I move—

1. (a) the retirement of the chief engineer, Col. R, McArthur, and subsequent degrading of the post of chief engineer;
2. (b) the system and methods of promotion;
3. (c) the abandonment of the proceedings to obtain refund of approximately £25,000 per annum, underpayment to the department by the Wireless Company of South Africa; and
4. (d) the desirability or otherwise of establishing separate postal and engineering (telegraphs and telephones) departments, each under a separate and distinct head.

I am not much in sympathy with those people— those members of this House—who, for some weeks past have been preaching economy, translating that economy to mean that either you should reduce the cost of administration or not increase it. I do not regard that as really an honest form of preaching economy, and, honest or not, I do not believe that the cost of living in South Africa, nor anywhere else, is very much affected, either by the retention of its present level, or the subsequent increase of the cost of administration. But I do believe in economy, and, of course, there are some extraordinary outlooks on what is meant by economy. Some people, like those members I have referred to, have an idea that economy means not spending. I do not agree with that view at all. My view is: spend what you have to, but spend it wisely; that is economy. Economy should not, I think, be measured by the amount you spend, but by how it is spent, and it is in that light, economy being wise spending, and, in turn, coupled with efficiency, that I am referring to it now. In regard to efficiency, one is called upon to define precisely what that means. The bulk of the members of this House consider it means that your work should be done at high pressure, and at low wages. That is not my view of efficiency. Efficiency means, to my mind, getting the work done in the best possible way, naturally as cheaply as you can; that is complete efficiency, and, in turn, is the natural corollary of spending the money wisely in the form of wages or salaries, or in whatever direction is needed. It is entirely in that spirit I am approaching the matter. Now those members of this House who have the impression beforehand that I am putting this motion on paper and moving it with the intention of baiting the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, are doomed to disappointment. I have no intention of baiting the Minister. I am hoping to delve into the matter much deeper than that. I am asking for a commission of enquiry, and I hope the Minister and his colleagues will agree that this commission should be of the strongest possible character; not the Public Service Commission, or a commission drawn from both sides of this House, either a majority here or on that side, nor a commission composed of any one of the political complexions represented in this House, even though not in the House themselves. In view of the considerations involved, the commission should be represented by those in whom the people of the country repose the utmost confidence, and I suggest it should be composed of members of the judicial bench; somebody who is above partisanship, and beyond being influenced by political considerations, whose whole object is to take the evidence and press the matter to a conclusion, giving that conclusion to the Government in the hope that the Government will receive it favourably, and act at once. My only quarrel with the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs is that he has failed to take hold. He has, I fear, surrendered to his officials. It may be, of course, that his own insecurity of tenure has something to do with that. I hope he will forgive me for suggesting that; I do not do it out of malice. I say from my short experience—though longer than his— I am convinced it is necessary for a Minister in any department to interest himself practically in all the ramifications of his department; to take the keenest interest in the question of promotions, and see that he gets the right men, and be very careful when he finds public-spirited officials coming within his ken—and they should come within his ken—to protect them, whatever disclosures they may make, in the direction of their retirement. I urge that seriously on the attention of the Minister, because therein lies real efficiency. Interest yourself personally in all the circumstances of the department, and hold on to those desirous of doing the best they can, and ruthlessly extinguish those who show a contrary intention or desire. I was dealing with the question of efficiency, and, of course, this means justice to individuals as a corollary. I found, shortly after my accession to office, that there was— and it became abundantly clear, had been for many years—tremendous friction between the administrative or clerical side of the department, and the engineering side, and I may say right away that that friction, resulting, perhaps, from a different point of view, or a misconception as to what is one’s public duty— that friction was making for inefficiency and ultimately resulted in the resignation or the compulsory retirement, or the retirement agreed upon on both sides, of the head of the department, Col. McArthur. That was the sequel. I believe it was on account of that friction between the branches of the department and the determination on his part to see things right in the department that he had to go. Translated literally, it is not wholly and solely personal. I again remind the House that this friction has been running right through the several regimes of my friends who sit on this side of the House, when they were in office. This friction still existed, I think, but if they were aware of it they did not tell the world. The engineering side and the clerical side have been at daggers drawn to the extent that the engineering side has never had a real opportunity of functioning properly, and the business of the department has suffered in consequence. Now I do not want to go into the whole of the history of it, nor do I wish to mention the various engineers who have been involved. I need only bring to the House the conditions which obtained with regard to a recently ex-engineer, Col. McArthur. At the outset, may I correct the hon. Minister in his answer? The Minister was asked by the hon. member for Dundee (Mr. Friend) what was, amongst other things, the amount of pension that Col. McArthur received on retirement. I think the Minister said it was something like £500 per annum. Is that the correct figure?

I said something higher than that.

No, you did not. However, the Minister will have the real answer at his disposal.

It was £520 per annum.

To that extent the Minister is correct. I said, in round figures, £500. But even £520 is incorrect.

Quite so.

It is another instance of the danger of relying too much upon officials. Col. McArthur, I believe, had a pension on retirement of something like £750. I may be wrong in that, and I am open to correction. Of that he commuted a third and the state paid Col. McArthur £3,000 in a lump sum, and £500 in payment of his pension.

It was £501 9s. 4d.

