THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22607, 26 June 1935, Page 8

THE PUBLIC SERVICE

ITS DEVELOPMENT AND TRADITIONS ADDRESS BY MR DOWNIE STEWART The inaugural meeting of the newlyformed Otago branch of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration was held in the Public Trust board room last evening, Mr C. de R. Andrews presiding over an attendance of about 40 officers of the various local Government departments. The speaker for the evening was Mr W. Downie Stewart, M.P., who delivered an interesting address on "The Public Service, Its Development and Progress." After briefly outlining the aims of the institute, the chairman introduced the speaker, and said that no one was more qualified to give such a talk than Mr Stewart, who had had the opportunity of studying the public service and its officials, first as a legal practitioner, then as a member of Parliament, and finally as a Cabinet Minister. Mr Stewart said he took it that the object of the members of the institute was not to form a sort of trades union, but to study the science and art of public administration, the best methods ot recruiting officers of the service, to see. that the best men were induced to enter it, and to maintain and increase the pride of its members in their organisation. In short, it might be said that they wished to give their service the status of a learned profession and to maintain its high ideals and traditions. Soon atter the war, a group of civil servants, in inland determined 10 form an institute for the purposes he had mentioned, ana now nearly every university had thrown itself into the movement with enthusiasm, and maintained a lecturer or a protessor of public administration. In some countries, like America, there were tpecial courses in the principles of public administration; in fact, the Americans had excelled in this task of training students for their job. The same thing had happened in Australia, where various Mates had university chairs of public administration. , . , , With the growing complexity of modern industrial and commercial life the State was being called upon more and more to intervene in dealing with the problems that arose, and each step meant an expansion of the public service in some new direction. Instances were the vast extension of the work of the State in the spheres of public health, pensions, unemployment and so on. The main problem of entrance to the service, proceeded the speaker, appeared to turn in New Zealand on the fact that if a student wished to go through a university course he had usually to give up the idea of entering the public service, owing to the regulations as to the age of entry- In England, the system of recruitment allowed for entry after the university course had been completed, lhis was vastly different from the old days of patronage in England, when the office hours were from 10 to 4 (or sooner) and cvnics used to say that civil servants were the class who devoted what time they could spare from the neglect of their duties to the adornment of their persons.

Mr Stewart concluded by narrating, in his own racy and humorous style, a number of reminiscences of bis association with civil servants in various Government departments, and he gave his impressions of them from the point of view of a legal uractitioner and of a Minister of the Crown. Following his remarks, he answered several lquestions, and at the conclusion of a round-table discussion was accorded a hearty vote of thanks.