The Sham Referendum

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 27, 6 July 1905, Page 18

The Sham Referendum

The plebiscite egg is not yet laid. But our Bible-in-scbools friends are already beginning; to count their chickens. They are busy framing the form of question to be put to the free and independent elector at ' the coming referendum '—which, by the way, is about as much a ' referendum ' as it is a parallelopiped. The form favored toy some (so we learn from the ' Outlook') is this : ' For Bible lessons ' ; ' Against Bible lessons.' This form of reference is identical as to substance with the one suggested last year by the Bible-in-schools Conference. There is only one thing the matter with it : It is a complete misrepresentation of the position. It serenely assumes that a change in our Education Act has been already decided upon, and that the only question that the electors have to decide is this : What is to be the nature of the change ? Are Bible lessons to be introduced, ar are they not ? Or must some other sort of scheme be devised ? Obvibusly, the first issue to determine, if a plebiscite were to be forced upoi the electors, would be this : Whether or not our system of public instruction is to be secular, as at present ?

Every form of reference thus far put forward by the Bible-in-sohoolsi party «has been studiously vague and reticent and cleailv intended to ttirow dust into trie public eye- Our Bishops ' sized ' them all up in the following ter^e manner : ' (I) It gave no information whatever regarding; the nature and source of ,the Scriptural and other religious instruction proposed to be introduced, or (2) regarding the nature of the explanations thereof which it was intended"- to give. (3) Worst of all, the terms 1 of reference were so worded as tc* suggest that tihe new scheme would be something added, by way of extension, and not— as it would really be— an alteration of the most radical kind in our Education Act. It is> difficult to av'ojd the conviction that the form of ballot paper to which we allude was deliberately iiv tended to confuse the electors of the Colony, and to snatch a victory by a ruse de guerre rather than 1 by a straightforward appeal to the country on a clear-cut and definite Iss*ue.'

•For w»ays that are dark and tricks that are vain,' the heathen Chinee is not alone in being 1 peculiar. 1