guide the new Prime Minister in his conduct of its affairs. No battlecry could be more welcome than "Less politics, more business." What makes it especially acceptable is that it has not been invented to fit the occasion. Mr. Coates is proposing to apply to general administration the methods and ideas which he has used so effectively in tho departments under his control for the past five or six years. He has proved that ho can live up to the principles detailed. His reputation for doing things instead of simply promising to do them, for adjudicating on questions submitted on their merits rather than with the desire to please suppliants, of taking the right course in defiance of consequences, is well established. It is good to find him promising, at his entry into the office of Prime Minister, that ho will maintain it in the altered circumstances he faces. The Prime Minister half apologises in confessing that he is not much of a politician. He need not have done so. It is one of his chief merits in the eyes of rightthinking people. Being equipped with the necessary vigour and determination, he has only to continue working on the lines he has indicated and the country will ask him emphatically to give them no more of politics than he is already capable of giving them. He stands an excellent chance of proving that the best way to succeed in politics is to be no politician. In the.years during which political influence hung like a miasma over public administration, New Zealand had plenty of opportunity to evaluate it properly. Its passing will leave no regrets behind. The evil has diminished very much of recent years. In his own departments Mr. Coates was notably downright in sweeping it away. • There is still room for the exercise of his thoroughness elsewhere in the activities of the State. Political influence is more subtle, if less pernicious, than direct corruption, from which New Zealand has always been conspicuously free. Its evil effects may be more enduring. The idea that the Government is a generous parent with an inexhaustible purse may be entertained in times of abounding prosperity. When hard times arrive they bring the day of reckoning with them. The experiences of the past few years should be fresh enough to make everyone appreciate what Mr. Coates says of the impossibility of getting something for nothing, even from the Government; it should be said, especially from the Government. For the Government has no real resources beyond what it levies from the governed. If it purports to give any scryice free, it must obtain from the country the . wherewithal to pay for that service. The Prime Minister, believing that the method of indirect paying is the more burdensome eventually, declares that State services should be paid for as obtained, that the departments should be run on the lines of ordinary business and made to pay their way. The full realisation of this ideal may never be possible, but to have it the goal of his administration means that the Prime Minister has the best interests of the country at heart. He is not setting himself an easy task. The claimant, whether he be an individual, an organisation, a district, or a province is always on the doorstep. The bait of support or the threat of opposition is always being used, either directly or by innuendo. Mr. Coates has experienced these things already as a Minister. Now that he is Prime Minister the pressure will increase. He is prepared to display in his new office the same soundness of judgment and disregard of threatened consequences that have made his reputation. He is entitled to, and should receive, tho very fullest support in fulfilling his promise to carry on, in a wider theatre, the war against political influence in public administration. Though differentiating so clearly between politics and business, the Prime Minister made one refcrenco to tho present political situation. With so much in the air about party fusion he could not ignore it. Ho indicates that he views the possibility with an open mind. He deals with it as something which is hopeful. If it is to grow, he will do nothing to check it, but will be prepared to consider impartially any propositions that the active agents of fusion may place before his party. A lead is given them to go ahead and prove tho degree in which their expressed desire to bring it about is prompted by real earnestness. They are given a clear field in which to work. Even in this reference to a subject which is wholly political tho Prime Minister's statement is

hardly a political declaration. It is a striking example of the degree in which he has divested himself of the old attitude in which the struggle for supremacy often threatened to obscure what should have been the objective of those engaged, the administration of public business in the best interests of the community. When Mr. Coates first came before the public as a Minister of the Crown his methods were considered highly unconventional, largely because his manner of expressing himself was different from that to which tho country was accustomed in its Ministers. A little more experience of him showed that lie was unconventional in action only so far as inertia and circumlocution had become conventions in the departments of which he had become tho head. The one convention which he shattered most completely was that of leaning toward tho most popular rather'than the best way of doing things. He had to face opposition, but he fought it and won. His appointment as Prime Minister is the fruit of his victory. Now the country confidently expects that he will bear himself in a position bringing greater opportunities as well as greater responsibilities, just as he. has done in the immediate past. Direct promise that the expectation will be realised is given by the first statement from Mr. Coates as Prime Minister.