CIVIL SERVICE

Southland Times, Issue 22378, 18 July 1934, Page 8

CIVIL SERVICE

COMMISSIONER’S POWERS.

DR CAMPBELL BEGG’S SUGGESTIONS. (Per United Press Association.) Wellington, July 17. “I feel the time has come to take careful stock of the position and to consider if the interests of the Civil Service would not be better safeguarded by a board of three commissioners or by a system where at any rate the Assistant-Commissioner could not be dismissed except on the same terms as the Commissioner himself, namely, by a resolution of the House of Representatives on definite charges of incompetence and misbehaviour,” said Dr Campbell Begg, president of the New Zealand Legion, referring to the. power vested in the hands of the Public Service Commissioner, during the course of an address to the Wellington branch of the Insurance Institute and Officers’ Guild of New Zealand to-night. Dr Begg said that wherever the Public Service had found itself at the mercy of political change, graft of the worst kind had set in. There was no doubt that the Public Service in New Zealand had been used as a stamping ground for politics in the past. A new era had set in in 1912 when most of the power was put into the hands of the Public Service Commissioner and two assistants. This carried its own dangers. While the Commissioner himself could be removed only by resolution of the House of Representatives, the Assistant Commissioner could be removed by the executive on the recommendation of the Commissioner himself, who had practically sole power. “The dangers of such a position are apparent,” observed Dr Begg, “and it may not be desirable that the morale of the service should be affected by the feeling that the -whole of the destiny of members is vested in one man.”