RADIO REGULATIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 105, 6 May 1933, Page 14

RADIO REGULATIONS

REPLY TO MR. VICKERY

GOVERNMENT'S POWER

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, May .5. Addressing a public meeting at Kaiapoi tonight, Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, said that the defence of the Radio Broadcasting Board by its chairman, Mr. H. D. Vickery, yesterday contained two statements that called lor the closest attention. Mr. Vickery pleaded .that the regulations prohibited the board from broadcasting controversial matter, and also that under the regulations the board was compelled to broadcast Government statements. In the first case Mr. Holland said the board day by day was broadcasting matter that was highly controversial, and was therefore flouting the regulations. If the second statement was true, he declared, they were confronted with one of the gravest administrative scandals New Zealand-had ever known. The Broadcasting Act of 1931 bestowed no power whatever on the Government to compel the board to broadcast its statements, and shut out thoso of the Opposition. It was clearly another case of the Government promulgating, by Order in Council, measures which overrides the legislative enactments. ,It was the extremo of absurdity that Mr. Coates should be permitted to broadcast speeches in favour of the Ottawa decisions, while the Opposition was denied facilities to examine critically the same decisions. Either wireless uroai.uusting would have to bo mado available to both sides of Parliament, said Mr. Holland, or, in t*he interests of fairness: and common decency, it would have to be denied to both. To mako a great national, service a propagandist monopoly 'of the party in office was something that could not bo tolerated.