ARMY DEFAULTERS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 152, 29 June 1945, Page 8

ARMY DEFAULTERS

ATTITUDE OF MINISTER

Parliamentary Reporter. WELLINGTON, this day. He had absolutely no use whatever for conscientious objectors or military defaulters, said the Minister of Rehabilitation, Mr. Skinner, House of Representatives last evening during a.discussion on the question of appeals. He despised their mental outlook, and deplored the attitude they had adopted in time of peril, but were those men criminals? He would give the worst criminal in the world an opportunity to appeal against any sentence imposed upon him.

There was no intention to let anyone out of detention unless he proved his case, added the Minister. It had been said that the Government proposed to close down defaulters' camps. That at Galatea was being closed down for the simple reason that it was being settled with returned servicemen, and it was not fair, or even logical, to leave unsettled land suitable for settlement, or to expect defaulters to work amicably alongside returned men. Defaulters were being utilised to the best advantage in working blocks for settlement, and so far there had been only 13 escapees. Although he considered the amendments should have been made three years ago, added the Minister, it was, nevertheless, never too late to try to undo any injustice that might have been committed. Of the 57,000 original objectors in the United Kingdom, only 100 were in detention, while in New Zealand there had been 2869 appeals, and 688 men were in detention.

Mr. S. W. Smith (Nat., Bay of Islands) who followed the Minister, suggested that the answer to the disparity in those figures lay with the present Government. Members of the Government, he said, had encouraged direct action of all descriptions over the years, and from 1914 to 1918, and they were now reaping what they had sown.