THE PUBLIC SERVICE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21453, 29 March 1933, Page 8

THE PUBLIC SERVICE

The. retirement of a number of departmental heads of the public service makes an opportune occasion for reducing the national overhead. It is no personal reflection upon the retiring officers and their contemporaries who still exercise authority to assert once more that the public service system is wasteful in the extreme. Tho staffing basis is extravagant. Excluding the Post and Telegraph Department, which is not controlled by the Public Service Commissioner, the Police Department, the Customs Department, which is run on business'" lines, and several others to which no exception can be taken, the general position is anything but satisfactory. No private business could survive _ under the ordinary staffing standard of most departments. The evil began in prewar days, when, under the influence of rising prices, it was imagined that State employment could be indefinitely expanded and State servants be assured of security in their engagement which could not possibly apply to private employment. The excessive burden imposed upon the country, one of the main reasons for the crushing taxation of these days, is recognised bv the Government. The Prime Minister has expressed emphatic opinions on 1 lie subject. But practically nothing lias been dotje to reduce it. Evidently the Government is afraid of the political reaction, and the taxpayers are forced to the conclusion that the bureaucracy is in the saddle and cannot be displaced. The expansion of the public servipe since the war has been out. of all proportion to the expansion of the country's business. Already attention has been drawn to the retention of most of the staff recpiired by the Public Works Department in the days of great, spending. Other departments are just as . extravagantly staffed. That of Agriculture to-day has 549 classified officers; in 1913 it had 392. Lands and Survey had 441 officers in 1913. To-day it has 613. Public Health, which had 53 permanent officers in 1913, now has a staff of 438 without counting temporary employees. The whole service must be overhauled and very considerably reduced, and with new heads in a number of departments the process of retrenchment should be expedited. The common attitude in the service that State employment has special claims for protection cannot withstand the pressure of stern economic necessity.