At all events, the little mistake I made would not shut down the Union. I was £1 9s. 4d. out. The point is, it was sought from the Minister to mislead this House by understanding, very considerably indeed, the amount of pension that the chief engineer was getting. He got his full pension, I believe, for the salary he was receiving for his service, plus, of course, under the Natal law, the difference between the actual service he has given and his retiring age. He was getting, in fact, £750 pension. At the outset, you see, the Minister himself has been misled, and was, unfortunately, misled into misleading this House. If he was not misled then he deliberately misled this House. I ask the Minister not to shake his head. I am not going to make this a personal matter with him at all. I am not baiting the Minister. I have nothing whatever to do with the Minister as a person. I am regarding him as the ministerial head of the postal department, and I am satisfied from my pas: experience, and experience of officials within the post office to-day, that all is not well with the state of Denmark. I am urging upon him that he should enquire into it, and give his personal attention to it. I know that he cannot enquire into everything, so, in order to do this, I ask him to agree to the appointment of this commission to go into all the circumstances that I shall enumerate. I ask that this commission should examine the matter with no partiality whatsoever, and should make its recommendations to him to help him, and whatever experience I have will be placed at his disposal freely and unreservedly without any personal or political bias, in order that we might get a higher state of efficiency in a department with which I was closely associated for about four years. I must return to this question in order that the Minister shall not be under any misapprehension. The hon. member for Dundee asked the question whether Col. McArthur had resigned from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. The reply was that Col. McArthur had asked to be retired on pension before the usual age. I am informed by Col. McArthur that that is not correct. He did not ask to be retired, but, as the result of the persecution which Col. McArthur had to endure, and to which he was subjected for many years past, he got so disgusted with the whole position that he intimated his readiness to retire if the Minister so desired. That is number one. He did not ask to be allowed to retire. Question number two was: “What were his reasons, and who was appointed in his place, when was the appointment made, and at what salary?” That will come in later on, when I am dealing with the degrading of the post of engineer. The answer to the question “What is the salary?” was that it was £1,210. The next question was, whether Col. McArthur draws a pension? The answer was “Yes." The next question was: “What period did he serve before his pension was due?” The answer was: “Two years and seven months.” Hon. members must remember that that was added to his service for pension purposes. The next question was: “What public money does he draw now ?” The answer was literally correct. The question was, unfortunately worded, and it gave that clever and astute gentleman who draws up the answers to these questions for the Minister to fire off, the opportunity for the Minister to say it in the way he desires. The answer was that the pension was at the rate of £501 9s. 4d. per annum. In the light of the information I have given the House that statement is obviously incorrect, because the pension granted to him was £700 odd per annum, to which he was legally entitled, and of which he was allowed to commute one-third and get a lump sum payment of £3,000. All that was done was to capitalize a portion of his pension, but his actual pension was £750, or as near that sum as may be. So the Minister was put into the false position of having to inform the House that Col. McArthur was getting a pension of £501 9s. 4d., as though that was the only sum ever granted to him. The question was most unfortunately worded. It gave the gentleman concerned the opportunity of answering it in the way he desired. Do not let us beat about the bush. It was desired to inform the House that Col. McArthur is getting no other public monies beyond the £500.

How can you say that?

How many Ministers are there on this job? I do not blame those brothers in misfortune, not for one single moment; I have a certain amount of sympathy with them.

A soft spot.

