Evening Post. MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 1934. A BAD START

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 31, 6 August 1934, Page 8

Evening Post. MONDAY, AUGUST 6, 1934. A BAD START

The Religious Exercises in Public Schools Enabling Bill, the last of a very long series of more or less similar Bills, made a poor start in, the House of Representatives on Wednesday, and would probably have made a poor finish if Mr. H. Holland, the mover, had allowed it to go to a division. It is not often that the mover of an important measure finds himself in so awkward a position or is compelled to aggravate it so seriously by a glaring tactical blunder. J We say "compelled," for it may be assumed that the tactics which stultified the course that he afterwards had to take were not of his own choice. They must have been forced upon him by the promoters of the Bill. As on previous occasions of the same kind the object of the deputation from the Bible-in-Schools League • which interviewed the Prime Minister on July 19 was that the Bill should be given a fair hearing and allowed to come to a vote on the merits. But the justice which the league claims for itself is no part of its scheme for its opponents. The only way in which they can get a fair hearing is by having their petitions referred to a Select Committee of the Houses—a procedure which has been followed on previous occasions, and of course gives the supporters of.the Bill an equal opportunity. Asked by Mr. P. Fraser before the debate opened whether he would agree to the Bill's being sent to the Education Committee, Mr. Holland refused.

He had had an experience of that before, he said. The last time he willingly consented to it, and the Committee kept the Bill1 for.twenty-week's before it was reported'.to the House three days before the,session ''finished.

.. It is surely clear that the fact—if it is a fact—that the Education Committee bungled or dawdled in its procedure on the occasion mentioned is no valid reason why the petitioners against a measure of revolutionary importance which has received no serious attention from the electors or the Government should be denied their normal constitutional right of. an.* effective hearing, for their objections. But Mr. P. Fraser, who introduced the deputation from the National Schools Defence League to the Prime Minister on, Thursday, provided an interesting and amusing explanation of the trouble alleged by Mr. Holland. The Bible-in-Schools advocates- had blocked their own Bill. "The main reason for the delay last lime," said Mr. Fraser, "was the voluminous evidence from the supporters of the Bill." At the best it was a case of pot and kettle, but Mr. Fraser, who knows what he is talking about, says that the pot was the more serious offender, and now the pot is making i£s own exuberance a ground for preventing the kettle from getting any hearing at all. There is certainly humour in it, but not much of the justice for which, as we have pointed out, the Bible-in-Schools League, when justice serves its own ends, stickles so strongly.

But the. crowning joke of Wednesday's debate is still to come. In further reply to Mr. Fraser, Mr. Holland said, "I do not approve of the Bill going to the Education Committee. I want the House to settle the Bill." The laughter with which this statement was received proved to be fully justified. The man who was so eager to save time and to get a prompt decision from the House showed before the end of the sitting that he did not want such a decision, and what his action can have meant except that he feared the House would really "settle" the Bill if it had the chance we are quite unable to see. When the debate was interrupted by the 10.30 adjournment Mr. Holland himself had it set down for resumption on August 29. An adjournment for four weeks, when a week would have been the normal period, was taken at his instance, and no explanation offered. Yet surely some explanation was due of the contrast between the precipitation which he showed to get to a division at the outset of the debate and the four weeks' reprieve which seemed to be the limit of his ambition when the chance offered. Even Mr. Forbes, who .in his talk to the Defence League's deputation showed an exaggerated idea of the right of a private member to control the procedure and a strongly inadequate appreciation of the rights of petitioners to be fully heard on a momentous issue of I policy which he and his colleagues have completely ignored, admitted that he shared in the general surprise. If the Bill comes before the Education Committee in the first week of September, will the Prime Minister propose that the restrictions which he has quite improperly, in our opinion, already suggested on the petitioners' right to a full hearing shall be lightened owing to the'lateness of the hour?

Besides showing that it was not the opponents of the Bill, who could easily have blocked it altogether if they had desired, but its friends that were afraid of a division, the debate also showed ihe urgent need for the detailed examination of its provisions

which the latter are anxious to avoid. Except for the simple faith and the good intentions which are always entitled to respect, Mr. Holland's speech in support of the Bill was as weak as it could possibly be. His grasp of facts was weak, his logic was weak, and he showed no appreciation of the essential difficulties of his task or of the standpoint pf his opponents. He said ihat "today the country was reaping the result of the secular system" which it established more than fifty years ago, and pointed out the superior advantages enjoyed by the Australian children in this respect, yet he disputed the soundness of Mr. Jordan's inference that he was blackening the character of our children in comparison with those of Australia. At the same lime, he made no attempt to show how any religious effect could possibly be produced by the mechanical inculcation of Biblical lessons by teachers whose religious qualifications cannot be tested and of whom a large number will have no sympathy or aptitude for the work.

Mr. Holland also described the difficulties of teachers and parents as having been obviated by the conscience clauses, ignoring the fact that, so far as the teachers are concerned, the conscience clause has proved illusory in practice, since to take advantage of it has acted as an invitation to annoyance and persecution. Nor is even the semblance of a conscience clause offered to the taxpayers who are just as much entitled to consideration as parents or teachers. Mr. Holland even went so far as to say that "the State was not called on to bear anything of the expenditure arising out of the religious exercises." But, as these exercises are to be conducted in school hours, and will occupy a twelfth of the whole time, the whole of this expenditure, representing a twelfth of the Education Vote, will actually be borne by the State. The vital problem of the nature of the religious instruction was left untouched by these supporters of the Bill. "What were the teachers to. teach?" asked Mr. Walter Nash, but there was no answer. Mr. Downie Stewart also said that this point "would need a great deal more explanation if the second reading went through." If it does a thorough overhaul by the Education Committee will be absolutely essential.