ETHICS OF QUOTATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24605, 13 May 1941, Page 6

ETHICS OF QUOTATION

The quotation from a document of a passage that is divorced from its context is not generally regarded as commendable. In certain circumstances it may be dishonest and reprehensible. The use which Mr M. Connelly, M.L.C., who is a candidate for a seat on the City Council, made last week in an election speech at St. Clair of a quotation from the report of the city valuer last year does not redound to his credit. Mr Connelly quoted from the report a paragraph in which the city valuer ascribed the public interest in the valuations to “the increase in rateable values, which amounted to £114,263, the greatest in the history of the department for one year since the inception of the annqal value system of rating in the year 1857.” Mr Connelly seems, however, to have been very careful to refrain from quoting the city valuer’s explanation of this exceptional increase in the valuation, contained, as it is, in the report from which the quotation was made. The city valuer stated that, in pursuance of a uniform policy with respect to rateable values, the valuations had during tjie depression years of 1931 to 1934 been reduced by £279,621. As the depression passed away, however, and as rents, building costs, and the rents of sections increased so also the valuations increased. Cause and effect were plainly observable in the valuer’s assessments, and it is pertinent to observe —what Mr Connelly omitted to mention —that less than 1 per cent, of over *IOOO objections to the valuations in 1939-40 was sustained. Moreover, though there was an exceptional increase in the valuations for the year, the total of them was only £1204 in excess of the total in 1931, in which year the valuations were the highest that had been recorded to that time. The inference which Mr Connelly seems to have deliberately sought to convey by his quotation of an isolated passage in the city valuer’s report is clearly refuted by a reference to the report as a whole. The suppression of significant features of the report was in effect a glaring distortion of it.