No. There was a question of a lack of efficiency owing to an overlapping of the clerical and the technical or engineering sides of the department. What led to Col. McArthur’s resignation was his “fed-uppishness” with this overlapping due to the lack of technical knowledge on the clerical side — an understandable thing which should not be tolerated for one moment, and a constant hampering that he experienced from the clerical side in his efforts to improve the engineering side of the postal department. I will challenge anybody in this House or anyone in the engineering world to dare to say that Col. McArthur was not in the first flight of engineers in this country, more particularly can I say from my own experience—and I will even call on the Minister of Labour to deny that he himself has not expressed himself to me personally and also on paper to Col. McArthur himself that it is a great pity that the latter found it necessary to sever his connection with the Minister in his technical capacity to the Defence Department over which the hon. gentleman reigns with such scintillating ability. It was a genuine testimonial—Col. McArthur appreciated it, and I appreciated it, and it only bore out in part what I knew fully that Col. McArthur was a brilliant engineer of almost world-wide repute, and was thought a great deal of by both the British and the Australian post office departments. Easy as it might have been in the first place to divorce the clerical and engineering departments when both concerns were very small, it is all the more necessary now that they have grown to such tremendous proportions, especially on the engineering side. We have as an example the experience of the whole world, particularly the Continent, where the engineering side of communications has developed to a tremendous extent. Almost without exception leading countries have two separate departments—not two separate departments under one departmental head, which I was quite prepared to institute, thus leaving the postmaster-general in supreme command—not that, but two completely divorced departments, each with its own distinct head answerable only to the Minister. On the Continent that system obtains generally, and even in conservative England, where I suppose the postal department stands more than anything else for conservatism, a select committee of the House of Commons recommended to the Government that the time had arrived when an account of the tremendous growth of the engineering branch, and in order that there should be no hampering and that the telegraphs and telephones should advance without let or hindrance, the two departments should completely be divorced under a separate head, the Minister being the focussing point of the department. I did not ask for that when I was in the Cabinet, but I essayed to have this brought into being, not divorced from the postmaster-general but still under his direction. I regret very much to say now that I noticed evidences of intrigue of such a character as to prevent a Minister bringing in a reform when he found it to be necessary and that he was prevented by the intrigues of officials below him on the clerical or administrative side of the department. I give that to the Minister in all seriousness and good faith and with the best of good will. The Minister had better examine very carefully indeed the position of his department—it is nothing to smile at and that is a very foolish way with which to deal with an indictment. I am not very much concerned with the personality of the Minister at all, and I do not think anybody else is, but I am giving him the benefit of my experience and if he thinks it is not worth anything that is for the world to judge, but I have the right to expect that he will take the advice in the spirit in which it is offered. I have a copy of the correspondence between Col. McArthur and the department which I will lend to any hon. member to read. The chief engineer complains not only of being hampered, but of a complete waste of money by reason of the fact that the clerical side of the department did not understand the position, particularly when it came to buying certain articles. He cites here in the first place the case of the purchase of insulators. It was about the war period and prices had soared, and without reference to him or the chief storekeeper orders were placed with a German firm—that is nothing against it, of course—for insulators far in excess of requirements without consultation with the chief engineer, the purchase being made on the ground that the British-made article was very much dearer at the time. He draws attention to the fact that there was a complete miscalculation, to say the least of it, because they were taking a German quotation of some weeks before the actual indent, although the prices were falling all the time, and the English insulators were very much cheaper at the time the German insulators were purchased. He says this is the direct result of not consulting with the chief engineer, who knows all about these things. I care not who he is; he has the training and general capacity, and is as much an administrative officer as any clerical man can be, with the superimposed qualification of knowing his engineering side as well, and dovetailing the two together which makes for efficiency. Something like 50 per cent, more insulators than were required were purchased, and the Treasury had to go into the matter, and they actually queried it. It is not the present Minister of Finance, so I am not getting at him. In addition to the extra cost per thousand they paid which they should not have paid, on examination by the chief engineer, he condemned every one of these insulators. That was one of the nails in his coffin. He protested that this was making for inefficiency and was wasting public money. If the Minister would only take the trouble to read this statement made by him, I am sure he will realize, whatever he has made up his mind to to, that it is absolutely essential to have an enquiry such as I am asking for. Then there was a question of the tremendous quantity of bridle wire bought without him and condemned because it would not stand up to the work. This system of running the post office is leading to this inefficiency. Like a thread woven through cloth is the personal objection of certain officials on the administrative side which has translated itself into obvious dislike of, and determination to get rid of, Col. McArthur, because he was a thorn in their side. To show you how inefficiency occurred, and developed, the department promoted clericals on the engineering side. I leave it to any professional man to say, from his wide knowledge of world affairs, whether it is not desirable to have a technical man in charge of technical matters, and not, be interfered with, sat upon and controlled by clerical men who, in the nature of things, can have very little knowledge of these matters. I have confidence in the point of view of these professional men. Very estimable men have been promoted in the telephone service. I know them very well, but I say they are round pegs in square holes, and should not have been promoted on the engineering side. The chief engineer has to take orders from clericals with regard to equipment and matters of a purely engineering character—how they are to be done, where they are to be done, and what is to be done. It is a state of affairs that cannot commend itself to any man of affairs or who has any pretence to knowledge of how they should be run. The institution of exchanges was all decided by clerical men. Curt orders were given to the engineer to carry this or that out. There are numerous instances where, against his express advice, certain work was undertaken with the result that it could not stand up to the requirements. Is there not a case, on that alone, for an enquiry? The engineer does not want to run the administrative side at all, and does not want to have anything to do with it, namely the postal side, but he has a right to run the engineering side administratively as well as technically because he combines the two branches of knowledge, and he is best able to do it in the interests of the country. He did several things to bring him into disrepute with the clerical side; he joined issue with the clerical side on the well-known instance where four men were incontinently retired from the postal service at a considerable financial loss to themselves, in one or two instances, and what for? A post was abolished—the Minister of Finance will be interested in this—accompanied by increased payments by the state, however small it may be, and new posts were created and two posts were combined in one. It was apparently an economy, but I emphatically believe it was in order to make openings for certain friends of those in authority. This is not a political thing—I hope the Minister will not think that for one moment at all. They were not politicians, but it was purely personal interest on the part of the officials for their own friends to get jobs. I will bring it down to one, whom I definitely refused to promote because I thought him incapable for the higher post. The Public Service Commission is not the right body to deal with these things at all; they have so little knowledge of them; it is all paper knowledge. I would rather that the Minister shoulders the responsibility all the time. What has happened? The posts were scarcely instituted before it was found, as I myself indicated to the postmaster-general, that it was entirely unworkable for the two posts to be joined together under one head. I held that the business of the department would suffer, and that has been proved to be correct, and they have now got the two men in the two offices, but they do not happen to call the postmaster the postmaster. But the promotion was accomplished. My interest in this matter is only that of the State to-day. I am a member of Parliament, with an experience of official life, short as it was, and on that experience, which to me was very rich indeed, I am drawing, and giving the House and the country the benefit of it, for what it is worth, in order that some effort may be made to secure complete efficiency of a department which can be made remarkably efficient indeed. There is one other matter with regard to this engineering side to which I wish to refer, and which I am keenly anxious to bring before the House. All over the world they have, in postal departments, development control. The idea is to take a bird’s eye view, not only of the present services, conditions and equipment, but of possible growths and of requirements in this or that direction, in short, a mapping out ahead of engineering developments, keeping up with the growth of the population. All over the world they have that, but all over the world it is in the hands of the engineering department, and I say that that argument cannot be gainsaid. The engineer is the man to carry out development study. Long past has gone the time when an engineer was only an engineer. The engineer to-day knows as much about administration, if not more, than a large number of people who have had their entire training in administration. What have they done? They have a committee of these clericals who are studying, from an engineering point of view, what the development is likely to be, and shall be, and will be. It is a waste of public money, by reason of the fact that these things will not be done properly. Instances have occurred where the institution of telephones and other things has been more costly than it ought to have been, by reason of the fact that clericals control this development, and not the engineering staff. There is one other very important matter I wish to mention, and that is the question of the payment due to the Administration of something like £25,000 a year from the Beam Wireless Company of South Africa, due to underpayment of terminal charges. I am absolutely certain of the underlying influences after my 20 years’ experience of political life. I have seen how big finance can exert influence. These are things which are done by the Minister on the advice of officials. I am not attacking the Minister, but it a most extraordinary thing to me that this should take place. When I was Minister it was reported to me by Col. Mac-Arthur, who was acting postmaster-general at the time. He reported to me that the agreement made between the Government and the Beam Wireless Company of South Africa was not being adhered to, and that this was to the disadvantage of the department and the public of South Africa; that they were paying less terminal rates for their telegrams than they were supposed to, and, what is more, in making them that allowance, those responsible were actually breaking an Act of Parliament. In the agreement for beam messages from South Africa to England, the post office takes telegrams in. You write a message in the ordinary way and hand it over the counter, as though it was an ordinary telegram. The company controlling the beam has its tariff for messages fixed by the Government, by the postmaster-general, and in the agreement made between the Government—and that agreement is only carrying out an Act passed by this House—it is laid down what they shall pay to the Government for what are called “terminal charges”; that is, the sending of a telegram from any town in South Africa to the point where they transmit it by beam. The Act is specific, and the agreement is specific, and lays it down that the terminal rates shall be the ordinary telegraph rates of the country. I ask any hon. member of this House what they would understand by “the ordinary telegraph rates”? You pay the ordinary telegraph rates. What do you pay? A minimum of 1s. 3d. and every word after that, on the same message, is 1d. in addition. If you only send an address, you pay 1s. 3d. But what do we find? By an interpretation of the former postmaster-general, endorsed by the present postmaster-general, these people are getting off with not that as the price, but with 1d. per word, and, as the vast bulk of messages really go from four to five or six words, you can understand that the difference between 6d. and 1s. 3d. is dead loss to the Union of South Africa. Col. McArthur discovered this immediately he assumed control of the administrative side, and informed me officially, and I instructed him to demand of the company that they should pay for the first year as the agreement said, and as the Act lays down. They resisted it. The Act provides that where there is any dispute, either side can demand arbitration, and they did so. We put up our arbitrator; we were facing the issue knowing that we would get the verdict. I was not content with merely taking the report of Col. McArthur; I used my own commonsense, and we went to the law adviser. The law adviser had been seen by somebody else, and he gave a judgment against us. Further information was sent—I sent Col. McArthur to interview the law adviser—the agreement was produced, and at once he said that we had a case, and we could go ahead. I went down personally to my friend and he agreed right up to the hilt that this company was doing us out of £25,000; of course, he did not agree as to the precise amount. I consulted him as a friend of the family. We were all satisfied that the company was doing us down. I came out of office; Col. McArthur was relegated to a back seat; arbitration proceedings were abandoned, and as a result South Africa is going to receive £25,000 less for terminal charges than it ought to be getting. This is something the House did not know of; something the House ought to know of; something that I hope that side of the House will regard as justifying the necessity of an enquiry being made into the matter by people competent to judge; people not likely to be swayed by influence. The desirability of establishing separate departments within this department I dealt with as part of the other matter. I do not want to keep the House. I could give innumerable examples, but in saying what I have said I hope hon. members will see that I have established a case for enquiry. I have not asked the House to convict anybody; I have not asked the House to say to the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, “You are no good; get out of it.” I am only asking that a commission should be set up. Do not take what I say; do not take the Minister’s reply; do not take anybody’s, anything, but get somebody to enquire into the whole business who would express themselves without fear or favour as to the line to be adopted. After that, the Minister, or the Minister and his colleagues, can take the responsibility. Even if I cannot get the commission appointed I feel that I have done my duty.

