Page 231
evidence. I attach the comments of the Culonial Secretary, (enclosure 5), the Acting Financial Secretary and the Accountant
Enclosure General on this issue.
No.6.
I have read the relevant files. Mr. Butters' minutes
are for the most part tersely and strongly worded but as they applied to the known chaos in the financial arrangements of the Immigration Department, which Mr. Forrest doggedly refused
to organize on proper lines, I de not regard them as unjustifiably severe on the part of a responsibly-minded
Financial Secretary.
Pudney's minutes contain nothing
positive to which exception can be taken: he certainly gave the Commissioners the impression that he had been unhelpful but from the papers before me it seems that though keeping very strictly within the limits of his office, he tried at any rate at first to assist Mr. Forrest.
Nothing
mordant is traceable in the few Secretariat minutes dealing with this department's affairs and I have it from Mr. Forrest himself that the Secretariat officers shewed him much personal sympathy and kindness though officially they could not give
him the aid which he needed.
13.
But, while I feel sure that there was a real wish
on the part of the Secretariat and the Treasury to help Mr. Forrest, I regret that I cannot dissent from the conclusion to which the Commission point in paragraphs 40
and 41, viz. that firmer handling of the matter in those two departments would have served saterially to help the Immigration Department in its pressing and eonfounding difficulties and incidentally would have saved much time
and trouble all round. It seems to have been clear at an
early stage that on the one hand the new department was
gravely deficient in staff, accommodation and equipment and that on the other its financial organization was gravely
Page 231
196
Page 231
Page 231