CENSORSHIP ISSUE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 188, 8 May 1944, Page 5

CENSORSHIP ISSUE

Australian Litigation Suspended CHIEF JUSTICE’S ADVICE SYDNEY, May 5. The Chief Justice, Sir John Latham, suggested in the High Court today that the parties in the Press censorship dispute should consider whether, instead of proceeding further in a conflict in the Courts, they should not meet and try to find a means of placing the censorship upon a practical basis. The problem would not, in any event, he said, be completely solved by any process of the litigation. The hearing was adjourned sine die. The Attorney-General, Dr. Evatt, announced subsequently that while he had nothing to say about the merits of the present litigation, the Government, in accordance with the Chief Justice’s suggestion, would make an attempt to settle all the existing disputes. The whole question would be reviewed by the Commonwealth in the spirit which obviously actuated thre spontaneous suggestion of the Chief Justice. The president of the Australian Newspaper Proprietors’ Association, Mr. R. A. Henderson, said that the newspapers’ stand was taken in what they conceived to be the national interest. They would try to meet the Chief Justice’s suggestion in every possible way short of the surrender of what they -believed to be vital principles. _____________