The Hawera Star. SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 1925. MAKING KNOWN THE LAW.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 16 June 1928, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

SATURDAY, JUNE 16, 1925. MAKING KNOWN THE LAW.

Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock In Hawera. Manair,. Normanby. Okaiawa, Eltham. Mangatoki. Kaponga. Alton, Hurleyville Patea. Waverlev. MoLoia, Whakamara, Ohangal, Meremere. Fraser Bead, and Ararata.

A city contemporary states that the com 1 plaint recently made by a mother Ln the Children ’« Count that Parliament takes no stops to acquaint the people with the requirements of the laws it ■passes was perfectly justified, and it proceeds to <J Is cams the ease for the broadcasting of information. It deplores the attitude of Parliament, which, it 'contends, takes the stand that once it has enacted' new commandments for the people it lias no further duty to perform. It finds that lam's may be passed and come into operation- months before they appear in the printed volumes of the Statutes, and in the meantime the would-be law-abiding citizen may become the prey of any officer or inspector who has been sufficiently enterprising to keep abreast of the mem'legislation. This metropolitan paper admits that Parliament prints- its laws, ib-ut it finds fault f with the form in which they appear. Nobody -buy® copies of the Statutes and nobody subscribes 'to the Gazette, and the article -under notice very definitely expresses- the opinion that no one should ibc called upon to do so in order to- learn the nature of the laws which the people’s own -representatives in Parliament have passed, -presumably for the benefit of the people themselves. The article follows up its solemn: criticism by giving the public a remedy for the existing state of affairs. It declares .emphatically that ■the principle which places- the onus on ■the individual to obtain information-, is wrong, and proceeds to give a public, (which we hope will not be ungrateful) a method by which the grievance may be put right and justice- done- to democracy-. “We hold,” the article continues, “that it is the duty of the Legislature, when it passes a law, to make the provisions of that law known to all the people of the Dominion, even to the extent, if necessary, of having copies- delivered by post to every adult, and we -would have- -the same course followed with al-1 regulations that are of general application. The more obvious method of distributing the information would be by advertisement in the newspapers of the country, but -we hesitate to recommend that method -because it would involve- an addition to the revenue of the newspaper proprietors, and because the Government has in the Post Office an efficient alternative method.” For our -part we think our contemporary is altogether too. self-effacing. If we had been smitten with a brilliant idea of that sort wo w-oukl not have -hesitated to- recommend Parliament to carry on a intensive publicity campaign through the newspapers. Doubtless there- will be political opponents of the Government who will be glad to seize ■upon the injustice here pointed out and the remedy recommended as- an argument for the furtherance of their campaigns at the next General Election. It has only to be str-es'esd a little for the public to .realise the full measure of the injustice it lias suffered all these years by being deprived of -blue books, vol- ! nines' of statistics and other weighty |tomes in which every paragraph begins with an. “aforesaid” or a “whereas.” With everyone receiving through the post a private copy of the year’s lag is-lati-om we would indeed be in a fair way to becoming an educated democracy. There would be a complete revolution in the reading tastes of the people. with legal reading for everybody; even the juveniles would no longer remain- an ignorance of the penalty provided by the law for the theft- of apples front the neighbours’ orchards. We are afraid', however, that our d:is- J tinguisihed contemporary is a. visionary, fated to disappointment iu this regard. Even 1 did it succeed ire convincing Parliament of the necessity for such drastic changes', it -would still have the hardest part of its task to perform- in persuading" the .recipients l to read the free copies -of the latest legislation. It is much easier to learn through the

newspaper reports of court .proceedings that the law requires a driver to keep to his left, than by “swotting up” the information from a book—and ever so much more entertaining when, it happens, as- it sometimes does, that -tlie man who pays for one ’-s instruction, -on the -point is a person one dislikes exceedingly.