The Argus at KellyGang 29/3/1881
ROLE OF ROYAL COMMISSIONS
Royal commissions and boards have their uses in the body politic. It follows also that they have their abuses. In theory nothing can be more admirable than the board idea. A difficult question awaits settlement. It is desirable that the issue should be dealt with in the light of knowledge, that it should be viewed from every convenient standpoint by competent men, who would grasp the situation, and who would be able to state the necessities of the case for the enlightenment of the community. To secure this good end the first requisite is that the board should consist of competent and independent men The members must not only be independent of the authority making the appointment, and of the persons or objects concerned in the inquiry, but what is of equal importance, they must be independent of prejudices , they must be unfettered by pledges to constituencies, neither must they have the fear of coteries before their eyes. The possibility that this necessary condition will not always be complied with stares the student in the face. He will see that it is quite possible that the theory may be one thing and the practice another.
There have been Ministries in Great Britain who have brought ridicule upon themselves by their boards, SYDNEY SMITH had to point his sarcasms at his own friends, who got rid of enthusiasts by nominating them to boards to whose labours no one ever paid attention but for a real burlesque of the legitimate board business we must come to Victoria of late years. The Government has sought to administer to a great extent by boards. It has used boards to get Ministers out of scrapes. It has used boards to obtain party reports for specific purposes, but it has very seldom indeed used them for the bona-fide object of obtaining decisions which shall command the confidence of the community.
A few instances may be quoted to illustrate the position. There was the Royal or O'Hea commission on lands. In the first place, there was no necessity for any such commission. The facts of the case are within the knowledge of every individual who aspires to be regarded as a politician, and what remains is to draw conclusions from premises which are for the most part undisputed. In the second place, the strongest and the clearest minds in the county would be taxed to work out a satisfactory settlement. But the Ministry simply nominated the more noisy members of their own Parliamentary tail. The inquiry was so conducted by the chairman that the commission and its proceedings became a laughing stock. As was to be inferred, the report was equally preposterous. It was jeered at by every section of the press, and there never was found a member of Parliament sufficiently bold to move that it be acted upon.
If the Government desired to discredit boards, and to provide our comic contemporary Punch with material for the easy discharge of its humorous functions, the O'Hea commission was a conspicuous success, but otherwise it was a signal failure. So with the Closed Roads commission. It may be that a body of high class men who stand well in the public estimation could have suggested a modus vivendi which, backed by then reputation for sagacity and good sense, would have been adopted by general consent. What Ministers did, however, was to gather together all the men who are rabid and fanatical about the closed roads, and the result in this case was the same as the other. The evidence was one thing, the report another The recommendations of the board were a foregone conclusion, and they have been treated by the country and the Legislature with the indifference they deserve.
Taking a long stride, we come to the board on the transactions between Messrs BRAIN and SONS and Mr RG FORD, railway en0meer Tho Service Government showed how to do justice to the country A commission of leading citizens was nominated, and Mr JAMES MUNRO, who it might reasonably be supposed would be trusted by the then Opposition, was appointed chairman. At such a tribunal the Berry Ministry on its return to power stood aghast It was dissolved at once, and replaced by three subordinate officers, who knew what verdict was desired, and who dare not do otherwise than return it In this case, m fact, we have presented to us the two sides of the picture-what boards should be, and ? what they may be-what to day they commonly are. The policy complained of is still in operation.
We do not say that the Cerberus board is a disgrace to Ministers, as the Bain Ford board was, but assuredly, if the public interests had been thought of, Mr BOSISTO would not have been left alone as the one member who cannot have a back mark entered against him, whose bread and butter is not affected by his comments. The Police board is to be compared with the O'Hea and the Closed Roads commissions. To make the violent and crack brained Mr Longmore chairman is bad enough. Upon the improper appointment of Mr GRAVES. We have commented already. If there was one member of the Assembly more notoriously disqualified than the member for Delatite it is the member for Moira, who in his capacity of editor and proprietor of the Benalla Standard was in continual verbal conflict with the police, and who from time to time expressed his opinion on then conduct in the strongest terms, and committed himself to charges of a serious character.
The evidence taken by the commission will no doubt be valuable, but people will have to sift it for themselves. Neither the police nor the public can have any confidence in such a tribunal It is prejudiced against particular men, it is incapable of such a work as the re organisation of the system, and it is therefore but a sorry burlesque of what a board should be.
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