RE-ORGANISING NEW ZEALAND’S LONDON OFFICE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2689, 20 December 1909, Page 7

RE-ORGANISING NEW ZEALAND’S LONDON OFFICE.

A SHIPPING BRANCH ESTABLISHED.

An important'step in the reorganisation of the -High Commissioner s Department was made this week, wnen the Government - shippin g business, which had hitherto been earned on by •the firm o.f Messrs E. S. - Smith and Co., -was taken over by tlie department ‘(writb.q the London correspondent of the New Zealand /‘Times” on Novemrber sth). Mr T. E. Donne, Commissioner, of 5 -Trade 'aind . Immigration, is _ direotirig the new branch, with Mr J. A. Maeon, late private secretary to the High Commissioner, as his right hand man. Some of Mr. Smith’s staff have' been engaged to continue the work. In future, therefore, all. profits earned in the shipping business will go to the department instead of to a private firm. The shipping, branch hooks all. the passages of the assisted immigrants, and sends out the railway ma-

terials and' all the thousand and one consignments ordered through theH'igh Commissioner by the New Zealand Government. The commission on booking and shipping orders have repre--sented a very handsome profit in years/for the firm which undertook the work, and-it is now proposed that this profit should in future go to the Government, whose business produces it. The starting of a Government shipping branch emphasises the need of more suitable accommodation than Victoria street now affords. The shipping office is up on the fifth floor, and there is no light,* so that the callers who come in their hundreds to inquire about.passages to New Zealand have to toil up five flights of stairs, and clerks have constantly to be running up and down, as Mr Donne’s office is on the first floor. This arrangement is. vastly inconvenient, and as the lease of 13, Victoria street, expires next September it is high time the Government decided the question of their future home in London. I understand that a fine building, somewhere in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square, has been offered on a seventy years’ lease to the New Zealand Government for a London office.