DEMONSTRATION RECALLED

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1930, Page 7

DEMONSTRATION RECALLED

INCIDENT AT AUCKLAND. A CONVICTION QUESTIONED. A hostile demonstration against the Primo Minister, Hon. G. W. Forbes, when he was leaving Auckland on August 25 for the Imperial Conference was recalled in the House of Representatives on Friday, when the Justice Department Estimates were being debated. Mr. M. J. Savage (Labour—Auckland West) said one man had been convicted of vagrancy as well as of being idle'and disorderly. If all the unemployed were to be charged with vagrancy there would soon not be many people out of gaol. Mr. Savage said he had taken up the matter with the Minister of Justice, Hon. J. G. Cobbe, who said evidence had been given that the man had done no work since June and occupied his time in addressing meetings as an agitator. “I want to 'be assured that men are not going to be arrested because they address meetings as agitators or because they have been unemployed,” said Mr. Savage. “If a man’s greatest crime is that he fights for his rights, I am with him.”

“The man was just summarily convicted and ordered to come up for sentence if called upon,” replied the Minister. Mr. Savage: But he was convicted. That js the point. The Minister said it had been pointed out that the man had repeatedly refused to take work and had given the authorities a certain amount of trouble. The Leader of the Labour Party, Mr. H. E. Holland, said it would be dangerous if men who were out of work were to be arrested for. vagrancy merely because they had no employment. He understood that this particular man did have means. In point of fact, he spent a good deal of his time in villifying the Labour Party, but that made no difference to the case. Every care should be taken to see that no man was convicted of vagrancy unless the charge that he was actually without means of support had been proved, Mr. Cobbe said that every care would naturally be taken to see that men were not convicted without justification.