Rights In N.Z. “A Mixture”

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31780, 10 September 1968, Page 18

Rights In N.Z. “A Mixture”

In some areas in New Zealand human rights were less secure than at first sight they appeared to be, said Mr W. J. Scott, chairman of the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties, in Christchurch last evening.

Speaking in the second of a series of five lectures on human rights and their application in New Zealand and overseas, arranged by the United Nations branch in Christchurch, Mr Scott said that the aims in the declaration were basically those of the capitalist democracies of the West. The ideas and aims of the declaration-were substantially those of the developed, sophisticated, social and political systems of West Europe, North America, and the offshoots of these cultures in the Pacific, he said. Mr Scott said that the average person was inclined to speak rather glibly about living in a free country, being a part of the free world, yet failed to see that in some fields of democratic life the area of freedom was being slowly reduced, “In some ways the rights

that are least securely held are just those we most pride ourselves on—freedom of opinion, speech, the press, assembly,” he said. The laws on indecency were liberal and enlightened. Yet limitations on freedom to demonstrate in public and at meetings did not cease even where permission was obtained. Mr Scott said that although the press, radio and television in New Zealand were free to publish anything that was not seditious, indecent, libellous or blasphemous, they were not organs through which the ordinary citizen could easily and freely express his views. The press for example was a commercial concern, dependent largely on advertising for revenue. Most of the New Zealand press was eon-

servatlve and supported the status quo both socially and politically and gave little space or emphasis to the expressions of minority views. Broadcasting, he said, was a State service run by a corporation nominally independent of Government control but which was more responsive to conservative than radical pressures and was behind rather than in front of public opinion. Mr Scott said that a comparison of the 8.8. C. and N.Z.B.C. programmes showed how timid and guarded the local organisation remained. In the present situation of the mass media the individual citizen, and small groups with different or new ideas had not much chance of circulating their views, said Mr Scott. The function of democracy

was to permit more freedom of expression so, all in all, one could take pride in the New Zealand system, said Mr Scott. In one area, however, security against subversion, rights were not properly guaranteed. The Security Service worked by methods which were at variance with the statement of human rights. A person did not need to be told what he was supposed to have done; evidence was given by officers of the service and contained much hearsay, it was also given in private and not under oath and there was no cross-examination. On the whole, the picture of fundamental rights as applied in New Zealand was something of a piebald mixture, said Mr Scott,