BIG BAY INQUIRY.

Evening Star, Issue 22684, 25 June 1937, Page 8

BIG BAY INQUIRY.

In his statement giving reasons why it was decided .that the official inquiry into the aeroplane fatality at Big Bay should be held iu private, the Minister of Defence (the Hon. F. Jones) adds almost nothing, certainly nothing of any importance, to the reasons for privacy that were given before the Board of Inquiry at its preliminary meeting in Invercargill. Mr Jones admits that so far as he himself and the department aro concerned there is no reason why the inquiry should not be public. As though to stress an extenuating set of circumstances, however, he goes on to say that the Board of Inquiry is not in the same position as an ordinary court, in that it is to make recommendations only and is not empowered to impose penalties such as is the case in a marine inquiry. In tins connection the public has every right to ask wherein lies the difference as regards the actual reporting of the evidence. The Minister, we think, would have some difficulty in making his point clear. Mr Jones goes on to say that his only reasons for requesting a private inquiry were: (1) To enable all possible evidence as to the cause of the accident to be procured so that action can be taken to see that similar accidents may be avoided iu the future; (2) so that no party to the inquiry, such as the pilot of the machine, should possibly have his standing impaired because of the fact that lie is required to give evidence at the inquiry. It is, of course, impossible to understand what his first clause has to do with the question of privacy. Under the British practice evidence is taken in public in an extremely wide variety of cases, and nothing of any significance has happened from which it can be deduced that the system is unsatisfactory. The Minister’s second clause is, in this instance, ocmpletely shorn of import by the pilot’s personal desire for a public inquiry. In point of fact, it cannot be said that the position is any different in this respect from, say, the Napier Hospital inquiry, which, subject to the discretion of its commission at particular points, is being held in public. Objections to piecemeal publication of evidence in the Big Bay inquiry did not hold for the inquest, and full confidence in the newspaper reports was indicated when those reports were received by the board to show what happened at the inquest. Significantly enough, the magistrate remarked that as a magistrate ho would prefer that the inquiry should be open to the public and the Press. The pilot, for whose interests the Minister is solicitous, prefers publicity. It would have been better if the Minister and the board had complied with these views instead of adopting a course which may form an unfortunate precedent.