OMBUDSMAN REPORT
15
maladministration must, of course, remain a matter for speculation, but the existence of an authoritative, powerful officer able to expose such grievances and redress them where necessary would without doubt be of enormous symbolic value in a community where the Government has for too long been able to avoid the kind of respon- sibility which comes from being accountable to an elected legislature.
There are good reasons for thinking that the Ombudsman system can do as much to remedy the imagined grievance as it can to right genuine wrongs. Sir Guy Powles has written:
"Many people whose complaints I have had to classify as unjustified have been satisfied to receive a full and careful explanation of the reasons behind decisions. They have realized that they have not been so badly treated and have written to tell me so. I have had occasion to make recommendations to reverse departmental decisions where the citizen had failed to do something through ignorance of departmental requirements. Loosely worded circulars, omissions from explanatory pamphlets and inadequate information by a department of another's contact with the particular circumstances are cases in point. In some cases I could only make recommendations to avoid such situations in the future".
In this connection it is worth noting that New Zealand officials have on the whole been more than content with the results of Sir Guy's work in the removal of many causes of frustration and misunderstand- ing, and consequent friction, a point which he himself made at the Bangkok meeting.
It is characteristic of the Ombudsman system as it has been introduced in common law countries that his powers fall short of executive action, though in Scandinavia he usually has the power of initiating criminal proceedings in appropriate cases.
In most cases, he submits general reports to the legislature with more detailed accounts of the cases which he regards for some reason as of im-