TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. FRIDAY, 16th JULY, 1937. PIOUS BUSYBODIES.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3927, 16 July 1937, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. FRIDAY, 16th JULY, 1937. PIOUS BUSYBODIES.

AN appeal to the Government to withdraw prosecutions against men who had made mis-state-ments concerning their earnings while drawing sustenance payments was made to th e actingMinister of Labour, the Hon. P. C. Webb, by deputations which waited on him at Auckland on Tuesday. Rev. T. Halliday, representing social service organisations, asked that the Labour Department should cease prosecuting men who had made misstatements as to their earnings. The Minister said these men were worse than Ned Kelly, as they were defrauding women and children of bread and butter. These and others would be required to pay back the amounts due to the fund, even it were at the rate of threepence a week. Any legitimate mistake would receive consideration. It is difficult to imagine the prompting which sent clergy and social workers in Auckland to plead for leniency on behalf of men who had defrauded the Unemployment Funds. The Government was, however, seriously asked to cease prosecution and penalty, but Mr Webb was deaf ta the humbugging entreaties. How clergy and social workers can associate themselves with such a request is difficult to understand. It seems rather a pious plea that there has been either innocence or ignorance, because if this could be true there must be something radically wrong with an education system which sends men into the world incapable of understanding a simple question as to their earnings during any prescribed period. Few men of normal intellect would appreciate the suggestion that they are so obtuse as to be unaware of the money that has reached their pockets. It would seem that the request for leniency is more inspired with the thought of embarrassing the Government than by genuine humanitarian motives. The material aspect of the case is that it amounts to theft of money and it can well be asked whether our clergy and social workers condone theft. But there is a still mere serious aspect—the abuse of a trust and thereby a great moral wrong. It has to be remembered thaf the Relief Funds are expressly intended to meet emergency and very certainly the public would not tolerate a rigid and slow working system in administration. The necessity for which these funds are established does no alleviate itself with time; rather will distress increase. Therefore the Government is forced to abandon the precautions which usually surround official administration; investigation must reduce to a minimum and trust reposes in the applicant. Therefore, when 600 men in Auckland raided the fund they rode roughshod over a trust. Is that what our clergy and social workers would condone ? Are such moral responsibilities to be set aside as though they never existed? Most cordially will every decent minded citizen stand with the Government in its declaration that the wrong must be put right. Indeed it is not too much to say that fraud, after this warning, should earn the penalty of the Crimes Act. The Government will not err if it makes the punishment fit the crime—the worst and the meanest of all crimes of trafficking a fund which belongs to people actually confronted with m'sfortune. There is nothing chivalrous or humane in shielding the wrongdoer, nor is the community served by social workers ,who 'plead leniency for men whose appetites have deadened the last shreds of moral respectability. And, moreover, the Government has problem enough withou. pious busybodies pleading the humantarian impulse as the prompting for their interference.