BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 208, 22 November 1927, Page 13

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

REJECTION OF BILL MR. tSITT’S EXPLANATION “In justice to our supporters, the league executive, Mr. Holland and rayself, some explanation as to the rejection of the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill on its second reading should be given,” states the Hon. L. M. Isitt, M.L.C., in forwarding the following statement: “As the hearing by the Education Committee of objectors and supporters of the Bill proceeded, it became manifest that there was a danger of the Bill being side-tracked by the Nelson system being advocated in substitution of it. Mr. Hudson, the chairman of the committee, and a former supporter of the Bill, was manifestly in favour of such substitution, and when we found former voters lor the Bill outside the committee talking on these lines and strangely impervious to our explanation that so far from opposing the Nelson system, the Bill provided for its wholesale adoption wherever it could be efficiently worked, we were naturally greatly concerned. MR. HUDSON’S ATTITUDE: “A few days afterwards Mr. Holland told me that Mr. Hudson was moving an amendment against the Bill, but later told both Sir James Allen and myself with manifest joy that Mr. Hudson had interviewed him, that he had shown Mr. Hudson an amendment which he hoped would meet Mr. Hudson’s wishes, that Mr. Hudson had expressed his satisfaction with the amendment, congratulated Mr. Holland on his conciliatory spirit (so different from mine) and declared that if the amendments were incorporated with the Bill he, Mr. Hudson, would not move his amendment. AMENDMENT MOVED “We were as pleased as Mr. Holland, and a league executive meeting was summoned at considerable expense. That meeting not only unanimously accepted the compromise but cut out any time limit. W r hen the second reading of the Bill came on Mr. Hudson refused to accept the agreed-upon amendment, and supported Mr. Atmore’s amendment that ‘The Bill be read that day six months in order that the promoters of the Sill have an opportunity of considering the application of the Nelson system as recommended by the Education Committee.’ That motion was carried, net only killing the Bill, but also all possibility of any motion legalising the Nelson system being passed. Mr. Hudson later on said to Mr. Holland, T am afraid that I misled you.’ “I refrain from any comment upon Mr. Hudson’s repudiation of the compromise, but I wish to emphasise certain facts: —(a) If the main anxiety of those who wished to legalise the Nelson system was to obtain the vote rather than destroy the Bill, their obvious course was to follow precedent, vote for the second reading, and when the Bill was in committee stage move the amendment. By acting as they did they destroyed their own professed purpose. (b) Our Bill, while legalising the Nelson system for any schools that desired it, compelled a choice between the Nelson system or the religious exercises. No school could be left withcAit religious teaching of some kind. “Mr. Holland authorises the record given here of his arrangement of the compromise with Mr. Hudson as correct.”