FOR THE PUBLIC PEACE.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14841, 5 December 1913, Page 6

FOR THE PUBLIC PEACE.

The discussion upon the Police Offences Act Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night illustrated very interestingly the proneness of even normally careful sympathisers with the strike to ignore tho most obvious facts. This short.Bill, the principal provision in which is aimed at the suppression of intimidation, was introduced on July 16th last, over three months before the present strike commenced, and yet Mr Veitch described it as "panic legislation," meaning, of course, that it had been drafted to deal with the present trouble. Even had it booh drafted to deal with the recent offences against law and order, there would have been no ground for complaint. The actual fact, however, is as we have stated. -Most people will be surprised that anybody should oppose the purpose of a measure th© necessity for which has been demonstrated in

such striking fashion during the past six weeks. It is entirely idle to say that peaceful picketing is forbidden by a law directed against intimidation and

violence. As for Mr Veitch's curious complaint that instead of repressing serious, offences against individual liberty and public order, Parliament should be doing something else, is it not a very new and strange doctrine that curable crime for which a remedy has become necessary should be-left unattended to? To do the Opposition justice, they did not offer that factious opposition to the Bill with which they were so ready on its first appearance four months and a half ago. Even the Opposition is at times ablo'to receive the teaching of facts. They appeared oven to realise that incitements to crime must be drastically dealt with, for the only substantial criticism of the clause dealing with this matter was Mr Russell- not --reasonable, but quito needless, concern for liberty of speech. Liberty of speech is quite safe under the Bill; nothing will be restricted but criminal license, and that criminal license should be restricted is desirable, not only in the interest of peace and order, but in the interest of freedom of speech itself. For if no distinction were made between legitimate liberty of speech and criminal license, no distinction could be made between them in prohibitory laws. The Minister insisted that it is "a cardinal principle of our '•social life" that every citizen may exercise his lawful rights without fear or danger, and nobody denies this excepting those strikers who have carried out the violent instructions of their leaders.