MINISTERS AT WORK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 178, 30 July 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)

MINISTERS AT WORK

Just as Mt. Coates’ locum tenens is striving to keep eager workers in honest employment, Mr. Ransom, the Minister of Lands, is striving to keep farmers on the land and to increase their number. No Minister since the days of Sir John McKenzie, has done so much for land settlement in this country as Mr. Ransom has, under difficulties which none of his predecessors encountered, and it is to be hoped that whatever may be the fate of the Coalition Government in the near or distant future, the services of so capable a land administ-ator as Mr. Ransom has proved himself to be will be retained. The policy of the present Government is not merely to place men on the land at any cost, as was done immediately after the Great War, but, having proved themselves as capable husbandmen, to keep them on their farms in preparation for the better times that surely are at hand. As much may be said of Mr. Forbes’ colleagues, perhaps the association of parties tending toward maintained effort. Sir Apirana Ngata, not so very long ago merely a representative of his own race, is now in charge of half a dozen portfolios, giving them exemplary applications; Mr. J. A. Young, Minister of Health, Minister in Charge of Mental Hospitals and the Printing Department; Hon. R. Masters, Minister of Education, Minister of Industries and Commerce and one of the best informed members of the Legislative Council; Mr. J. G. Cobbe, Minister of Defence, Minister of Justice, Minister of Marine, Minister in Charge of Pensions, Police and Prisons, one of the most assiduous workers in the Cabinet and one of the warmest regarded in both chambers, the list concluding with Mr. C. E. Macmillan, the latest appointee, as Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Mines, and one of the most personally popular. The Cabinet on the whole has fully justified the spirit of Coalition.— Manawatu Daily Times.