CAL WELL OUT OF HOSPITAL

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31093, 23 June 1966, Page 13

CAL WELL OUT OF HOSPITAL

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) SYDNEY, June 22. The leader of the Australian Labour Party, Mr Arthur Calwell, left the Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, this afternoon to fly back to Melbourne by a Royal Australian Air Force aircraft.

Twenty uniformed , police formed a shoulder - to - shoulder barrier around his car outside the hospital. A 19-year-old youth, Peter Raymond Kocan, was remanded on bail today on a charge of shooting with intent to murder Mr Calwell after a meeting in the suburb of Mosman last night. Mr Calwdl said today that he forgave the person who fired the shot at him.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Mr Calwell, who is aged 69. said that the attack had come as a great shock to him because he never expected such a thing to happen in Australia. He has lacerations to the

jaw caused when a bullet struck the door window of his car and shattered it as he was about to leave the political meeting in Mosman. The bullet did not wound him. but he has a tear on the lapel of his suit coat which was made by the bullet. Speaking painfully, Mr Calwell told reporters at his bedside today: “It could have

been quite serious. But it’s not. I’m all right now.” Earlier, Mr Calwell, a Roman Catholic, received Holy Communion thanksgiving. KENNEDY’S DEATH Before yesterday’s incident, Mr Calwell told a television interviewer that he believed the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, a week before the Australian Federal election, had contributed “a lot” to the Labour Party’s defeat then. The Labour Party’s oldest living member, Mr Frank Williamson, aged 92, who was in the back seat of Mr Calwell’s car when the shooting occurred, said today: “Suddenly there was a loud explosion and glass flew everywhere inside the car. “Arthur jumped, pulled out

a handkerchief and I asked him if he was hit. “All he said was ‘Yes.’ ” Mr Williamson added: “The lad who did it is lucky to be alive. If he had killed Arthur he would have been killed himself. “There seemed to be scores of people standing around the car and he had no chance of escaping. “They were in no mood to treat him lightly.”

Zambian Copper.—Rhodesia railways yesterday gave the all-clear for some 16,000 tons of Zambian 'copper exports, held up for weeks in Rhodesia by a payments dispute, to move on to Mozambique ports. The copper is worth about £lom. —Salisbury, June 22.