PRIVATE HEARING.

Evening Star, Issue 22683, 24 June 1937, Page 10

PRIVATE HEARING.

The official inquiry into the aeroplane tragedy at Big Bay, north of Milford Sound, by which one person was killed and four injured on December 30 last, is being held in private. It cannot be said that very convincing reasons were given for that course, which was advised, but not directed, by the Minister of Defence, whose portfolio includes control of aviation. The pilot, the person most concerned in the result of the inquiry, desired that it should be public. It was stated that at the inquest, which was public, all the facts had not been gone into. A suggestion had been made against the pilot to which he was entitled to make a public reply. The Southland Aero Club, from which the aeroplane had been obtained on hire purchase, also objected strongly to a private inquiry. The case urged for that procedure was that inquiries held under the Air Navigation Regulations, of which this was the first in New Zealand, were of a special and highly teonical nature, and' that it was In the interests of aviation and of the public that the evidence, or part of the evidence, should not go into the Press divorced from its context. Such inquiries were held privately in Australia, and, it was understood, in Great Britain and other countries also. The first part of this argument might be wholly convincing • if •it • was Service aeroplanes, embodying possible secrets of construction, that were involved. The second part of it might be made an argument for holding every kind of protracted trial or, inquiry in camera, a general rule which would be unthinkable in the public interest. The same criticism would apply to a further representation that, freed from the deterrent effects of publicity, parties and witnesses concerned give their evidence more frankly and unreservedly. The board, with a stipendiary magistrate for its chairman, decided, after lengthy, consideration, that, in view of the international likeness of air regulations and of what was understood to be done in other countries, the Defence Minister'was best able to determine what the procedure should be, and that his wish in the matter should be complied with. The Minister has made it ■ clear that the report of the board, which under the regulations, will “ where necessary include observations and recommendations with a view to the preservation of life and the avoidance of similar accidents in future,” will be-published. That is very well so far as it goes, but the lay mind will still fail to' perceive in what has been put forward any convincing reasons why publicity should be less in an inquiry of this kind than that afforded generally to inquiries where the safety of the public is concerned.