AMOKURA INQUIRY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3085, 30 April 1913, Page 6

AMOKURA INQUIRY.

REPORT OF THE ACTING^MINISTER

NO GROUNDS FOR COMPLAINT. (Fitou Odh Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, April 24. The following memorandum relating lo the departmental inquiry concerning the punishment of boys on the training ship Amokur-a has been issued by the Acting Minister of Marine, the Hon. H. D. Bell “ The departmental inquiry by Mr Allport (Under-secretary of Marine) has been held, Mr Macasscy (of the Grown Law Office) being present throughout. Full opportunity was given to anyone who desired to bo heard, and many of the boys, as well as some of the public, gave ev.donee. I am satisfied that all the information necessary to enable the Government to deal with the matter has been obtained, and that no good end would bo served by a further investigation. There is no authority for the Government any more than for any other person or body to hold what has been called a ‘ public nquiry ’ except through a Royal Commission. The purposes of a Royal Commission arc to obtain evidence of the facts and to suggest remedies. The Government has the evidence, and does not require suggestions as to the course it should take. “ Corporal punishment has been administered for serious offences since the training ship was established in the year 1907. The regulations have always loft the matter af punishment to the discretion of the commander of the Amokura. Corporal punish/ ment will not be abolished aa the ultimata penalty for serious offences or for repeated misconduct. It has hitherto been administered with a rope’s end on the boy’s buttocks, the limit in most oases being six strokes, the maximum being 12. The evidence has disproved the assertion that cruelty or undue severity has been oxerC'sed. The boys no doubt bear the marks for some days, and in some very few cases the skin has been slightly broken, but there is no instance of a boy being incapacitated from immediately returning to work after the punishment. It Is probable that the boys themselves, like most other boys, would prefer corporal punishrnent to the minor penalt-es of detention and disrating which are imposed for ordinary offences, and this may have led to a more frequent application of the rope’s end than was necessary for the enforcement of discipline on board. No punishment has in any case been ordered by any other than the captain, and in every case of corporal punishment the captain himself has inflicted it.

“It is the intention of the Government, by regulations, to prescribe more particularly the offences for which corporal punishmay be inflicted, and (as in the case of the Education Department) to prescribe the nature of the instrument of punishment and the number- of strokes that may be inflicted. It is also the intention of the Government to direct that in future corporal punishment shall not bo inflicted in the presence of the whole ship s company as heretofore, but in the presence of one or two only. , , “As to the other complaints made, they were all completely disproved, except that of the somewhat circumscribed accommodation, which is due to the small tonnage of the vessel. If either House of Pari-ament desires to consider the departmental report, the report will ho laid the table aftei the meeting of Parliament.