Mr Nash Answers Protest On Security Questionnaire

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29264, 23 July 1960, Page 12

Mr Nash Answers Protest On Security Questionnaire

The national interest required that the reliability and discretion of those who held positions in the Government service where material dealt with was especially secref or sensitive should be beyond doubt, the Prime Minister

(Mr Nash) said in a letter to the Canterbury Council of Civil Liberties.

Mr Nash’s reply was to a pro"test on a questionnaire sent to Ministers’ secretaries involving " their political affiliations and the associations of their relatives. 11 “I consider that while, in the present state of the world, in- - vestigations can unfortunately not be dispensed with, it is important that the number of positions regarded as especially sensitive should be kept to a bare rninii mum and that any security checks -“should be made with care, intelligence, and liberality, and an *1 appreciation of the wider aspects of the matter,” the Prime Mini- -** ster said. *"I have no reason •■ to believe that these standards are not being observed.” ■“•■ .While appreciating the liberal ’ tone in which Mr Nash had re- - plied to the protest,-the council ,'“still felt that questions about a person’s relatives should not be „„ included in any questionnaire, nor could it see why past associations should be inquired into, unless there were some grounds for doubting the present integrity of the person questioned, said a statement by the council yesterday. Political inquiries about a per-

son’s past, as opposed to his present, tended to reduce everyone’s civil liberties, because nobody could say when his present would become his questionable past Though maintaining its view that the questionnaires should be withdrawn, the council said it was gratified at the liberalising legislation before Parliament. One of the prime reasons for the establishment of the council was its desire to see the Police Offences Amendment Act, 1951, abolished.

The act had many objectionable features, the council said. It extended the definition of sedition and gave power to the police to seize any printing press, book, or document and retain them for two months without showing cause why they had been seized. The Government now proposed to abandon those powers.

The council also congratulated the Government on its reducing the Public Safety Conservation Amendment Bill providing that when a state of national emergency was declared while Parliament was not fitting Parliament must be called together within seven .days. The bill amended an act passed in 1932, at the time when unemployment riots were threatening. It was based on a similar British act of 1920, but when introduced in New Zealand omitted the British provision for the calling together of Parliament within five days and Parliamentary approval within seven days of regulations made under the act.