PRESS CENSORSHIP

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24828, 30 January 1942, Page 4

PRESS CENSORSHIP

STATEMENT BY MR HOLLAND REFERENCE TO MINISTERIAL TRIPS (Special) CHRISTCHURCH, Jan. 29. "Do you think it is fair that we should be sending Public Works men overseas on war work at £lO or £l2 a week to work alongside'your boys who are being paid 7s 6d? " asked the Leader of the Opposition, Mr S. G. Holland, of a Tinwald audience in the Temuka by-election campaign. "Why don't you know about these things? It is because the press is censored. Some time ago Mr R. Semple, Minister of Railways, and Mr P. C. Webb, Minister of Labour, opened a railway, and they thought the event was of such great importance that they connected up the radio throughout New Zealand and let the war news go hang for a while," said Mr Holland. They talked to each other, and entertained the people, he continued, but Mr Webb had been elsewhere since then, but the public had not been told where he had gone. They would be told one day, but the press would not be able to tell them when Ministers did other things not so pleasant as the opening of railways. " I believe the people of New Zealand are old and strong enough and prepared to accept the truth," said Mr Holland. "One thing they can complain about is that the truth is denied them, because it is unpleasant. To-day we have a censorship imposed that is a breach of our democratic system."