The Times. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1945. Prosecution --- or Persecution?

Manawatu Times, Volume 70, Issue 281, 28 November 1945, Page 6

The Times. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1945. Prosecution --- or Persecution?

Four prosecutions of considerable interest to the buying public of Palmerston North and district were heard in the Magistrate’s Court on Monday. The circumstances surrounding these eases and their implications are worthy of some comment in order that citizens may get a truer picture of the methods adopted by the Price Tribunal and its army of inspectors.

No sensible person will object to inspection fairly applied, and certainly no one will have any sympathy for the profiteer who attempts systematically to fleece the public. But there are limits to which any inspectorial inquisition should be allowed to go, and the least that should be expected from the agents of the Price Tribunal is that they show some consideration in the exercise of their powers.

Take, as an example, the case of one of the largest stores which was prosecuted. Inquiries revealed that three Price Tribunal inspectors spent two months going over the firm’s stocks with a fine comb, and they could only unearth two breaches of a Price Tribunal order! And those breaches were not deliberate.

The firm handles not hundreds but thousands of lines. Price orders are constantly changing, and this places a great strain on the management and staff. Any reasonable person would imagine that two slips in a thousand—or thousands—were worthy of a certificate of merit. But instead, a reputable firm with ail unblemished reputation is presented with a blue paper, and suffers the odium of Court proceedings which must inevitably, to less discerning minds, create a suspicion that an attempt had been made to take someone down.

In another of the prosecutions the magistrate expressed himself as satisfied that there had been no deliberate attempt to defeat the Price Tribunal’s price orders. Here also it was a case of two errors in thousands of articles offered for sale.

Surely the inspectors are allowed, some elasticity. Why should firms of stainless reputation have to face the odium of Court proceedings? Such an interpretation of the law as revealed in these cases is unjust in its harshness and unbending rigidity, and some protest should be made lest there be a repetition of this offence of officiousness.

There is just one final comment that may be made. It would be interesting to know how long these three inspectors were combing over the stocks of Palmerston North business houses. The fact that they only discovered four breaches Is certainly a compliment to the integrity of the city’s commercial houses—and that is a fact which should give shoppers a feeling of security—and satisfaction.