Chase aid plea refused

Press, 2 April 1985, Page 8

Chase aid plea refused

PA Wellington Members of the Paul Chase public inquiry committee said they got an unhelpful response yesterday from the Minister of Justice, Mr Palmer, to thenplea for legal aid and a public inquiry. Paul Chase was shot during a police armed offenders raid on his Petone home in the early morning of April 18, 1983. The committee, with members of the Ngati Awa tribe and Mr Chase’s parents who had travelled from Te Teko, met Mr Palmer at his Beehive office yesterday afternoon, four months after they had first sought a meeting. Mr Palmer had declined a request for the meeting to be held at Te Mangungu marae, Naenae. The committee is appealing against a refusal of its request for legal aid to fund a private action for exemplary damages. “Mr Palmer was sympathetic to our position, but would not intervene,” said a committee spokesman, the Rev. Charles Waldegrave. “He has allowed the

bureucratic processes of the law and Government to paralyse anything being none about social justice. “Mr Palmer talks about a Bill of Rights, but we are not able to proceed with this Government any further than with the last,” Mr Waldegrave said.