RIGHTS REFUSED

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20737, 22 February 1939, Page 6

RIGHTS REFUSED

BROADCAST TALKS FREEDOM ASSOCIATION S CHARGE* UNDERMINING OF JUSTICE (By Telegraph.—Press Association) AUCKLAND, Wednesday A request by the New Zealand Freedom Association for broadcasting facilities to deliver a scries of addresses surveying actions of the Government which, it is claimed, have successively weakened and even undermined the authority of the Courts of Justice, has been refused by the Lirector of the National Broadcasting Service, Professor J. Shelley. The organiser of the association, Mr R. M. Algie, said yesterday that this decision meant that the Labour Government had established and intended to assert a complete dictatorship over the air.

The association's request was made following the Government’s decision to the effect that the Bureau of Importers was to be denied the ordinary privilege of an appeal to the Full Court by originating summons for an authoritative decision a-s to the validity or otherwise of the import control regulations. A Public Utility In his letter to Professor Shelley, Mr Algie said he desired to stress the fact that the addresses would be educative in nature and entirely free from party politics. They would take the form of an historical, accurate, trenchant, but fair criticism of a policy which so clearly threatened the security of the administration of justice in New Zealand. The material for the addresses would be derived entirely from the contents of the Statute Books. Several days later a reply was received from Professor Shelley n which it was stated that after caremi consideration they could not accede to the request of the association for broadcasting facilities. “Although the broadcasting servioe is a public utility, and although it is maintained by funds contributed by private individuals, nevertheless the people, who thus pay for a service, are to be allowed to listen to no addresses except those which it suits the Government to permit them to hear,” Mr Algie stated yesterday, 'Freedom of discussions is, therefore, at an end so far as this avenue of expression is concerned.” A Deliberate Plan The weakening of the authority of the Courts had been brought about very gradually, but it appeared to be part of a deliberate plan to increase the powers of Ministers and of the Cabinet as a whole. If the present policy be pursued, the time must soon come when the citizen would find that the Law Courts would no longer stand between him and the ever-increasing interference and control of political parties and of the bureaucracy. “The position in which the Labour Party has now placed us all is a very dangerous one,” he continued. “In future, the Government can make use of its very powerful Parliamentary majority to force through the House, in more or less skeleton form, and in quick time, any measures it pleases that are designed to bring about fart caching changes in our social, industrial and economic life. When It lays its proposals before Parliament, it can confine its bills to a mere statement of broad general principles and It can of course limit the debate to a dis-

cussion of those wide issues which alone appear in its bills. Mr Algie added that the association had an alternative remedy and it was now proposed to hold public meetings in each of the four large cities and tell the people how the authority of ths Courts had been undermined in recent years and how tribunals under f Ministerial and political control had been substituted for the free, independent and impartial system of the rule of law. The story to be told would be one which could not be narrated of any other part of the British Commonwealth.