The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING, Luceo Non uro.” THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1935. THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Southland Times, Issue 22488, 24 January 1935, Page 6

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING, Luceo Non uro.” THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 1935. THE PUBLIC SERVICE

Lord Hewart has not read the New Zealand Public Service Commissioner’s Report commenting on the criticism of the tyranny of the Civil Service, or, if he has, he has not been induced to depart from his strictures of the post-war aggrandizement of the Civil Service chiefs. This disinclination to depart from his earlier stand was shown by the Lord Chief Justice in the course of an interesting case resulting from Mr A. P. Herbert’s determination to have a drink within the precincts of the House of Commons. Mr Herbert’s thirst arose entirely from a matter of principle, a matter concerned with the rights of members and non-members to refreshment within the precincts of Parliament. The case was heard before the Lord Chief Justice. At one stage he remarked: “Is not Parliament really a Government department?” The inference to be drawn is obvious. What Lord Hewart has seen in the Old Country, and what he calls the tyranny of the Civil Service, we in New Zealand might dub government by Order-in-Council; but to assume that in this country the problem and the dangers of the power of the Civil Service hierarchy are restricted to these Orders-in-Council, is to make a very grave mistake. Lord Hewart, sensible of the democratic basis of British Government, is conscious of the growing influence, the growing power of the permanent heads of the Civil Service, due not entirely to their am.bition, but to the weakness of the Ministers charged with the double duty of policy direction and administrative control. At this distance, of course, it is impossible to speak with much confidence of the conditions in the Old Country, but in New Zealand the power of the junta controlling the Civil Service is much greater than the public at large suspects, and the only possibility of checking or diminishing that power is to secure action through the Ministers who are answerable to Parliament and therefore to the people. The removal of the Civil Service from political control has assisted in strengthening the position of those heads of Departments who may be said to be of the hierarchy. The power enjoyed and used by these heads is not restricted to influencing the course of legislation, but it extends through the administrative channels to the humblest members of the public service, exerting over them in many ways a form of tyranny that would not be tolerated in any private concern. Although the public service has its associations, they do not appear to show any activity with reference to such matters as instructions to public servants to

take out their insurance in the Government Insurance Department, and to eschew private concerns, despite the fact that these private insurance companies may be in a position to offer something more suitable to the individual. Undoubtedly, there is all the machinery for appeals and for consideration of complaints, but just as surely, the rank and file of the Civil Service are conscious of the fact that to individuals there is a certain element of danger in taking action which will disclose their identity. It is fairly clear, too, that there are people outside the public service who are conscious that the mysterious thing known as “The Department,” and which is actually the potentate at the head of it for the time being, sets up for itself something closely akin to a claim of infallibility. In private concerns, “the customer is always right”; in the Government service, the “head office” is always right. This is an aspect of the matter which is not revealed in Lord Hewart’s playful reference to the subordination of Parliament to the heads of Government departmens. The growth of bureaucratic power is not a good thing in a democracy, and the best way to check that growth is for all Ministers to be stronger personally in the exercise of their dual functions as legislators and administrators.