COMPENSATION SOUGHT

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21416, 7 March 1935, Page 14

COMPENSATION SOUGHT

♦ — AUTHOR OF TEXT-BOOK ON CITIZENSHIP F OK.VIHR CABIN FT MINISTER'S PETITION I From Our Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, March 6. A petition presented to Parliament last year by G. W. Russell, of Wellington, a former Minister of the Crown, for compensation for the preparation of a text-book on citizenship, for use in public schools — a book which was subsequently withheld—received a favourable report from the Education Committee in tho House of Representatives to-day. The committee reported it was satisfied (1) That the petitioner had written his book at the suggestion of the then Minister for Education (Sir James Parr); and (2) That although the book was not approved as a text-book by the Education Department, the writer should have been paid for his manuscript. It therefore recommended that the petition should be given favourable consideration by the Government. The petitioner estimated that he had lost royalties worth £SO a year for 12 years, £IOO as the cost of labour in writing, and £25 for printing an edition. He asked for such compensation as was considered justifiable. Mr H. Atmore (Ind., Nelson) said it would be only elementary justice if the work was recognised by the Government. The committee had been very impressed with the petitioner's statement.

Mr Walter Nash (Lab., Hutt) said that the petitioner, a former Minister in the Cabinet, believed that Sir James Parr had approved his book. He had even inscribed a sentence to this effect in the fly-leaf. The petitioner had been put to* great expense in doing the work the Minister wanted him to do. The book itself was a valuable one, and it deserved to be better known throughout the Dominion.