268 THE EXECUTIVE GOVERNMENT [PART 11
made on the authority of the Governor’s warrant, which was
issued upon a requisition by the Treasurer, and a certificate
by the Auditor, that the funds requisitioned by the Treasury
were legally available for issue. But the value of this pro-
cedure was completely vitiated by two facts. It appears
that the system was that all the officers should draw upon one
account, the Paymaster-General’s Account, and it was pos-
sible for the Treasury, after money had been transferred from
the Exchequer Account to the Paymaster-General’s Account
to meet the expenditure under the one head in the estimates,
to divert that expenditure to an entirely different purpose,
even one for which no provision at all had been made in the
estimates. This method of managing the public accounts was
condemned by the Transvaal Public Services Commission, and
by the Auditor-General in paragraph 30 of his report for the
year ended June 30, 1907, but no alteration was made in the
practice. Then the Treasury, even if there were no balance in
the Paymaster-General’s Account, used to allow overdrafts on
that Account despite the protests of the Auditor-General and
the Public Accounts Committee in 1909. The result was that
there was nothing whatever to prevent the totally illegal action
of paying salaries before Parliament had consented at all.
* Ministers are of course personally responsible for their own illegal acts,
though (e.g. in cases of expenditure such as that sanctioned by Sir T. Bent)
it may often be that impeachment—which is quite obsolete as regards the
Dominions—would be the only possible punishment. Cases are not rare
of other illegal deeds, such as Sir H. Parke’s efforts illegally to exclude
Chinese (see Parl. Pap., C. 5448, pp. 23, 46, 47) from New South Wales,
which failed. It was also a Prime Minister of New South Wales who in
1907 removed illegally wire netting while detained by the Commonwealth
Customs Department; Turner, Australian Commonwealth, pp. 180-2.
Malversation in office, such as that of Mr, Crick in New South Wales, is of
course punishable in the ordinary way, and minor offences (such as those
of Mr. McKenzie in Victoria in 1903) may be met by loss of office. Fora
gross example of disregard of law by a Ministry and Governor-General,
cf. the extradition of Lamirande in Canada (Clarke, Batradition,
pp. 116-8; Canada Sess. Pap., 1867-8, No. 50). For Sir H. Robinson’s
insistence on law, cf, his action in Rossi’s case, Pari. Pap., C. 1202, p. 54. For
the violation of law in the Cape in the war, see Cd. 1162. For New Zealand
cases, see Rusden, iii. 159, 160, 454. 455.
