ADVICE NOT WANTED

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20953, 4 November 1939, Page 9

ADVICE NOT WANTED

MINISTER AND MAGISTRATE TRAFFIC LAW BREACHES (Special to Times.) HOKITIKA, Friday Referring to the comment on traffic cases by Mr E. C. Levvey, S.M., to the effect that “the Court hopes that there will be no more of these addresses by Ministers, and things like that,” the Minister of Transport, the Hon. R. Semple, said today that such comment by a magistrate from a sheltered position, without his being able to defend himself, was to his mind quite a departure from the ordinary principles of British justice. Because someone committed a breach of the transport regulations, added Mr Semple, and counsel informed the Court that he was responsible, as he had made an appeal to the workmen on the job, he had to be indicted by a magistrate, without there being any semblance of evidence that his appeal had anything whatever to do with the offences. Read With Amazement Mr Semple said he read the report of the hearing and the comment with amazement. “I take the strongest exception to the magistrate’s comment, and counsel’s statement that the cases were caused by what I had done. The statements would lead the public to believe that I have encouraged the transport laws to be broken. It is contrary to the truth. “I have done everything humanly possible, since becoming Minister, to prevent accidents on the roads, and everyone knows that. To be accused in open Court of being an aider and abetter in breaches of the law is hitting below the belt.” It was true that when he visited Burnham he appealed to the workmen to expedite the buildings, so as to give the maximum comfort the State could offer to men prepared to fight and to lose their lives for the country, said the Minister. He would do the same again if he wanted a job done for the benefit of the nation. Advice Not Required “I do not apologise to Mr Levvey, a trustee of the law, or to anybody else, for making that appeal,” said the Minister. “I want to tell Mr Levvey that I am capable of forming my own opinion on appeals for speedy work for the nation without any advice from him and others. I know my own job. I resent bitterly the insinuation that I was responsible for a breach of the law. “Counsel for the defendants were hard put to it when they brought my name into the cases. It was not very courteous of the magistrate to attack me from his sheltered position, and without hearing my side. His attack was based on supposition, not fact, and it is news to me to learn that that is one of the duties of trustees of the law to take advantage of a public man who is doing his best, and to use such a phrase as ‘things like that,’ is not very creditable from a man in a high position.”