In seconding the motion of the hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Madeley) I think both sides of the House should take into consideration that there is no suggestion of any political pull on either side, with regard to the facts as he has put them to the House. It is hoped that not only the Minister, but also his colleagues in the Cabinet, will not take up the attitude that because certain official acts are challenged, they must oppose any enquiry. From the point of view put forward by the hon. member for Benoni, he has emphasized right through that he is not concerned with and never has seen any political aspect of the question, but he has seen a division between different sides of the department—a bureaucratic war in the department concerned, and I would love to see a bureaucratic war in every department to-day, because that would be the best way for the Government and the country to find out how little the Cabinet controls the administration of the various departments. That bureaucratic control has become so great and determined, that now you have bureaucratic differences, and bureaucratic wars. Out of evil shall come good, and out of such division as we have heard of to-day which probably exist in other departments, although they have not arrived at the same stage—indicate the necessity for the fullest enquiry. It would appear from what the hon. member for Benoni has told us, that the clerical section and the engineering section of the department were moving forward with the intention that their view shall dominate the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, irrespective of the well-being of the department itself. They take up the position “Either I must win, or the other fellow will make my position impossible.” It appears that the engineering side lost and the clerical side won. We know that in commerce it has been an accepted principle for many years that the engineering section is complementary to the general manager’s department, and the general manager’s department complementary to the engineering section. Even on your steamships to-day you have that position. Whilst the captain is in supreme command of the ship, the engineer is entirely in charge of his section so far as the working of the engineering side is concerned. The one official’s job is complementary to the other. Any pulling against each other would be a danger to the whole concern. Is that in the interests of the postal service? Is it in the interests of the country that such a state of affairs has been progressing for some considerable time? As far as I can see in connection with what my hon. friend has said, while the question of bureaucratic control is one that really comes out of all that part of it, and that part that I hope we shall hear something more of in the future, are we as a House and a country prepared to fight this question of officials, if they find that they have a chief who is responsible for Parliament and does not see eye to eye with them, and they will not be loyal to the outlook of that chief? We realize all the more the danger that the country is in, if officials can arrive at a stage when they can secure such a position that we have heard of this afternoon. I was more concerned with the statement made that two contracts had been placed without the consent of the engineering department, wherein a large sum of money was lost in one case, and a large amount of goods bought which were entirely unsuitable and useless for their purpose in the other case. The first was a matter of insulators. I do not know anything about them. My hon. friend describes them as porcelain fittings. The insulators were bought at a much higher price than need have been paid for them. The second charge is that a large amount of wire was bought and was found to be useless for its purpose. If that is so, I think the Minister will admit that, apart from anything else, there is a case for enquiry. We must take the statement made in the House, and I hope that the Minister will go into it and agree that the enquiry committee asked for will be created, so that they can go into these points also. I will say this that it is news to me, it is an eye-opener to me, that this Beam company has been able to put £25,000 against this country, that they are legally chargeable for a sum of £25,000 per year, and they have got away with it. It is news to me that that position exists. If the agreement entered into between the Government of the Union of South Africa and the Beam company is, as indicated by the mover of this motion, namely, that as a result of the terminal charges being interpreted wrongly, interpreted to the interests of the Beam company, and wrongly, as advised by the law advisers, then I say it is wrong that the head of that department, that the Minister in charge of that department, and the Government itself, should allow that position to continue. To say that a big company like that is getting away with £25,000 per year which legitimately belongs to the State, is a state of affairs that no political party can stand for, and no Government can stand for. The suggestion that may be made that this is an attack upon the Government is one which cannot hold water. I myself have supported the Government side right up to about 18 months ago, and until just a little before the last general election I have never heard about a thing like this. I am equally satisfied that when we sat there, if it had been brought to our notice, and we had gone to our Nationalist colleagues and put that position to them they would have agreed equally with us that it must be a thing to be put right and that the Government must see that justice is done. This is not a question of a political issue. It is not a question even of the administration by the Minister of that department. It is not even a suggestion that the administration is wrong from the point of view as he sees it, but it is to show that there is something of an undercurrent in his department that he himself is not aware of. It is an under-current of which each Minister is not aware of. It is a state of affairs that the Government of the country has not been fully aware of, but now the position has been put clearly before them, before this House and before the country. I submit that the case put forward by the hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Madeley) indicates first that there is no question of a political issue. Secondly, there is no question, so far as the Minister himself is concerned, with regard to his intentions or his outlook. Surely, it shows that there has been a bureaucratic practice. There has been gross inefficiency in the purchase of certain articles and, in one case, at a price much higher than should have been paid, and in the other case, the purchase of an article that was entirely useless for the purposes for which it had been bought. Finally, it shows that there is a contract in existence between the Union of South Africa and a private concern which would entitle the Government of the Union to £25,000 over a period of two or three years and during years to come, that is not being paid to the Government. I think that is an indictment of things underneath in connection with which we are entitled to an enquiry. This country is also entitled to have these things enquired into. I am not anticipating how the Minister may receive this motion, for I do not know. But the vote of this House against the motion of my hon. friend is not going to dispose of these things. A vote of this House against this motion, turning it down, will not dispose of it, not by a long way. There are members on both sides of the House who have heard this afternoon things that we have never heard before. It might almost make us feel that it would be a good thing if we could get a little more of the inner history of the workings of the departments whereby in the future we would be fully alive to the danger that every political party is faced with when it takes office, namely, the desire of officialdom and bureaucrats to filch from the duly elected of the people that power that the people believe they have given to a certain party.

The hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Madeley) at the beginning of his speech said he had no desire to bait the Minister, and I fully appreciate that that was not his intention in bringing forward this motion. I am quite sure, however, that in his own mind he considers he has delivered a slashing attack on the administration of the post office, and that his motion—he has made no secret of it— was designed for the purpose of attacking the administration of the post office. In his attack on the post office, he said he found in that department a tremendous amount of friction, and he plunged into past history relating to the purchase of unsuitable insulators and wire that gave rise to this friction. But all the time he was Minister of Posts and Telegraphs and noticed that the officials were not pulling together, what steps did he take to remedy this? Did he appoint a commission to enquire into the matter? Now, however, as a distinterested spectator, as he calls himself, he asks Parliament to do so. I want to assure him that when I first came into office, I found a lot of friction inside the department, but I defy any hon. member to point to any friction that exists in the department at the present time. It must be plain to the House that this is because the cause of the previous friction has been removed. I certainly had a good deal of difficulty at the beginning in trying to get the officials to work together. It was clearly the hon. member’s duty as a Minister, if he knew of all these things, to have taken proper steps at the time to see that they were remedied. His motion is very comprehensive, but three parts of it have no relationship to the administration of the postal department; (a), (b) and (d) all refer to matters of organization and promotion, and Parliament in its wisdom, or otherwise, has under statute relegated these matters to the Public Service Commission and that is the proper body to deal with these particular things. If their recommendations are wrong there is a need, not to enquire into the administration of the post office, but into the work of the Public Service Commission to see if it is not doing its work correctly. I do not want, however, to evade any of the points the hon. member has brought forward. In the first place, when I answered a question in this House a little time since, I told the House that Col. McArthur left the service voluntarily and at his own request. At the only interview I had with him I expressed the hope that he and others would do their best to allay the friction that existed in the department. I never saw him again, but many months after that I was shown a letter he had written asking to be retired from the department. I saw that letter with my own eyes, and I ask my hon. friend to believe that I read it. Of course, it was the duty of the department itself once the Public Service Commission had agreed to Col. McArthur’s retirement, to give effect to that recommendation, which it did. The post was filled—not the same post, for the department took advantage of the opportunity of his retirement to reorganize the engineering branch in a direction they had favoured for some time. That brings me to another matter. Apparently the policy of the past has been to refer every little tin-pot question relating to the engineering department to headquarters, and the consequence was that a headquarter staff had grown up altogether beyond what was needed. Matters that could easily be left to our divisional engineers, who receive high salaries—matters which they were thoroughly competent to deal with—were referred to headquarters. Advantage has been taken of Col. McArthur’s retirement to reorganize the department, which has resulted in a large degree of increased efficiency, and at the moment, a small economy which is reflected in the estimates. The hon. member tried to prejudice me against the officials by saying they hid things from me. I should never hesitate— and the hon. member ought to know me well enough to be aware that if I saw anything of that kind in the department I should not close my eyes to it—to demand satisfaction. The hon. member tried to poison my mind against my officials by saying that it was his experience that the officials were always trying to mislead him, and that they had also tried to mislead me in regard to the answer given to a question replied to in this House. Well, the department through myself categorically answered the question asked by the hon. member for Dundee (Mr. Friend). I was given supplementary information so that if a supplementary question were asked as to whether the pension was all the moneys Col. McArthur received I should be in a position to answer that question. The question asked was what public money does Col. McArthur get, and the answer was a pension of £501 per year. The further information supplied to me was that Col. McArthur has commuted one-third of his pension for the sum of £2,890, and this £501 represented a pension on the two-thirds remaining. I have not found any instances where, if officials have been treated fairly and have been asked questions, they have failed to give me proper information. The next point was with regard to the system and methods of promotion. The hon. member knows quite well from his own experience that these are matters obviously for the Public Service Commission to deal with, but I notice that all along he has differed on that point, holding that the Minister should decide these matters, but the law has laid down that these are duties which the Public Service Commission should perform. I entirely disagree with him, and I do not know what we should come to in this country without the Public Service Commission. I wonder what state the public service would be in if there were not a commission to adjudicate on these matters, and if these things were left to the Minister of each department to determine. Personally, I think this commission is not only necessary in the interests of the public, but I think public servants will agree with me when I say it is necessary in their interests as well that these matters should be relegated to the commission. You cannot have it both ways—to relegate it to the commission, and to give the Minister a free hand, as the hon. member thinks he should have had when he was in office. He has dealt with what he calls the underpayment by the wireless company in South Africa to the Government for services rendered. I will go a little deeper into this matter, so that hon. members may thoroughly understand it. I can speak only from the facts as I have found them. In 1923 Parliament passed an Act in the schedule of which was an agreement which allowed a company to set up a high-power wireless station in South Africa. Terms and conditions were laid down in that agreement, the capital to be raised by the company, and so forth, how they were to perform the service, the rates to be charged to the public, and the recompense which the Government had to receive from the company for the transmission of messages inland. The agreement states that this amount shall be subject to the usual charges made for inland telegrams, which, as hon. members know, is 12 words for 1s. 3d. It is the same now as it was then. The minimum is 1s. 3d. That obviously is not in accordance with the advice tendered at the time by the department that the charge should be a penny a word. The interpretation the department has placed on those words from the beginning, and there is plenty of proof on that point—was that the rate was to be 1d. per word—the same rate as they charged the cable company, and in accordance with the international postal agreements under which they are not allowed to charge one company more than another, or to differentiate. Furthermore, the department, from the very beginning of the service, charged 1d. per word. There is no doubt what their intention was, or their interpretation of the words, they were to charge only 1d. per word.

interjected a remark.

I quite agree a mistake was made there in a strict legal sense, but the law does not compel them to charge more. In the mind of the company, of the postmaster-general, almost universally the intention was clear to charge only 1d. per word, in regard to the transmission of those messages inland. Anyway, they started off in this way. Hon. members will remember quite well that when the aerials of the high-power station had been erected, and some £60,000 had been spent, radio-telegraphy had been so improved by inventions that the old idea of a high-power scheme was abandoned with the permission, I presume, of the Government, and again with the consent of the Government, the company was permitted to erect a radio station costing only about one-fifth of the original station.

Radio was the original; they invented the beam.

