MINISTERIAL ABSENTEEISM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25798, 20 March 1945, Page 4

MINISTERIAL ABSENTEEISM

The records suggest that Mr Sullivan, Minister of Supply, who has been absent from his country for scarcely five months, is not yet a serious contender with Ulysses, who absented himself from his kingdom for twenty years. But, apart from other differences, there is the distinction that the prolonged world trip made by Ulysses was due to his participation in a war, whereas Mr Sullivan is, of course, now, as always, a civilian. His connection with the war, apart from the questions concerning his department that have arisen from it, has been that of an interested spectator. The Publicity Department has issued some excellent photographs of him inspecting New Zealand forces in the Middle East theatre; and elsewhere he .has visited servicemen’s clubs and greeted New Zealanders who are serving their country in the most exacting role, as fighters for freedom. But his visits must have been as brief as those of angels, for in the past five months he has covered a lot of ground. He went abroad, it will be recalled, to represent New Zealand at the Air Conference in Chicago last November. His mission was a failure. This was not surprising, since everybody except, possibly, the members of the Australian and New Zealand Governments, knew before the conference started that the Canberra Pact idea of international air transport operation would never be acceptable. It remained, when Mr Sullivan got to Chicago, only for him to sponsor the vain proposal, in association with the Australian representative, and for the Brazilian delegation to administer the coup de grace. Thereafter his odyssey followed broader lines. If he did not, like Ulysses, sup with the lotuseaters, he was entertained by Mr de Valera; if he has not, like Ulysses, come back with the winds in a bag, he has been to many countries, met many important people, and no doubt returns with happy anecdotes

of what they said to him and what he told them. Indeed, he is able to assure the gratified New Zealand people that he discovered their country enjoys “ extraordinarily high” prestige abroad —a circumstance they may or may not choose to attribute to the frequent foreign trips of Cabinet Ministers. But there is another trifle of information which the public would probably prefer to learn. It concerns the cost of these Ministerial peregrinations, and the reason for their frequency and extended nature. The answer to the latter part of the question is not satisfactorily provided in platitudes and generalities such as Mr Sullivan has uttered; and the answer to its first part has been stubbornly refused. The Opposition has for years pressed for an accounting on the cost of these pretentious war-time Ministerial excursions abroad, and the information has been scrupulously concealed in the War Expenses Account. A notice of motion requesting a return itemising the expenses incurred on trips and missions taken by members of the Government since it came to office, which was on the Order Paper of the House of Representatives last session, was ignored, and it must be assumed that the Government has its reasons for reluctance to disclose to the taxpayers at what price they are learning of the extraordinary prestige their country enjoys in the lands beyond the seas favoured by Cabinet Ministers.