FALSTEIN CASE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 226, 25 September 1942, Page 6

FALSTEIN CASE

COURT-MARTIAL SEQUEL A REMISSION SOUGHT Sydney, Sept. 18. Parliamentary friends of Mr. Sydney Max Falstein, Federal Labour member for Watson (Sydney), are trying to secure remission or part remission of the 28 days' camp detention to which he was sentenced as aircraftman, second-class, by a Royal Australian Air Force court martial. Falstein was found guilty of having used insubordinate language to a superior officer on September 4. He was also charged with having said: "I am going to Canberra next week, and I will have you shifted." But there is little chance of Falstein airing his grievances at the present Parliamentary session. The Minister for Air, Mr. Drakeford, has lirmly refused to intervene on Falstein’s behalf. Falstein had the right to appeal against his sentence to the Air Board or the Governor-General, he said. Labour friends. Senator Amour, ot New South Wales, and Mr. Caiwell, of Victoria, tried to have the papers of the case tabled in the House of Representatives, and asked questions on the administration of the training camp to which Falstein was attached. Senator Amour alleged that the court martial had a political background. Mr. Caiwell declared that Falstein had been harshly treated and that there would have been no court martial if he had not been a Labour member of Parliament.

Royal Australian Air Force spokesmen denied that there was any political background to the court martial. The fact that Falstein was a member of Parliament “mtitled him to no special privileges. Meanwhile Aircraftman Falstein languishes in a detention camp. He is not permitted to have visitors nor read newspapers. He rises early each day, exercises, drills, scrubs floors and performs heavy labouring jobs, eats the plainest of foods and retires early to sleep in accommodation little better than a cell. He will be entitled to the usual four days’ remission for good conduct.