Beam means the same thing as radio. The original agreement was therefore departed from, and when the company had put up their station and began to operate, they did so under a temporary permit issued in terms of the Post Office Act—not the 1923 Act, which referred to a totally different thing, a high-power station. I think legally the Act is defunct and does not exist, because a departure from it was acquiesced in, and because there is no penalty in it for non-compliance. With regard to the new station, permission was given to the company to work this under a temporary permit, which incorporated the conditions of the original agreement as far as rates and charges, expropriation, and other obligations of the company were concerned. The company started to receive and transmit messages, and we forwarded them inland, and charged the sum originally intended, viz., 1d. per word, which is the same charge that we have made for 25 years to the cable company. While the postmaster-general was overseas about two years ago, the hon. member has to-day told us, the chief engineer pointed out to him the discrepancy between what we were charging and what was laid down in the 1923 Act, and immediately the hon. member set machinery in motion to lay a claim to the difference in the amount. I wish to point out to the House that, although the 1926 Radio Act had been passed, the company were still compelled to carry on under a temporary licence given from time to time by the postmaster-general, and until I gave orders to stop the work, about £1,000 had been expended in trying to ascertain what the difference was between the two charges. I think it was an unwarranted expenditure of public money. The company resisted the claim, and pointed out that the practice had been in existence from the commencement, and that the department had never made the claim before.

What about the auditor-general?

The auditor-general does not appear to have been aware of this matter as far as I can learn. There was a provision in the original agreement to the effect that in the event of a dispute occurring as to rates or other matters, the dispute had to be submitted to arbitration, and the company, who resisted the claim, asked for arbitrators to be appointed. It was at that juncture I came on the scene as Minister. I went through the papers, legal opinions, and things of that sort, and there were three outstanding points which impressed me. The first was this: that it was as clear as daylight that from the very beginning of the working of the wireless the whole department from top to bottom has been under the impression that the intention was to charge the same for the transmission of wireless telegrams as had been charged for cable telegrams. The second point that impressed me was that all the legal advice tendered to the hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Madeley) as Minister, showed that if it had been a simple matter of this clause in the agreement going before a court for an interpretation of the clause apart from the surrounding circumstances and intentions, then it was obvious that the court could be expected to give a verdict in favour of the Government, but as the matter had to go to arbitration, arbitrators would not divorce that clause from the rest of the agreement, and surrounding circumstances and universal practice, and there was not much likelihood of the Government claim being successful. The third point was that even if we gained the verdict the company would, as they threatened, reimburse themselves from the pockets of the public, so that no good public end could be served by taking the money out of one pocket and putting it into another. Furthermore, if it was as claimed that 1d. a word sufficed to pay the department for the service rendered, there seemed no great point gained by increasing the charge for messages. Those were the points that impressed me, but for the time being I left the matter where it was. We were asked to appoint arbitrators, and in due course to notify who our arbitrators were to be. When we came to Cape Town the state attorney came down and began to prepare his evidence. He interviewed officials as to what were the intentions, not the intentions of the late Minister or myself, but the intentions of the officials who advised the Government at that time, and he came to me and advised me that he had no real case to go to arbitration with. If it was a matter that he could take to a court, he said it would then be a different matter, but in regard to arbitration on the question of the interpretation of this agreement, in the light of what was the intention at the time the agreement was made, then he felt sure we had no case. Acting on that advice, we withdrew our claim, and shortly after, acting under Section 5 of the Radio Act, we were able to issue the licence to the company under which they work at the present time. The principal conditions of the previous temporary licence were repeated in that licence and we also made the position perfectly clear as to what the charges were to be in future.

One penny a word.

Yes, the same as the cable company. We have no right as a member of the International Postal Union to differentiate between one service and the other. The hon. member has dealt with his pet idea of separating the postal from the engineering branch of the service. He speaks from his own particular knowledge in these matters, but I have, or think it best, to follow, more or less, the advice of people who are expected to tender Ministers competent advice. I see no necessity for having two departments in water-tight compartments, so that they can never come into contact. It seems to me that the engineering branch, the telegraphs and telephones, and the postal side, should be in the closest co-operation with each other. Once you start this idea of public utility services being divided into a number of branches, with heads of these branches who may differ as to methods and policy, you are on the road to friction, and friction must eventually take place. Then who is to decide? I can only think that the friction of which the hon. member has complained, but which is non-existent in the post office to-day, began at the time the hon. member conceived this idea of dividing the department. I hope that, as Minister, I am not going to be placed in the same unenviable position. I see no need for reorganization. The hon. member has made out no case for it. In regard to three parts of this resolution the matters mentioned are those which the Public Service Commission have been appointed to deal with. If the hon. member has advice with regard to these matters he desires to tender to the Public Service Commission, let him do so. The hon. member has dived, to some extent, into the past, but he has brought forward no evidence to justify the enquiry he has asked for, and I hope the House will reject the motion. I would also like to add that I resent very much the hon. member’s attack on the officials of the postal department. I have sat in this House as many years as he has, and I must say that as, an onlooker, and as one who has been more recently in closer contact with the department, I have always thought that the postal service of this country is most efficiently run. I see no fault to find with it. I hear no complaint from this House of the administration of the post office, and I hear no complaints outside, except, of course, those little faults and mistakes which are common to all humans. I do not think the hon. member is fair in attacking a set of officials behind their backs in a place where they cannot reply.

This has been going on ever since Union, and, like the hon. Minister I came in and found it going on and found that it was doing harm to the service. The hon. Minister has discharged an honest official who was doing his best in the interests of the department—or rather he has removed him and de-graded the other men and in effect told them that if they are not very careful they will go too. He has laid down conditions and regulations under which they cannot do anything. He has laid it down that the postmaster-general is the boss of everything. The hon. Minister said that this gentleman asked to be retired. He goes on to say [letter read]. Of course, one would expect the Minister to adopt that attitude. As I indicated right at the beginning he is content to sit in his chair and rubber stamp anything that comes up from the administrative side. I was rather sorry to have the Minister turn on me in that ferocious way of his when I tried to correct a little mistake he had made. Not only did he refuse to accept my correction but he emphasized his mistake. He had the whole thing topsy turvey. He said radio came in after the Act, and when I suggested he meant Beam he turned on me like a wolfhound. I was perfectly genuine in my remarks. He says that I have attacked officials behind their backs when they cannot defend themselves. I have heard that before in this House. Hon. members must not bring up matters of this kind because they are attacking administrative officials behind their backs, although the official is looking at you all the time. I say if that is so then we are getting to a pretty pass. I take it it is the business of hon. members when they know things are not being done correctly—when there is something going on that should not be— to bring the matter before the House if they cannot get redress in any other way. The hon. Minister says he sees no fault in his department. No, he simply knows what he is told; he will never find out anything in his department; it may be he simply does not know where he is. He said that the friction in the department was not evident until I started it.

I do not know when it started.

Do you accuse me of starting the trouble?

I do not know what you did; you know better than I do.

