Mr Scrimgeour

Southland Times, Issue 23181, 23 April 1937, Page 6

Mr Scrimgeour

The more that is known of Mr C. G. Scrimgeour’s appointment as controller of the National Commercial Broadcasting Service, the stranger it appears. In the first place the position, though it has since become one of the most valuable in the civil service, was never advertised. It was given arbitrarily to a man whose calling scarcely seemed an exceptional qualification for the running of a commercial advertising service; and the first the New Zealand people heard of his appointment was through an Australian paper. Mr Scrimgeour’s salary was then fixed at £5OO a year plus 7| per cent, of advertising revenue, though this arrangement, according to the Prime Minister, was to be reviewed in three months’ time. Yesterday—not three months, but within a few days of six months, since the appointment was made—it was announced that Mi Scrimgeour would be paid, as from April 1, a straight-out salary of £l5OO a year. In other words, he is to become one of the three or four highest paid civil servants in the country, with a salary equal to that of the General Manager of Railways and greater than that of the Director-General of the Post and Telegraph Department. Here are the salaries of some of the principal officers in the civil service (as supplied to The Southland Times from Wellington yesterday), with Mr Scrimgeour’s added for comparison:

£ Secretary to the Treasury 1650 General Manager of Railways 1500 Director of Broadcasting 1500 Mr Scrimgeour 1500 Director-General Post and Telegraph Department 1400 Controller of Customs 1300 Controller and Auditor-General 1300 Director of Education . 1250 Director-General of Health 1250 Director-General of Agriculture 1200 Commissioner of Taxes 1200 Commissioner of Police 950 Under-Secretary for Internal Affairs 950 In the Government’s eyes, it appears, control of a radio advertising service is only slightly less important than the highest financial position in the State; as important as the management of an undertaking in which £60,000,000 of public capital is invested and 17,000 employees are engaged—the railways; as important as the management of the whole national broadcasting service; and more important than the management of the post office (10,000 employees), the country’s educational services, and the country’s health services—to take only three of the lesser-paid positions. It is quite clear from this comparison that Mr Scrimgeour is not being paid on the basis of his worth to the State. On what basis, then, is he being paid? Why does the Government feel so particularly indebted to Mr Scrimgeour that it not only presents him with a job; not only pays him a salary that is, by comparison with those of other State officers, quite exorbitant; not only gives him complete freedom to broadcast political speeches from Government radio stations; but on top of all that allows him to tell even its own Ministers their business. Questioned at Dunedin after Mr Scrimgeour’s abusive tirade against the New Zealand Press, the acting Minister of Broadcasting, Mr Jones, said that a full inquiry would be made into the circumstances of the attack. “I expect the truth is Mr Jones had to make such a statement out of courtesy to his inquirers—it was his duty as Minister,” commented Mr Scrimgeour in an interview at Auckland. “I have nothing whatever to fear from an inquiry,” he added, explaining that Mr Savage had given him a definite assurance that “my activities as an individual, and the message I had, would not be prejudiced.” The more his “message” is full of political gall, the better the Government seems to like it. But the Government would do well to remember that Mr Scrimgeour’s very handsome salary is provided, not by the Labour Party, but by the taxpayers of New Zealand; and that in face of this particular kind of political manoeuvring there comes an end to the patience even of taxpayers.