SHIPPING COMPANIES OPPOSE EASING OF PENALTY FOR DESERTION

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 June 1950, Page 6

SHIPPING COMPANIES OPPOSE EASING OF PENALTY FOR DESERTION

WELLINGTON, Yesterday (PA).— The shipping companies did not. feel that the penalty for ship deserters should be lessened because a deserter could obtain good employment in New Zealand, said Mr D. R. Riddiford in the Magistrate’s Court today. If there was such a shortage of labour and far more jobs than men to fill them, then measures could be introduced to ensure a regular supply cf labour, he said. Mr Riddiford appeared for the Shaw Savill and Albion Company when William Thomas Brook, a ship’s greaser and gasworks fireman, pleaded guilty to deserting the Waiwera at Wellington on May 29. Counsel for accused (Mr. W. J. Stacey) said accused had come to New Zealand with the intention of deserting. Accused had expected, a tine of £lO. but on his arrival found that he could be incarcerated. He (counsel) thought some distinction should be made in respect of deserters who gave themselves up voluntarily to the police. He thought they should receive some remission, even if of only a few days. The superintendent of at Wellington Gas Company said in evidence that accused was employed by him as a retort operator, and he was a competent worker. 1 The magistrate. Mr J. S. Hanna, I remarked that New Zealand depended almost entirely on her frozen meat ' and wool, etc., trade to England, and that accused was a refrigeration engineer. In sentencing accused to one month’s imprisonment, Mr. Hanna 1 said he felt sure the New Zealand High Commissioner in London could tell inquirers of the penalty of ship desertion.