REGULATIONS BEYOND THE LAW.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1939, Page 4

REGULATIONS BEYOND THE LAW.

J)ECISIVETA T as it upholds the view of those who contended that the institution of the import control regulations now in force in this country amounted to an arbitrary and unwarranted exercise of authority by the Government of the day, the .judgment in which Mr Justice Callan has declared the regulations to he invalid evidently wilt be of limited practical effect. It lias-already been announced by the Prime Minister that the judgment may be tested in the Court of Appeal and that if the final decision supports that of the- Supreme Court, the Government. will forthwith introduce legislation validating the regulations and everything that has been done under them.

The maximum possible effect of the judgment thus is to refer the question at issue back to Parliament, which has full power to deal with it as it thinks fit. Our constitutional practice is strikingly different from that, for example, of the United States, which possesses, in its Federal Supreme Court, a tribunal empowered to veto not only administrative action, but legislation not. in accordance with the constitution. Tn New Zealand it rests entirely with Parliament to say whether a judgment like that of Mr Justice'Callan on the import regulations is to have any lasting or real effect.

So far as the present Parliament is concerned, the Government is not likely to experience any difficulty in securing the passage of its projected validating legislation. In the event of a sufficient body of opposition to any act of policy developing, an election of course offers the means of securing the repeal or amendment of the policy in question, but the effective appeal here is to the bodv of electors and not to the Courts.

It would be disappointing, however, if the judgment delivered in this instance by Air Justice Callan did not serve a good and useful purpose in impressing on Parliament and the Government the necessity of adopting adequately orderly and constitutional methods of giving effect to any policy. The judgment lays it down clearly that the regulations are not such as the statutes relied upon authorise Hie Governor-General in Council to make, and that under Hie regulations lawful activities have been limited in ways which Parliament has neither prescribed nor authorised anyone else to prescribe. This, the judgment observes, is of fundamental importance from many points of view, of which not the least important arc connected with publicity and the necessity for proceeding by certain ordered steps which it has been thought wise to make incidental to the evolution of Parliamentary enactments. The judgment at least should command attention as a condemnation of slipshod methods which evidently ought to be amended apart from, any question of policy involved.