THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY “Public Service.” MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 1947 INDIVIDUALISM?

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 56, Issue 32897, 18 August 1947, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY “Public Service.” MONDAY, AUGUST 18, 1947 INDIVIDUALISM?

A young married man, a carpenter, who has been living in a shed with his wife, began to build his own home with the help of relatives. Then the ponderous machinery of the law moved and the carpenter was brought to court charged with “having worked at his calling or trade on Sunday in view of a public place.” Fortunately, the magistrate refused to be impressed by the strict letter of the law; what is more, he recommended that the law should be amended so that permits could be given to encourage such enterprise. The spirit of self-help, of enterprise and initiative, is indeed dead in New Zealand if this ridiculous law is tolerated. To condemn people to live in sheds, to expect them to bring up families when they do not possess homes, is neither Christian nor logical, and no churchman would compromise with his beliefs or his conscience by supporting an amendment of the law that would permit a carpenter to work upon his home on a Sunday.

Such initiative should be encouraged, and this latest ridiculous attempt to make a criminal of a man who believes in his fundamental rights as an individual, in his own honest enterprise, should spur Parliament into a prompt amendment of a law that should never have possessed its present sweeping and arbitrary powers.