SUPREME COURT Student’s Appeal On Flag- Burning Incident Fails

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31231, 1 December 1966, Page 24

SUPREME COURT Student’s Appeal On FlagBurning Incident Fails

A girl university student, Leonie Rae Derbyshire, who displayed a burning Union Jack at Canterbury University on August 19, when the Gov-ernor-General (Sir Bernard Fergusson arrived to open the new science block, has lost her appeal to the Supreme Court against conviction for offensive behaviour in a public place. Mr Justice Wilson, in dismissing the appeal, has said: “A respect for the flag of our fathers, which forms an integral part of our own New Zealand flag, is to be expected in right-minded persons, regardless of their political opinions.”

Both grounds of appeal—that the appellant’s actions had not constituted offensive behaviour, and that it had not occurred in a public place—were rejected by his Honour.

On the first ground, and adopting Mr Justice Haslam’s definition that “offensive behaviour” was a course of action “calculated to cause resentment or revulsion to right-thinking persons,” his Honour said that there was no difficulty in applying the expression “right - thinking persons” to those from whom a respect for the Union Jack could be expected. To them, the burning of the

Union Jack most certainly would cause resentment or revulsion, and the appellant's action must be offensive behaviour. A Public Place

As to whether the place it occurred—a road in the forecourt of the science block—was a public one. as defined in the Police Offences Act, his Honour has held that it was.

For this purpose, his Honour had adopted a test in law that a public place is one open to, or used by, the public so that there is some need for the protection of the public in that use—against behaviour or language specified in the act.

A University technician had

seen and photographed the appellant carrying the burning flag, and later being escorted from the scene by Inspector R. P. Silk. One photograph showed the presence of a small boy and three other women.

Inspector Silk's own evidence was “a number of members of the public in the area,” and of "a number of schoolchildren standing on the side of the entrance road, watching the activities.” It was a fair inference, said his Honour, that some of these people were sightseers —with no attempt made to eject them. “These facts, taken together, show that the forecourt was ‘open to’ the public, and that it was, therefore, a public place,” his Honour said. His Honour said he might draw an inference that there had been a political flavour to the flag-burning incident. “But the mere fact that a gesture is politically inspired does not prevent it from being offensive behaviour,” said his Honour. “Political fanatics, as well as ordinary citizens, are required to abstain from offensive behaviour in public places,” he said.