PUBLIC SCANDAL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 177, 28 July 1944, Page 5

PUBLIC SCANDAL

CENSORSHIP PROBE Disturbing Revelations In Australia N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent Rec. 12.30 p.m. SYDNEY, this day. The task of probing the ramifications of the Commonwealth communications censorship has been taken out of the hands of the special Parliamentary Committee appointed last March. The committee, which in ■ June issued its sensational interim report on censorship practices, has been replaced by a judicial inquiry to be presided over by Sir William Webb. Chief Justice of Queensland. The inquiry will open here next week. Meanwhile the Prime Minister, Mr. Curtin, has announced that he has approved the "anti-snooping" recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee. These included cessation of the policing of minor broaches of rationing and other regulations through, mails and censorship, and the handing on, without notice, of private business information to Government Departments. Sustained Public Clamour Widespread protests by Parliament and Press, as well as by private individuals, have been made against such censorship practices, and there has been sustained public clamour for their more searching investigation. The Sydney Morning Herald says, editorially: "The fear has grown, and has been strengthened by the disgraceful revelations already made, that military security, so-called, is being used as a cloak for odious and intolerable forms of espionage—that nobody's mail is safe from prying eyes, and nobody's telephone secure from official eavesdroppers. "The air, thus polluted, must be cleared once and for all, and only ruthless and open inquiry into the censorship scandal will clear it."

The paper adds that the Parliamentary Committee, now disbanded, did not "reach to the heart of a scandal whose ugly fringes only it had touched."

Meanwhile, in Adelaide, another judicial inquiry is proceeding into specific charges made by Mr. A. J. Hannan, K.C., South Australian Crown Solicitor, that his letters had been opened and his telephone tapped. These allegations touch political and not military security matters.