SPIRIT of the PRESS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 752, 30 July 1886, Page 21

SPIRIT of the PRESS.

The Seleefc Committee on the Government Insurance Association presented their report last Eriday, together with the evidence on which that report is "based. The evidence is very voluminous, occupying about eighty closely printed foolscap pages, and comprising the answers —many verylong—to no fewer than 1286 questions, in addition to numerous ** statements ” volunteered by witnesses, and many documents. The Committee, in their report, deal mainly with two subjects concerning respectively the past and the future of the Government Insurance Department. Under the former head comes their criticisms of the much-talked-of purchases of property made by the Association in the various cities of the Colony. The general opinion of the policyholders and of the public has from the first been adverse, to these purchases, and the Committee substantially endorse that view. It may be remarked that the unfavourable opinion formed by the policyholders and by the public was based mainly on the arguments urged in defence of the purchases. This phase of the matter may, however, be passed by for the present. The purchases—wise or unwise—have been made, and are affairs of the past. Ear more interesting to all' persons concerned is - the question —What, is to be the future of the institution? The answer suggested by the Committee is in substance the same as that returned by the policyholders as the result of the recent poll-. The course advocated is the resumption of control by the Government. That proposal evidently falls in with Ministers’ views, and it will doubtless receive effect at the hands of the Government and of the House. Yet it seems to us not free from some taint of inconsistency. We have always declared our preference for Government control rather than the mongrel and unmanageable system established by the Act of[lßßdi. Government management is to be preferred to that of the present form of Board. But it has not been shown that a more judiciously constituted Board would not have worked satisfactorily- The Committee have given certain reasons which induced their decision on this head- Some of these reasons seem slightly inconsequent. If the internal dissensions of the Board, and the publication of those dissensions, form a ground of abolition, then surely the position of our representative, institutions must be very precarious. For we have heard of responsible Governments in which internal dissensions not only occurred but also were published ; and of a Parliament in which quarrels of the most violent character took place and iound publication, a Parliament which occupied whole evenings with idle and purposeless wrangles about dogs and puppies. But the conclusion deduced from these facts are —not that responsible Governments and Parliaments should be abolished and all power vested in tbe hands of a despotic ruler, butthat abetter Government should be formed, ot a better Parliament elected. Similarly, it would have been more rational to endeavour to devise a more suitable and workable style of Board than to decide after little more than a year’s experience that the, Board system of management has totally failed. Had a Board been constituted in which the policyholders- should exercise a real instead .of a mock control, and from which th® political element should be rigidly eliminated, there is no valid ground for assuming that it must needs hav® proved such a failure as the present Board has been. We regret that an. effort has not been made in this direction, but we agree with the Committee in deeming Government management infinitely preferable to that of a Board, as the latter is constituted by the Act of 1884. i