CO129-590-11 Commission of Enquiry into irregularities in Immigration Departments 22-4-1941 - 19-12-1941 — Page 162

Chairman:

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You told us you had time to draft this agreement yourself.

That takes considerable time.

Mr. Forrest: Not so very much.

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Perhaps I am wrong.

I was speaking as a draftsman.

Surely

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Q.

A.

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the additional time in reporting what you had done or were

contemplating doing would be comparatively speaking very small

indeed.

I am not so sure. Every minute counted.

And there were other things which you considered more important

than reporting, more urgent?

Definitely.

Than reporting the action you contemplated, or the action you

had taken, to Government?

Undoubtedly.

Every minute of my time was taken in ensuring that

that Department kept going. I have exhausted my superlatives,

as I said once in some minute in trying to induce people who had

never visited the Department to realize the pressure of work.

In my 21 years' experience of Government work I have never

worked in conditions like it, or anything approaching it.

Mr. Woo: The reason which has been advanced for granting the general

agent the almost exclusive privilege of supplying photographs

is the desirability of securing uniformity in size and other

respects.

Mr. Forrest:

That reason has been advanced, where?

Mr. Woo: From the minutes.

Chairman:

There are, I think, minutes of yours, Mr. Forrest, in the file which I have here, CSO.2863/40, in which you say it

is very desirable indeed that we should have a virtual monopoly.

There is the size, the thickness of the paper, the durability

of the photograph, even the colour.

Mr. Forrest: In my minute of 11th December?

Chairman: There are a series of them. The first on the 1st December.

And all those matters are mentioned.