‘New Govt strangely silent’

Press, 22 September 1984, Page 8

‘New Govt strangely silent’

PA Wellington The Government was strangely silent about the Security Intelligence Service Amendment Act, said the retiring president of the New Zealand Journalists Union, Mr Tony O’Brien, yesterday. In his address to the union’s annual conference in Wellington, Mr O’Brien said that the Government had promised to look at defamation laws and enact recommendations of the 1977 Committee on Defamation. With its promised look at some aspects of the Official

Information Act, this was good news for journalists. But the Government was strangely silent on the question of the S.I.S. Amendment Act. The legislation, which prohibited journalists from naming spies and provided for interception warrants and surveillance, had no place in New Zealand society, he said. Journalists had no wish to undermine the authority of the State but they were committed to a policy of opposing certain elements of the law which, in some respects, was really an ap-

paratus of a police State, Mr O’Brien said. Likewise, the Public Safety Conservation Act had many odious elements. “It can be, and has been, used to adopt peacetime censorship,” he said. Mr O’Brien urged the union to take up those matters with the Government. On voluntary unionism, Mr O’Brien said the legislation should become history within a month. But as long as there was “woolly” thinking in some political parties, the spectre of such anti-union law would never go away.

The union was involved in an Arbitration Court case involving the Timaru reporter of “The Press”, Mr Douglas Hodge, who left the union with the advent of the neiw legislation. Mr Hodge had a black ban imposed on his work and took the matter to the Arbitration Court, which found the union had no case to answer. Mr O’Brien said there was one final point to the affair, should Mr Hodge apply to rejoin the union, no barrier should be put in his way. “We are not vindictive people,” he said.