"ANTI SOCIAL."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 232, 1 October 1928, Page 16

"ANTI SOCIAL."

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

REFORM PAPER'S CRITICISM, jj — | GOVERNMENT'S 'HIGH-HANDED" ij ACTION. H SI J The Christchurch "Press." a leading £1 Reform newspaper, has the following ? comment on this week's debate on the J Mental Defectives Bill:— § It must have astonished the more & | thoughtful members of the House when j the Prime Minister described the Mental i Defectives Bill as a policy measure which i the Government was determined to push j through. After the opinions expressed \ about the bill all over the Dominion — j not by people hostile to the Government, J or by irresponsibles, but by educated i people who are in the fullest sympathy i with what the Government is trying to i do —it is distinctly high-handed to refuse i time for further consideration. The i Prime Minister's excuse is that "there i was real need for the bill, and that to i fail to pass it would amount to neglect i of duty." The need for a bill of some j kind is admitted, but it is ridiculous to j say that it would be a neglect of duty j to delay a bill which has not yet been j made wholly safe. And if the Prime j Minister really said that the bill, as j now modified, is precisely what he and j the Minister of Health wanted it to be. ] it would be interesting to know on whose i advice it came before the House with i the clauses which have now been i dropped. The Minister admitted during i the debate that until Dr. Gray went i abroad the Government was not in a position to introduce a bill, and drafted this bill on data supplied 011 his return bv that "important officer." It looks, therefore, as if it was Dr. Ciray who advised sterilisation and the other proposals which have been dropped. But registration (in the terms of the bill) is a far more dangerous proposal than even t sterilisation, since it affects far more people, and yet the Government was so certain of the soundness of the advice tendered to it on this point that it would not have any of it questioned. The Minister even went so far as to say, when he was asked for an explanation • of the term "anti-social," that he was "quite satisfied in his own mind what it meant"; as if that settled anything! Surely the Minister can see that it does [ not in the least matter what is in his ' mind if the clause is obscure to other t minds—now, or five, or ten, or twenty 5 years hence. If "anti-social" means • "criminal" the clause should say "crimi- • nal"; but to most people it means t nothing definite at all, so that if the '• Legislative Council does not throw it r out this clause will allow almost anyone J to be registered whose opinions or '• actions are objectionable to whatever r majority happens to be in power.