Mr. Semple Returns To The Attack

Northern Advocate, 30 July 1938, Page 5

Mr. Semple Returns To The Attack

[Per Press Associatiott. Copyright.] WELLINGTON. This Day. Replying, to criticism of his action by Mr W. A. Bodkin (Opposition— Central Otago) when the House continued the Budget debate, on resumption at 2.30 p.m. yesterday, the Minister of Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple, said Mr Bodkin had contended that he (Mr Semple) had no proof of the statement which he had quoted the previous evening. Mr Semple said he had such proof, and he produced a copy of the “Pukeroa Review,” which he said, Was a journal circulated in the sanatorium. The Iron, gentleman had stated that the lady concerned was merely attacking Communism, but there was no reference to Communism in the article, which was headed, “This Freedom!” Mr Semple expressed the opinion that Mr Bodkin had been very unfair in his criticism that the Minister had no justification or reason for his attack on the lady, and, moreover, that he was sheltering behind the protection of Parliamentary privilege. The statement he had made, he said, he would repeat from every public platform in the Dominion.

Describing the statement as a “black, infamous and criminal falsehood,” Mr Semple, speaking in the Budget debate on Thursday, explained that a little publication from Pukeroa Sanatorium contained a report of the visit of the woman, whom he named, an official of the National Party, who spoke to nurses and inmates of the institution. She was reported, he said, to have drawn an inference, quoting from an alleged Socialist book, that Labour proposed to destroy legal marriages. and said that in this way children born under a Labour regime would be illegitimate. ‘ I ask the Leader of the Opposition to repudiate this woman,” added Mr Semple. “I have never heard of her,” retorted Mr Hamilton. “If you don’t know her. she knows you,” replied- Mr Semple. “That is the foulest indictment ever cast against a civilised country. This type of woman must suffer from a distorted mind. She is not fit to be at large, let alone creep to the bedside of her sick fellows and administer mental poison.”