ARMY DEFAULTERS: VOTING RIGHTS NOT YET RESTORED

Greymouth Evening Star, 5 October 1949, Page 10

ARMY DEFAULTERS: VOTING RIGHTS NOT YET RESTORED

WELLINGTON, October 4 (P.A.). —Defaulters during the war have not yet had their voting rights restored, and will not be able to vote at the General Election. The New Zealand Inter-Church Council on Public Affairs has asked the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) for restoration of the right of defaulters who were later released on parole as conscientious objectors to vote. So far Mr Fraser has taken no action. The secretary of the council (Mr C. Gibson Young) said this evening that the council had written to the Prime Minister and offered to send a deputation to discuss the position. The council was concerned that those men who were classed as objectors and released on parole were still not deemed to have been discharged, and under the Electoral Emergency Regulations, 1943, were disqualified from enrolling and voting. In a letter to the Prime Minister on behalf of the council, Mr Young said: “In view of (1) the strong desire of many Christian people that the stigma attaching to defaulters under the Electoral Emergency Regulations, 1943, should be removed, and that they should be finally discharged from the military forces and (2) the imminence of the General Election, on behalf of this council, I would plead for immediate and sympathetic reconsideration of the position of these men, many of whom are otherwise wdrthy citizens. “I suggest, moreover, that our case is strengthened by the intentions of the Military Training Bill, on which I have consulted the Director of Employment. Had those defaulters on parole been dealt with under the bill their objections would have been upheld.”