Freedom Association Refused Radio Facilities

Northern Advocate, 22 February 1939, Page 12

Freedom Association Refused Radio Facilities

[Special to “Northern Advocate ”] AUCKLAND, This Day. The Director of the National Broadcasting Service, Professor J. Shelley, has refused a request by the New Zealand Freedom Association for broadcasting facilities to deliver a series of addresses surveying actions of tlje Government which, it is claimed, have successively weakened and even undermined the authority of the courts of justice. The organiser of the association, Mr R. M. Algie, said yesterday that this decision meant that the Labour Government had established and intended to assert a complete dictatorship over the air.

The association’s request was made following the Government’s decision to the effect that the Bureau of Importers was to be denied the ordinary privileges of an appeal to the Full Court by originating summons for an authoritative decision as to the validity or otherwise of the import control regulations. “Although the broadcasting service is a public utility, and although it is maintained by funds contributed by private individuals, nevertheless, the people, who thus pay for a service, are to be allowed to listen to no adI dresses except those which it suits the Government to permit them to hear,” Mr Algie stated yesterday; “Freedom of discussion is therefore at an end so far .as this avenue of expression is concerned.” Mr Algie added that the association had an alternative remedy, and it was now proposed to hold public meetings in each of the four large cities and tell 'the people how the authority of the courts had been undermined in recent years, and how tribunals under ministerial and political control had been substituted for the free, independent and impartial system of the rule of law. The story to be told would be one which could not be narrated of any other part of the British Commonwealth.