The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1930. THE COST OF PUBLIC SERVICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1080, 18 September 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1930. THE COST OF PUBLIC SERVICE

PUBLIC service by State departments and local bodies in this corintry employs over 85,000 workers and costs £.19,000,000 a year in salaries and wages. Any person who dares to suggest that these figures are preposterously high for the needs of a population less than a million and a-lialf, or hints at the possibility of the Civil Service being overstaffed, “bases his criticism in most instances on a misplaced and generalised assumption, showing an ignorance of the exceedingly wide ramifications of State activity.” So, at anyrate, says the Public Service Commissioner in his annual report which was submitted yesterday to Parliament, and he is in a position to speak with authority.

If adverse criticism of the cost of Public Service be ignorant, then it is to be regretted that the ignorance does not make for bliss among overburdened taxpayers. In any case Mr. P. Versehaffelt denies the fairly general charges that the Civil Service is overstaffed and that the departments have been guilty of financial prodigality. These “are entirely unwarranted charges to level at the Administration, for there is a plain reason for the presence of every person employed, and any curtailment is not a matter of organisation, but of Government policy.” No doubt the reason for the employment of every person in the service is plain enough to the Commissioner and each civil servant, hut is it a satisfactory, convincing reason? While most taxpayers will agree with Mr. Verschaffelt’s explanation as to the expansion of departmental activity or wide ramifications, and accept it without challenge as regards the cause of rank growth, few of them will be disposed to applaud it. There are now no fewer than fifty-five principal departments of State with tentacular ramifications from the Ross Sea to Samoa. Many of these, as the Public Service Commissioner has explained naively, have grown slowly and steadily in recent years because of the popular demand for extension of social services, “remaining more or less obscure and unfelt until, during a period of financial depression, the magnitude of the load fills the taxpayer with apprehension.” Today, the growth of State departments is not obscure. It is plainer than the reason for the employment of every person in them, and the financial effect is felt. The Commissioner has asserted that since the 1921 retrenchment of non-essential and redundant members of the Public Service a rigid scrutiny of all requisitions for new appointments has been made. Indeed there lias been a definite curtailment of new appointments except where expansion of business or newlyassumed activities have made it unavoidable. The net increase last financial year was only 148, this being 81 fewer than for the previous year, while the total classified salaries show a decrease of £G,312. Moreover, just under one-third of the increase in the number of appointments was accounted for by additional appointments to the Public Trust Office, whose salaries bill does not constitute a burden upon the taxpayer. Then 20 per cent, of the increase was due to the appointment of additional trainees for the school dental clinics. This increase may be arrested some day when diet takes the plac’e of dentistry. Meanwhile, in all the departments of State everybody is essential and nobody is redundant. For this there should be much gratitude—in the Public Service.

Those critics who have come under the Public Service Commissioner’s lash may be comforted by the knowledge that leading economists and representative business men also have shown an ignorance of the exceedingly wide ramifications of State activity. In their ignorance they have observed with the apprehension which is one of the by-products of financial depression that in the Civil Service proper, in the departments; employing about onefourth of the total public employees, the staffs have increased since 1914 from 11,587 to 21.272, an increase of 84 per cent., also that salaries increased 174 per cent., from £1,914,016 to £5,237,731. Doubtless the reason is plain, simple and perhaps perfectly justifiable, but in the same period the population increased only 30 per cent. The demand for extension of social and other services must have been very persistent and successful. If the widespread criticism of public service costs be merely an exercise of ignorance, one wonders what sort of wisdom a thorough investigation of departmental staffing and expenditure would disclose. Let it be “a misplaced assumption” to suggest that the disclosure would reveal a great deal of redundant employment and financial prodigality.

SAFEGUARDING THE WATERFRONT

much irreparable damage has already been done to the original waterfront of the harbour that in any further schemes of development special efforts should he made to have remaining natural features preserved. In deciding to extend the Waterfront Road beyond Kohimarama, the City Council has wisely kept this obligation in view, and at considerable extra cost lias decided to take the road at the part affected through private property rather than encroach on the beach. The price asked for part of the property was an obstacle in the way of this alter native. As usual in such cases, some owners, recognising the benefit to the locality of such development works, adopt a generous attitude, and others place a high valuation on their land. In the event of a deadlock, however, the council has recourse to the compulsory terms of the Public Works Act, which gives protection against excessive valuations. By the'original plan the road beyond the Kohimarama pier was to have run out from the existing road on to tidal beach, where it would have been carried on a substantial embankment to a point some distance nearer St. Heliers. Although in the opinion of harbour engineers the beach would have built up again outside this embankment, this would have been a process of many years. In the meantime the populace would have been deprived of the use of that section of the beach, and the embankment would have been a disfigurement to the waterfront. The effect of embankments crossing bays and beaches is not at all harmonious unless the work is very carefully carried out, and a survey of the neighbourhood of Point Resolution and Hobson Bay gives a good idea of the disastrous effects of a series of embankments in breaking up the spacious perspectives of the foreshore. By the plan now adopted for dealing with the problem at Kohimarama, the City Council will take over a part of the sections of several property-owners, setting back the houses on the sections, and carrying the road along the front of them. This plan is going to be more expensive than the other, but the ultimate results will justify the higher expenditure. Except for a small proportion of the cost which will be devoted to the purchase of land, or the compensation of owners, most of the expenditure will be on labour, which, in these times, is a most important consideration. The Waterfront Road as far as it has progressed is an improvement of which the community has every reason to be proud, and it is satisfactory that the City Council has not adopted a short-sighted view in formulating its proposals for completing it.