THE PROPOSED PLEBISCITE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16113, 30 June 1914, Page 4

THE PROPOSED PLEBISCITE.

This first essential in connection with a plebiscite euch as it is proposed to take upon the question whether Bible lessons and Scriptural teaching should be introduced in the public schools of the dominion is that the issue sh,a!l be stated to the electors in a way that will admit of no confusion and that will elicit an honest expression of 'popular opinion. It seems to us to be quite clear that this essential is not satisfied in the form 'of the voting paper that is proposed in the Bible-in-Schools Referendum Bill -which has been brought dawn in the Lower House by the Minister of Education. The Bill proposes that the electors shall return an answer, either directly in the affirmative or directly in the' negative, on one issue which is to be submitted to them. This issue contains, however, two distinct propositions which not only are not necessarily allied but aie in fact properly separable. The elector who is entirely sympathetic to the proposal that selected passages from the Bible should be read in the schools under the supervision of the teachers may be wholly opposed to the proposal that the " right of entry" should be accorded to clergymen or Other accredited representatives of the various religious denominations to instruct the children of their respective t churches in their particular tenets. The inclusion of the two proposals in one issue Ls distinctly objectionable. If the Bill is passed in the form in which it has been introduced the effect will be that the electors who are favourable to one only of the

two proposals will either have to disfranchise themselves by refusing to vote at all or else will have to vote in a manner that does not egress their real judgment. Consequently the issue as framed cannot conclusively reveal tlio mind of the community on the question. It will be unfair to those, on the one hand, who are not wholly in accord with the platform of the Biblo-in-Statc-Schools League and also to those, on the other hand, who are not wholly antagonistic to that platfoirm, if the two propositions on which they axe expected to vote are not submitted to thorn as separate issues. The form of the proposed voting paper should certainly be amended in such a way as will allow those electors who favour the introduction of Bible lessons but are opposed'to the "right of entry," and vice versa, to express their opinion in terms that will jncA, involve any violation of their convictions.