DEFAULTERS AND THE STATE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25866, 9 June 1945, Page 6

DEFAULTERS AND THE STATE

The proposals announced by the Acting Prime Minister for the reviewing of the position of military defaulters will receive a mixed public reception. This is not surprising, for they are a mixed and controversial lot of proposals. Mr Nash points out,‘with some show of righteousness, that in Great Britain and Australia conscientious objectors whose claims for exemption from military service were rejected have had the right of'appeal. There is an obvious retort to this, that objectors have had no such right in New 'Zealand simply because the Government has consistently denied it to them. And as Mr Algie, M.P., emphasises in a clear statement on this question, Parliament has only recently rejected the proposal that at this late date appeals should be taken. On decisions of similar cogency with those which have put these defaulters in detention, other former objectors accepted armed or alternative service and have been assisting in the country’s war effort for many years. The fact that defaulters have been sentenced to a period of detention of indeterminate length is again the responsibility of the Government. If defaulters today have been in detention, as Mr Nash observes, for upwards of three years and a-half —with no right of appeal and no knowledge of how long they may have to stay there, wasting their' lives and the taxpayers’ money—they can thank the Government for this experience. But now that the Government, with the war in Europe over, is emboldened to take up this thorny problem, it proceeds from one extreme to the other. Not only are all defaulters being given leave to appeal, but their new petitions will be addressed to a closed tribunal, the only publicity given to them being a report made to the press by the authority which deals with the appeal. This is, as the president of the Returned Services’ Association, Mr B. J. Jacobs, has protested, most improper. The appeal from a decision given in open court should, beyond question, be heard openly, with press and public present and the Crown represented. To say this

is not to reflect upon the two revising authorities appointed, who stand high in public esteem, but to insist that the ends of justice can best be served when the public rights and privileges are maintained. Justice, and not indignation, however justifiable, being the touchstone in the State’s dealings with defaulters, it is scarcely possible to follow Mr Jacobs when he proceeds to demand that these men should be deprived of their civil rights for a period, and that they should be debarred from employment in the public service. If, as is to be assumed, the sentence of defaulters to detention camps is intended to be punitive, since they have refused to obey their country’s law to bear arms for it, then punishment must cease when they are legally adjudged to have completed their sentence.