COST OF GOVERNMENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 191, 14 August 1931, Page 12

COST OF GOVERNMENT

PUBLIC SERVICE STAFFS DEPARTMENTAL EXTENSION ARRESTING STATISTICS. The raising of income tax and tariff has caused many people to direct their attention to the cost of government, s somewhat loose term used to embrace all departmental activities. Before giving figures one or tw r o important facts should bo emphasised. One is that the more sparsely settled a country is the higher is the ratic between the number of State servants and the total population, provided s high standard of service, such as prevails in New Zealand, is required. Take, for instance, the Post and Telegraph Department. The present staff.' of hundreds of offices could probably provide the same service fur twice the number of people in their areas. The same applies to the country police force, to part of the rural school teaching service, and to other branches ol State employment. Effect of Small Electorates. Another undeniable fact is that th £ . smaller the population and the size ol Parliamentary electorates the greate; the tendency for governments to uicel demands for State service, whicr swells the cost of government to di mensions out of proportion to the nor inal resources of the country, and quite excessive when those resources i r ( severely curtailed by depression. The meeting of these demands adds to th power of departments, and in the opinion of many people creates manx of the worst features of bureaucracy Both these facts are supported bj statistics. In March last the Hon. E A. Ransom announced that the tota number of permanent State servant; was 43,696, and of temporary employ ees 1.1,621. The permanent list inclmi ed 7788 classified officers under thf Public Service Commissioner, 8945 per manent Post and Telegraph officers and 13,908 officials of the Railways De partment. It might be contended thai even though the post office and rail ways are State monopolies, they never theless are trading departments w’hicl should not be associated with the ad ministrtive branches of government. Eloquent Comparison. Without discussing this argument one may proceed to the examination ol the figures of the Public Service Com missioner’s classified list. The com parison between 19.13-14, a year th:u ended four months before war recruit ment dislocated the services, and 1928 29. the last year to which official fig ures arc available, is arresting, par ticularly in view of the fact that n the period the population increased b; only 332,753, the official figures for tin calendar years of 1914 and 1929 beiuj 1,140,172 and 1,472,925 respectively. In the pre-w r ar year the number 0: officers on the list was 5071, their sa. aries totalling £899,114. In 1928-2! the staffs had grown to 7604, and tfiei: salary bill to £2,266,580. It is not sur prising that business men w r hos« solvency implies a constant watch <n “overhead” stand aghast at these figures, because they know, without a de tailed analysis, that the increase ii departmental staffs cannot possibly b justified by the expansion of nationa I ‘ ‘turnover.” The Classified List. In 1913-14 the Department 0. Agriculture, Industries and Commerce then a single organisation, had 421 classifiied officers. In 1928-29 the De partment of Agriculture employed 54! officers and the Department of Indus tries and Commerce 10. Other com parisons are as follows:—Audit Depart ment, 1913-14, 60, 1928-29, 156; Crowi Law. 9 —6; Customs, 238—302; .De fence, S3 —49: Dominion Laboratory 14 —0; Scientific and Industrial Re search, 0—51; Education, 248 —293 Government Insurance, 138 —111: Im migration, 6 —11; Internal Affairs, 22c —326, plus a relieving staff of 49 Health. 66—426; Justice, 202—261 Labour. 66—107; Land and Deeds 97 —133; Land and Income Tax 71 —159; Lands and Survey, 438—628 Marine, 173—188; Mental Hospitals 532 —939; Mines, 99—51; Nationa Provident and Friendly Societies, .1834; Native, 54 —67, plus Native Trust not separately mentioned in 19.13-14 27; Pensions, 27 —110; Police. 6 —6 Printing and Stationery, 308—319 Prisons, 142 —235; Public Trust, 203599; Public Works, 530 —7.14; Stamj Duties, 32 —76; State Advances, 53 87; State Fire Insurance, 53 —142 Tourist, 125—105; Treasury, 55—89 Valuation, 91—83. Among the departments created u the interim are the State Forest Ser vice with a staff of 119, and Extern.i Affairs with a staff of seven. Th Registrar-General’s Department, xvit.l 32. was separately enumerated in 1913 14, but is not now. It is impossible to say what balance there may exist one way or the othei through the employment of casual em ployees in any of these department: in either year, but the general expan .sion in this group of departments alont is enough to make critics wonder if ii is typical of the w’hole of the services The comparison shows that the De fence total dropped, but obviously thi is accounted for by some alteration 11 the system of classification, becan*-; pre-war totals were much lower tliaj up to a year ago. Warnings Unheeded. From time to time since the w:;; warnings have been issued by compel, ent men that the cost, of governrrnm’ was becoming perilously great. h 1927 the late Sir Robert Stout raisec the question in the Legislative Coun cil and tabled a motion asking for treturn relating to the High Commis sioner’s Department alone, but it warejected by 25 votes to 8, upon the ad vice of the Leader of the Council, wh< said that if the motion appeared or the order paper of the House it wouli be opposed. aLter Sir Robert wrote on the subject in which he cornplaine that the people of New Zealand wbu denied information of an official char actor and strongly pressed his poinl. When the figures given in thi: article were shown to a business mar he said they were definite proof thai the services had become the master They rode on the back of the country like the old man of the sea. The coun try was under the whip of bureaucracy “Take,” he said, “the Printing am Stationery Department with its 31L classified officers and an unknown num ber of casuals. They represent a huge printing business. State papers anc reports and tables pour from itj

presses but look through the output of one session and you will find hundred* and hundreds of pages of unnecessarv stuff that is printed, simply because i. has always been printed. The prepara tion of unnecessary matter, particularly tables to the —nth degree, must keep many men constantly employed And the Government allows this sort of thing to continue and piles on the taxes to pay for it.”