Inquiries in Camera

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22237, 30 October 1937, Page 14

Inquiries in Camera

The Minister for Defence (the Hon. F. Jones) might have saved much time if he had admitted in the House of Representatives on Thursday that holding the inquiry into the Big Bay air disaster in camera was a mistake. The matter was raised in Parliament by the member for Awarua (Mr J. Hargest), who suggested that the pilot in the case, Mr A. J. Bradshaw, had not received proper treatment. To the extent at least that Mr Bradshaw was, as Mr Hargest said, denied a public inquiry into the case, the member's complaint holds good. The decision to hold two subsequent inquiries of a similar nature in public was a tacit admission that a mistake had been made in the Big Bay case. This, the Minister on Thursday was foolishly reluctant to admit, though on a question which did not involve departmental policy, he was ready enough to admit error on the part of a servant of the department. It is not suggested that the pilot in this instance suffered any injury through the inquiry being held in camera, beyond being denied public judgment on the facts as presented in evidence, but the Minister might as well have* admitted, first as last, that he had changed his mind about the advisability of holding air inquiries in camera. His original explanation was that such inquiries " were of a special, highly technical nature and " that in the interests of aviation and the public, "the evidence, or part of it, should not go "into the press divorced from-Us context," We

pointed out at the time, and reiterate, that the " interests of aviation and the public " are endangered much more by the suppression of evidence than by the possibility that evidence will be misunderstood because it is highly technical or because it has been condensed. The courts have regularly to sift evidence of a "highly " technical" nature and it is not suggested that a public hearing in such cases interferes with the justice of their decisions. It is difficult to see the point of Mr Jones's argument that Mr Hargest's bringing the matter up in the House could only do Mr Bradshaw a disservice. There is only one place for a member of Parliament to question a departmental decision, and Mr Hargest chose the right place to ventilate his complaint.