COUNSEL’S CRITICISM

Southland Times, Issue 21219, 21 October 1930, Page 8

COUNSEL’S CRITICISM

GOVERNMENT AUDIT DEPARTMENT.

“BUREAUCRATIC ARROGANCE.”

(Per United Press Association.)

Wellington, October 20.

Some critical remarks concerning the Government Audit Department were made in the Police Court to-day by Mr H. F. Johnston, K.C.. at the resumed hearing of the case in which Laery and Company, Ltd., auctioneers and produce merchants, of Wellington, were charged on five counts of failing to disclose pecuniary interest in a contract and on two counts of delivering false sales accounts to the Department of External Affairs. Mr E. Page, S.M., presided.

Mr Macassey, the Crown Prosecutor, conducted the case for the police. Mr Stevenson assisted Mr Johnston with the defence. “This is a case of very great importance to the defendant company because the crime involved is one of first-class importance, having as a penalty, in the event of an individual being charged, a term of imprisonment,” said Mr Johnston. The peculiar way in which the case had been presented to the Court had left it to the defence, throwing almost the whole burden on them of bringing to the mind of the Court what the crimes alleged were meant to be. Neither had the prosecution taken the trouble to give any real evidence of the contract which was allegedly made by the Crown with the defendant company or of where the terms of that contract had been departed from. “There are two departments concerned,” he continued, “and what can only be described as the bureaucratic arrogance of the Audit Department which is entirely dissociated from business of any description and apparently has no business knowledge, has led them to impose on the External Affairs Department which was doing the trade, a bureaucratic ignorance of business which, if it were true, would be an abysmal and the strongest possible indictment of a Government entering into trade at all.” There was a conflict of evidence between Mr Smith of the Department of ExternalAffairs and Mr Scott, of the Audit Department, he continued. It was not clear to whom the bananas belonged. The Court -was entitled to consider whether the custom of "buying-in” by its general practice was reasonable and honest. The prosecution had kept from the Court that the custom was universal. The prosecution had had to admit in cross-examination that the custom was known to it. The statement put in by Mr Scott in support of the charges was crude and childish and if it were circulated as the general method of the Audit Department *in ascertaining a company’s profits, it would be laughed at and ridiculed by the whole of the people of New Zealand. Regarding the charges against the company when a practice was known, it was not a secret. Legal argument ensued and the hearing was adjourned till to-morrow.