Is that asking to be retired? Nothing of the sort. He merely made it clear that he was not to be considered and that the enquiry was to go on as though he did not exist. The hon. Minister made one mistake—he made many mistakes—but he made one particular mistake in saying that we have no right to differentiate between two persons as to charges. Why on the Ream question one of the complaints of the Beam company in Canada was that they had to pay excessive terminal charges. The hon. Minister’s contention does not hold water at all. We can make what charges we like to the cable company and the Beam company. I agreed as Minister—or rather Mr. Boydell agreed originally—to allow them to experiment with the Beam question, but said we would insist on a high power radio system and I took up the same standpoint; and they were working under a temporary licence. I ask the hon. Minister if one penny a word has now been made perfectly clear to the company, and he said “Yes.” I asked the hon. Minister has he given them a licence, and for what period?

Seven years to go.

Then the hon. Minister is acting illegally in accenting that Beam system unless he comes to this House for permission to amend the Act.

Read your Radio Act of 1926.

That has nothing to do with it. That is broadcasting, and has nothing to do with international communication. It has nothing to do with the Act introduced by the right hon. member for Standerton in this House. The hon. Minister is acting illegally in doing anything of the sort without amending the Act already in existence. The hon. Minister says the Government attorney came here and interviewed officials and as a result he found it impossible to go to arbitration. Of course the officials themselves made an interpretation and that is one of the contentions of the hon. member for Langlaagte (Mr. Christie). Officials have been insisting on policy for the hon. Minister to pursue. The very fact that the Minister has given them their licence for seven years at a penny a word shows that he has no wish to safeguard the interests of the public and that all he was concerned with was satisfying the wireless company. He uses this extraordinary argument. He said that if we made the company pay 1s. 3d. for their telegrams, they would reimburse themselves from the public. Is that not an extraordinary argument? I have never heard anything like it. He has control, under the Act, of the rates that they shall charge. If they are allowed to reimburse themselves, out of the pockets of the public, his would be the fault. The charges are to be laid down by him and by nobody else, not by the company. The company has to charge the rates that the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs lays down. In the first six months of working under them, on a temporary licence, because I refused to give them a permanent licence, they were making over £3,000 a month clear profit. Now, they have five directors—I think they have more, but I know of five, and they are each paid £2,000 a year.

Who pays that £2,000 a year?

The Wireless Company. Does not the Minister know that?

How do you know it?

How do I know it?— £2,000 a year each !

How do you get that?

It is published. They are getting £10,000 a year, and they were making £3,000 a month clear profit in the first six months of working. That is going on, and the Minister uses the argument that if you make them pay 1s. 3d. for a message, they will reimburse themselves from the public. The Minister is the man who controls the rates that they have to charge, and they have to pay. If they can make all that profit, out of the first six months of working, out of the charges made, they can easily afford to pay a right and just charge. The initial mistake was made by the officials. But is that any reason why we should perpetuate that mistake?

Why exploit it?

I am not going to exploit it, but I know what the Act intended.

How do you know?

I remember the Act itself.

You did not frame it.

No, the hon. member for Standerton (Gen. Smuts) framed it. I will tell the Minister how the mistake arose. It arose in this way. At the time that the Bill was drafted, the charge for telegrams did not include the surcharge of 3d. That was a war measure. It was a penny per word with a minimum of one shilling. That was intended, and it was interpreted in another way. The mistake was made by the department. The charge that the Government intended was a minimum of one shilling, and whatever other charges might be made. The Postal Department might have to impose other charges. That was why ft was put in that way. The Bill was discussed very keenly indeed. The Minister says that, as a result of my intrusion, when he came into office, he found a large number of accountants trying to get the thing up to date.

I did not say a “large number,” but I found men at work.

I do not want to misrepresent the hon. Minister. He said there was a sum of £1,000.

Which was already spent and wasted.

Wasted? Of course it was wasted, in the light of the policy of the Minister now. It would never have been wasted if my policy had been carried out, and instead of getting £25,000 less £1,000 which is £24,000, they would have been getting nothing at all. That is the objection to the department itself. They should have kept their records up to date. That is one of the complaints. It was a question of how many messages had gone in and out, and it was a simple arithmetical sum to find out exactly how much money we had demanded. It was the department itself that was at fault and not me. He says in reply to my statement in regard to the motion that the method of promotion was referred entirely to the Public Service Commission. I though the policy had been altered. I think hon. members on this side of the House will remember that was not the way it was done. Every promotion is first submitted by the head of the department to the Public Service Commission, and that is where all the difficulty occurs. Let me say that there could be no more heartburning or ill-feeling on the part of officials in the department if you did away with the Public Service Commission. There would be no more than there is now. You have a host of dissatisfied, yet clever, officials and honest officials, who want to give their ability to the service of the department, and are anxious to serve, but are kept back, because they are outside that ray of light which flows from the throne on which the Minister sits somewhat supinely. That is a fact. He misleads the House into the belief that the Public Service Commission incepts the promotions. It does not. The head of the department does that, and sends them to the Public Service Commission, and generally, the Public Service Commission agrees. Sometimes they find fault with them. However, I do not want to prolong the discussion at all. I do not think the Minister has replied sufficiently well to my initiatory speech as to knock down the case I have made. The only thing that emerges from his remarks is that the Government generally have surrendered to the influence of the Wireless Company, which is, in the ultimate, Marconi, who is getting a grip on the wireless communications not only all over the Empire, but practically throughout the world, and is only resisted by the large American combination which exists to-day, and the Minister has played his rather ignoble part in surrendering the communications of this country to the Marconi company which is out to get a grip of us and has entirely succeeded.

Motion put and the House divided:

I move—

I have not a grave indictment to bring against the Government, like my hon. friend has. A man named H. Sobey joined the Cape service in 1906. He was a signalman at Germiston in 1914, when the strike broke out, and while riding to his work on a motor-cycle—which I personally think was a very foolish thing to do, when a strike was in progress—he met with an accident and was off duty from January 14 to January 29. When he returned to duty, he was treated by the administration as if he had been on strike, and consequently was not re-employed. He then went on active service, and when he returned he was re-admitted to the railway service as a new entrant. Later on his break in service was condoned, but for pension purposes only, so that for all other purposes he has been regarded as a man who went on strike. He petitioned the select committee on pensions, and while they sympathized with him, they said his case was quite outside their purview, and now he asks, having exhausted all other means, that the petition be referred to the Government for its consideration. He has three doctors’ sertificates to prove that during the period he was absent from duty he was actually injured. He was unable to resume his duties. Whether he intended to go on strike, I do not know— he says he did not. Another point is that immediately he got his injury, he in conformity with the regulations notified the head of the department, or his superior officer, that he had been injured, and sent a copy of the doctor’s certificate to him. Not only that, but it appears that a grave error was made as this man was on the old Cape fixed establishment and his conditions of service was controlled by Act 32 of 1895. He was, however, dealt with as though his condition of service was under the Act of 1912. He should have been tried under the regulations of the old Cape civil service. Take it all in all, this man has fairly had a grievance. As far as I am informed, he is a capable officer, there are juniors in the service who have been put right over him, and he is occupying a minor position, because it is reckoned against him that in 1914 he was considered a striker. He has stated to me that if only he was given an opportunity of stating his case, before any tribunal, even a court, he would be able to prove from the medical documents that he was in the doctor’s hands, and was suffering from an injury, and that he was not on strike. He is a persistent man, because he has been getting at probably more than half the members of the House.

seconded the motion.

