Mr Scrimgeour wants voting age of 16

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33033, 28 September 1972, Page 18

Mr Scrimgeour wants voting age of 16

The voting age should be lowered not to 18 but to 16. Mr C. G. Scrimgeour said last evening, in a public lecture at the University of Canterbury.

Still as provocative as in the days when his radio broadcasts as “Uncle Scrim” were a considerable embarrassment to the authorities, Mr Scrimgeour looked at least 15 years younger than his age of 69, and only a slight hoarseness was evidence of the fact that he had spoken for more than 11 hours since arriving in Christchurch the previous afternoon.

“The most effective years of education — and I know you shouldn’t say this in a university — are from birth to the second birthday,” said Mr Scrimgeour. “Your development should be at a peak long before you enter a university. If you haven’t demonstrated your ability by the age of 16, you never will." The average age of China’s Red Guard was 13 years, he said. Mao Tse-tung had told those young people — who were not bom at the time of China’s revolution — that they should make one of their own. Mao had done this because after 19 years he had seen the emergence of an elite — “effective, noble, self-sacrific-ing people who nevertheless had become an elite, a part of an establishment” — and he had looked to the young to restore impetus to China’s social revolution. “NOTHING LEFT”

Mr Scrimgeour asked his audience to imagine Canterbury University students putting on red arm-bands, being given free seats to Wellington in N.A.C. aircraft, taking over the Reserve Bank’s new building, and telling the authorities: “We’ve come along to see what you’re doing about things.” “When I came back from countries like China, I was horrified to find that the vestiges of the welfare state had disappeared,” Mr Scrimgeour said. “There was nothing left of what I had dreamed about, worked to bring about, and skited about to the rest of the world. “Social Security, medical benefits, good standard housing — there is nothing left. We have the largest overseas balance this country has ever had — but you ask any old age pensioner how he is getting on, they are worse off now than they were in the depression days. “Nobody knows much about the depression these days unless they are getting on to my age,” said Mr Scrimgeour. “I was getting £6 a week as the Methodist City Missioner in Auckland. It wasn’t very much to live on. We always prayed for a wet Saturday. They had to make enough pies for a fine day at the races and on wet days there were lots of pies left over, even a thousand or more. Then the Scrimgeour family — and quite a few others — lived very well for some days on stale pies. ‘TWICE CURSED” “I ran a boot repair shop, a clothes drive, three butcher’s shops. We gathered fruit in the country, and gave it away. But none of these things were any good. “The other churchmen said charity was twice blessed. I said it was twice cursed: it cursed those who gave and those who received. The churchmen said this was a horrible thing to say, but others who didn’t like living on stale pies liked to hear it. “I pointed out that all this was happening in the richest country in the world, with everything you could possibly need to feed and clothe people adequately and to house them.

“In the end, rhe authorities stopped me by jamming my radio station. They built a transmitter on the instructions of the Minister of Broadcasting and put a squealer on it. However, that Government didn’t last much longer. “I was not a member of the Labour Party, but their ideas came nearer to what was needed for our country. During the next 10 years, they showed what could be done and how it could be done.”

QUESTION ASKED A member of the audience asked Mr Scrimgeourif he

could compare the present leaders of the Labour Party with the leaders of those days. "No, I couldn’t compare them,” he said. “Could you comment on them?” the questioner asked. "That was a comment,” Mr Scrimgeour said. “What was the cause of your confrontation with Peter Fraser?” asked another of the audience. “Well, Peter Fraser didn’t have a good sense of humour,” Mr Scrimgeour said. “I was a great personal friend of Michael Joseph Savage and John A. Lee, and he didn’t like me to be associated too closely with Joe Savage. Fraser knew three months before Lee was expelled that Savage was dying. When they kept up that lie and got Lee expelled, I became exceedingly angry. “Not one of the Labour members of the War Cabinet was a returned soldier, and five of them had done gaol for sedition. I said they should recall Lee —who had won the D.C.M. and lost an arm—as the Minister of Defence. Fraser got purple in the face. “SPECIAL POWERS”

“He used all his special powers to deal with me. He even brought the conscription ballot a month forward so as to get me in the Services. I was an A.C.2 (an aircraftsman second-class, the lowest rank in the Air Force) but they had a special file on me marked ‘No action without reference to the Minister of Defence.’ I had 17 medicals, eight of them specialist examinations, to try to keep me from home service.

“When I decided to leave New Zealand anyway, they gave me a V.I.P. seat in an aircraft just so I got out of the country. But I should thank God for Peter Fraser, because I had the most interesting part of my life away from New Zealand.” Mr Scrimgeour was asked what was so wrong about the present broadcasting system.

“It’s a monopoly,” he said. “Suppose you are a broadcaster and you get up to the top rank. Then vou have an argument. Someone doesn’t like the colour of your eyes

or the length of your hair or the way you stand — and you’re out of a job. But they not only take away your job. they take away your nationality. “There are at least 500 people who have been <Uprived of New Zealand citizenship because there was no other broadcasting job for them in New Zealand. And the Broadcasting Corporation doesn’t want any alteration because there wouldn't be anyone left in their bloody place. "Forgive me." said Mr Scrimgeour. “When you’ve lived in Australia a long time . . .”

Speaking of broadcasting restrictions in the 19305, Mr Scrimgeour said that when George Bernard Shaw came to Christchurch he had been invited to give an address on the air. However, there had been a long discussion in political circles on whether Shaw should even be allowed to land in New Zealand, and he was told that although he would be allowed to read one of his plays, he would not be allowed to read the more obviously political prologue to the play. “So Shaw contented himself with a few pleasant remarks,” said Mr Scrimgeour. “They asked him what he thought of Canterbury, and he replied: ‘Altogether too many sheep’.” TELEVISION DEBATE Mr Scrimgeour did not agree with a questioner who suggested that television might have a detrimental effect on politics, because some politicians showed up better than others. “I’d like to see a debate between Kirk and Muldoon," Mr Scrimgeour said. "Then you would find out Kirk’s strengths and Muldoon’s weaknesses — or vice versa. It would be very interesting.”