MOTIVE FOR ACTION

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

MOTIVE FOR ACTION

TO GET RID OF PROBLEM

"SMOKE SCREEN WAS SOUGHT" Parliamentary Reporter. WELLINGTON, this day. The Government's real motive was to get rid of the problem of several hundred military defaulters it did not know what to do with, contended Mr. W. A. Sheat (Nat., Patea), in the House of Representatives yesterday during the discussion on the regulations setting up revisionary tribunals for the hearing of the cases of defaulters.

Mr. Sheat said the Parliamentary committee which heard evidence on the subject last year gave as its finding that, as the matter was one of the Government's policy, it had no recommendation to make. The main reason for that report was that the committee, during its deliberations had communicated to it a definite indication that the Government had already decided to take the step it had since taken. It was made perfectly plain to members of the committee by the chairman of the committee.

Mr. A. S. Richards (Govt., Roskill) That's untrue, and you know it.

Members of the committee, continued Mr. Sheat, were told that Cabinet had been discussing the matter and had practically arrived at a decision to set up tribunals, and a very strong effort was made by Government members on that committee to get the committee to bring in a recommendation in favour of appeal tribunals. It became perfectly obvious to members of the committee that they were being asked to provide a smoke screen, behind which the Government might crawl out of a very awkward position. The Government now pretended that it was concerned only with a few genuine cases of people who should have been classed as genuine conscientious objectors. Could the Government say that its attention had not been called to alleged wrong decisions at any time during the last four years until the last few weeks? He was informed that the Government had already made arrangements for closing down some of the defaulters' camps, and for getting rid of the land where those camps had been established. If the Government was really concerned with all genuine conscientious objectors, said Mr. Sheat, it should make provision whereby those who had served in the Forces, either in a combatant or non-combatant capacity after the dismissal of their original appeals, should enjoy the same right of appeal as military defaulters. Why should a conscientious objector who had had his appeal dismissed have the right of appeal to another tribunal when a person who had appealed on the ground of undue hardship, had to be satisfied with the decision of one tribunal?