Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 - 1954)(about) |
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Sunday 24 January 1909
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ls Who mus this country? Parliament, I with ¿the Moore vGroveroxnent ' as its
.exçcutivfvor Juli ? Well, as for as de- partmental administration is can
eerned.the direction of affairs* is <vr- ; tainly in the hands of Juli. Within the limits of that majrwrflously duc-
tile piece :ot legislative 'wisdom the. Public Service Act he "eau do «hat, his characteristic -wrong-head- edness prompts " him 'to do. He can take a man from the Lands vpe payment and placed him . in a Job where his energy and- .his experie-ice axe absolutely wasted.' ' <He can pile .ihiWiinen's ' work On the shoulders of onfe overloaded, official "and permit his Kiona-mates to pase the time cracking peanuts. He can put a" dB4tMfc&-year man on to lick stamps for a âiving:,
'while a sweated ?. wage-slave . oh the - ^i^-Äark hW 1» imdertake a £10-a Tf^ß0bi.fXtei*®p laugh -Äi a*he Minis -tera,"and js responsible to nobody, for üjé 'possibility v of persuading both.. Houses of Parlinmppt to pass a vote* of censure on = -the majt,. -much' Iwss sacking bim in his shoe-leather, is too
remote to bc worth considering. There i Isla 'Cheerful constitutional £c¿áon that rio mere public servant may interfere in matters* of public policy, but 'Juli, .in his capacity as boss-joss ol
the \Ctvil Serving, ?-. habitually -does so» i He interferes in publie policy by stead- .! lng in the "may of Civil Service reform, an undertaking which everyone who has the State's interests ats heart reáog- j ?hise&-as necessary. He vron't allow < the Civil Service to be .reformed, if. you- please, and Parliament, in its de- ;
cadence, hasn't the moral courage to 1 -coerce -bim. . Moreover*, he .has held j up for two years tile decentralisation i
of the Lands Department, and if that j
isn't a business wit« which Parliament
« solely dbneerned; we don't know a ] matter of public' policy "when we see ]
one.. Fancy a jumped-up public servant j having ihe impudence-and the pother >-io stand in the way of reform pro- posals vitally affecting the State's land settlement policy "on. jthe 3-vound that a few bank managers and Devil s Brigadiers object to the change. Yet this is the positiori indicated by tho extraordinary correspondence publish- ed last Monday, and it is a position that no self-respecting constitutional l State where the people are supposed Ito role can tolerate for a' moment.
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'. It is admitted on all sides that the administration of the Lands Depart- ment -badly wants sharpening up. Thc delays incidental to the present sys- tem, the muddlemeut and the red-tape are almost as inimical to land settler , ment as the hysterical lies of men like Needham and Underwood, and are'ap- parently recognised by the Premier sis such. Moreover, decentralisation is a. plan which has been tried eucce&s tuMy in. New Zealand^ and it is likely to. work even better in thia country of vastly greater distances, provided a reasonable amount of horse-sense is in- troduced into the manufacture of it. But Juli, the swollen-headed JulL will have none of the thing. The scheme, he reckons, is too complicated for the enormous intellects which (by the grâce of Martin J.) direct the' desti : nies of the Lands Department, besides i his friends in the banking line and the j siac-and-eight industry complain that
it will interfere to some extent with their businesses, and the private coit i venience of "Jerry" Holmes and "Cocky" Bobinson is far more" im- portant, of course, than the settling of 20,000 agriculturists on the soü and the permanent interests of the whole darned State. So the tinpot autocrat planked his immovable body in the track of the proposal, just as he" did in connection- with the reform of the Civil Service, and in the ami- able spirit which incited him to grease the fat hogs of the Straw-hatted Bri- gade whMe he reduced tbs salaries of the rank-and-file to a scandalous ex- tent. Parliament, for its own self respect, will have to do something to JuD. lt cannot, consistently with its own dignitv. permit this arrogant au- tocrat to interfere with the general policy of the State- It cannot allow a third-rate stamp-licker to usurp functions prescriptively delegated by a free people to its Parliament. It can- not, in honor, sit like a graven image while Juli deliberately sprags the wheel of the State coach. Parlia- ment should sack. Juli, and abolish his expensive office, and do* away with the amazing Public Service Act and re- assert its constitutional right to con- trol the public purse and the civil es- tablishment. The present position is merely a travesty on responsible go- vernment. Juli and his Public "Ser-
vice Act, by the way, were legislative ly sponsored by the dreadful Daglish Government - a singular illustration of the fact that the Labor Party, with all its boasted theoretical democracy, bas dangerous .tendencies in the direc- tion of a crabbed and liberty-subvert- ing bureaucracy.
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