Respect For Law In N.Z. Thought To Be Declining

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27669, 27 May 1955, Page 14

Respect For Law In N.Z. Thought To Be Declining

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, May 26. Once a year the people of New Zealand were invited by the Commissioner of Inland Revenue to disclose their illegal earnings, said Mr H. G. Miller, librarian at Victoria University College, addressing the convention of the New Zealand Institute of Public Administration today. “I can think of few things better calculated to undermine respect of the law than this tacit understanding of a Government department to cover up □ur crimes if we disgorge a share of the swag,” he said. Mr Miller said that when New Zealand was founded the law was still regarded with a certain awe, because it was believed to be in some sense of Divine authority, and because the volume of it was not great. But not so today. In 1769, 96 pages of new law sufficed for the whole British Empire. But for New Zealand, with a population smaller than that of a single European city, 1800 pages of new law were not enough in 1953, but had to be supplemented by an almost equal quantity of rules and regulations. “If on the one hand we remove the idea of a higher authority and on the other take to dashing off new laws 10 pages a day, we should not be surprised if respect for the law declines,” he said. “Laws that are made as lightheartedly as we make them are not likely to command respect, and do not.” Mr Miller said the laws were not always enforced. In 1949 a Judge of the

Arbitration Court was reported to have said that the Wellington City Council was one of the few employing bodies in the country that complied with the law relating to stabilisation; some years ago the Inter-Church Council complained to the Minister of Health that his department had issued a leaflet on abortion that was in clear conflict with the Crimes Act; it had recently been asserted that the Minister of Labour had, in writing sanctioned breaches of the law relating to hours of trading; everyone had read a good deal of the strange things that went on in some parts of the country with regard to the licensing laws.

“The fact would seem to be that more and more law is becoming something that the Government has up its sleeve, that it can produce and enforce i if it thinks that the circumstances require it,” Mr Miller said. “All this seems to me to be serious. If our laws have no authority but what they get from the man in the street, if in fact the laws are constantly changing, and if they are enforced just as individual Ministers or officials please, we must not be surprised if the rising generation refuses to take them seriously. “I suggest that a leading task of the welfare State is to restore respect for the law, and to do this, first, by taking a new look at the underlying ideas of Western civilisation and revising our laws to conform to them, and, second, by taking a great deal more trouble over the enacting of new laws, reducing their quantity, and making no law that we do not mean to enforce.” Mr Miller said.