Government Has Lessened Respect For Law: Allegation In House

Greymouth Evening Star, 24 October 1947, Page 8

Government Has Lessened Respect For Law: Allegation In House

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. To cope with the.heavy legislative programme §till confronting it,, the House of Representatives will be asked to sit until mid- • night on three nights each week as from next Tuesday. This was indicated by the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, when the House met this morning. He gave- notice of his intention to move on Tuesday that the sitting hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays ■ and Thursdays'be extended from the customary 10.30 p.m. until midnight. Urgency was taken for the passing of the Imprest Supply Bill.

Mr R. M. Algie (Opposition,' Remuera) said the introduction of the Bill gave the Opposition an opportunity to bring a grievance to the attention of the Government.. There has been a tendency of late to disregard the due and proper administration of justice, which had reached the culminating point in the regulation recently issued dealing with the tramways dispute in Wellington. The Regulation was gazetted on October 1G and was made under the Emergency Regulations Act, 1939, in which there was provision that any regulation under the Act could-not be challenged in any court of law. Parliament was the only place where it could be challenged. The regulation deprived the Wellington City Council, a democratically-constituted body, of the right to go to the Supreme Court of this country for a judicial decision. We had reached an extraordinary pass when the Government took away the right of such a body to seek, the protection of the law. The objections to the Government’s action were that the regulation was made under an Act passed for war purposes and that when the regulation was made the House was in session and, if there was any doubt, the properplace to rectify it was not the Ministerial room but in the House. Strewn with Wreckage

Mr Algie said the political pathway of the Labour Government was strewn with the wreckage of legal principles. The Government had not observed the rule of law, if it were to 4 the advantage of its policy to disregard it. The Government during its years af office had done more to weaken respect for the administration of justice, to weaken judges, magistrates and other judicial officers than any other Government. Mr W. A. Bodkin (Opposition, Central Otago): In the Empire. Mr Algie said if his statement was untrue then it was scandalous that he should make it, but, if what he said was substaiitially true, it was equally scandalous that the Government should stay in office and not meet the charge. Long Fight

Mr Algie said that generation after generation had fought for the privilege to go to the law courts, but for ■■ the Government, to shut the doors of the law courts in the faces of its citizens was an abrogation of Government authority. The Opposition did not claim that decisions of the Supreme Court should not be corrected, but it did claim that if a judgment of the Supreme Court was given it should stand until it was corrected in Parliament. Mr Algie said that on at least four occasions the Government had violated the .written statute law of the country in appointing its own friends to positions on the public pay-roll. Members of the House had taken the oath of allegiance to the Crown and that meant an oath of loyalty to the law as it was written. If the private

citizen violated the law, there was machinery to deal with him, but what, could be said if members of Parliament, who were the custodians and makers of the law, themselves violated it, despite their oath to God and man that they would respect it.

“My colleagues and I are making an indictment this morning that could rank among the historical events of our country,” declared Mr Algie. It was an indictment that could not be laughed away. The Government was shutting the doors of the law courts aaginst the ordinary citizens, was openly disregarding the decisions of its own Supreme Court and was breaking the written law to make appointments to public office. There had been flagrant disregard of the principles of the British rule of law. .“I regret that the time has arrived in the . history of my country when there is too little clamour against this kind of thing,” said' Mr Algie. If the public was apathetic while the administration of justice was put into the wastepaper basket, then the time had come when it was no great, step from the tribunal to tyranny. Minister in Reply The Minister of Labour, Mr McLagan, said Mr Algie had given little if any information about the matter from which his indictment arose and on which he had based such sweeping and serious charges. The tramways tribunal was set up under the Strikes and Lockout Emergency Regulations and the original regulations gazetted in 1939 said that decisions of such tribunals were binding on all the parties concerned. The regulations could not be left indefinitely in force. They would have to be replaced by legislation.

The Leader ,of the Opposition, Mr Holland: That is our case.

Mr McLagan said that until the regulations were replaced they would continue to be used. In the recent tramways dispute, most awards had but that in Wellington had not. Industrial trouble threatened and under the existing legislation it would have been necessary to wait for the Wellington award to expire before any attempt at settlement could be made and it would have taken nine months before-settlement could be reached. “Appeasement, Appeasement” Mr McLagan said the settlement of the tribunal in the tramways dispute was accepted by those on both sides, with the exception of the Wellington City Cotincil. The other -parties preferred to accept the decision rather than go to court with almost certain industrial trouble.

Mr W. S. Goosman (Opposition, Piako): Appeasement, appeasement, appeasement. Mr McLagan said it appeared to him that some peojile, while professing to deplore industrial disputes, seemed to be actually concerned in provoking them and were sorry when disputes were settled. Many of the charges made against the Government were quite irrelevant. As for the appointment of friends to public positions, the Government was less open to criticism than, any previous Administration and would stand or fall by that comparison. It had been alleged that court doors had been shut i against citizens, but to wait for the court to give a decision and then reverse it by legislation, as Mr Algie suggested, would be a farcical course to pursue. When the City Council challenged the validity of the tribunal’s the Government’s advice was that while the' original regulations would probably be upheld there was an element of doubt. The regulations were therefore amended to make the original purpose unmistakable, but. nothing new was added.