I have been requested by the Minister of Railways and Harbours to say he is prepared to accept the motion without, of course, committing the administration in any way. We do not want it to be considered from the acceptance of the motion that there is any probability of the decision which has been arrived at being reconsidered.

I am not going to oppose the motion, but I want to draw attention to the fact that recently I asked a question. It was on the 21st of March, when I asked the Minister of Finance—

To this the Minister of Finance replied—

What a discovery !

I was prevented from going further on receiving that answer, which was most unsatisfactory. Since I have been in this House, from 1910 onwards, a large number of petitions have been received and referred to the Government for consideration. I consider it is in the interests of the country that whenever a petition of this nature is referred to the Government, the House should be advised and given an opportunity of discussing whether the Government acted wisely or not in that particular case. From this answer it is impossible to learn what the Government has done in any particular case. I maintain the first duty of a member of Parliament is to act in the interests of the country, and I maintain furthermore, that when I asked this question I was not prompted by being merely inquisitive, but I was actuated by that first duty of an hon. member, which I mentioned. The Minister has made it impossible for any hon. member to make this enquiry. It is incredible that no such record is kept. I ask for the sympathy of the House. It is the bounden duty of the Government to keep a record. We pay Ministers and staffs, and the country is run at an expenditure of some £31,000,000 per annum, to deal only with the financial side and not the railway side. Are we to sit under this indignity ? I consider it is not only an insult to me, but to the House and to the country. I would like to know what language the Minister would have used had he been sitting here, and I had been guilty of the conduct of which he has been guilty. The Minister is treating this House with levity. It is monstrous.

Motion put and agreed to.

I move—

I am almost afraid to introduce this after the speech of the hon. gentleman just now. If the result is, after the petition is referred to the Government, that it is lost sight of, we are losing time. I hope in this case the Minister will keep a record, and rather create a record by going into this matter, and a further one by giving this motion the consideration it deserves. Mr. Leaver is well known. All that the House requires is to have its memory refreshed, and I am going to refresh it only on one or two points. Mr. Leaver has a great interest in trying to establish a nicotine industry, but owing to official representations, so he alleges, made by members of the Agricultural Department, he lost credit, or lost cast, so to speak. He lost money, and it is with respect to this loss of money that this gentleman is asking Parliament to intervene. The amount lost directly and indirectly is £5,000, and he has asked me to ask the Minister of Finance to urge upon his colleagues to agree to the payment of this amount as compensation. There is a good deal in his contention. He desires compensation for the harm that the Government department did him according to his allegation. But it goes further than that. Here is a man who was helping to start an industry which would have been of immense value, and which provided a very fine opening for by-products from one section of the farming industry, the tobacco industry. Such a thing would have been of immense value at the present time because of the difficulty now being experienced in disposing of our tobacco crop. It is well known that the selling of tobacco has become a very close preserve. A monopoly has got hold of it. The United Tobacco Company decides what a farmer shall sell, how much he shall sell, and what price shall be paid for it Any industry or enterprise which would help the tobacco farmer, and which would not be associated with the United Tobacco Company, would be of great value. Seeing that it was the intervention of a Government department that quite wrongfully and untruthfully depreciated the standard of our tobacco, and caused this gentleman the loss complained of, I hope the motion will be agreed to, and that the matter will be gone into by the Government and that Mr. Leaver will receive some compensation.

I second the motion. I hope the Minister will treat this motion in the same way he has treated the previous one. He need not give any undertaking.

I am sorry that the hon. member for Yon Brandis (Mr. Nathan) was dissatisfied with the answer I gave to a question he put to me. I hope he has duly impressed the House with the reasons given for his indignation, but he has not impressed me. The hon. member complains because I told him that the Government did not keep a record of the number of motions referred to it from time to time for consideration.

The hon. the Minister cannot deal with a matter arising out of a previous debate.

May I ask that the Minister be allowed to continue?

As far as the present motion is concerned, I believe the facts are well known to most hon. members. It has been debated in this House on many occasions. I understand that the grievance of this gentleman has got the sympathy of hon. members, but the stumbling block is that he has not yet got the sympathy of the Minister of Finance. No good purpose will be served in accepting the motion that the matter be considered again by the Government. It has been considered by the Government previously. It is for this House to express its opinion on the question, whether they desire me to pay this claim or not. I am sorry that up to now even on the merits it cannot be reasonably expected that the department through giving expression to certain opinions at the time should be held responsible for having caused the loss complained of. I cannot be expected to pay the compensation desired even on the grounds that the loss was so caused, if that were admitted. I can give no hope, if the House passes this motion, that we will be able to do anything. I think the House should face the question, and let Mr. Leaver know where he stands. He has told me on several occasions that I am the only stumbling block to the payment of compensation.

I am afraid that that is hardly a fair way to put it, that the House should face the question and decide whether this gentleman should be paid compensation or not. The Minister has said that he is not going to accept the motion. Having said that, he calls upon his followers to vote solid without any reference to the merits of the case. If the Minister had said: “Let the House decide, and I will be bound by the decision,” then there would be something in it, but when the Minister says: “I cannot accept the motion,” and then tells the House to face it, it is not a fair position. What can one do? The merits go by the board, and the case cannot be considered. I am satisfied from the enquiries I have made that Mr. Leaver has quite a good claim, but what on earth is the good of establishing a claim when the Minister, with a brick-wall majority behind him, appeals to that majority saying that this gentleman should not get compensation. All one can do is to express sincere regret and decide to give further consideration, not to the case itself—I am speaking personally—but to machinery for once again bringing it before the House in such a form that it can receive attention, but not under the present circumstances which are inimical to any justice being done.

Motion put and negatived.