The Minister, when he found he was in a difficulty, defended himself by quoting the old oath. That is perfectly legitimate, but at a previous stage of this Bill I pressed the Minister very hard to give us some reason or justification for departing from the terms of the old oath. In the oath that was previously taken by officers and soldiers each individual, whether an officer or a soldier, swore that he would not belong to a political organisation or to any secret society. For some reason which the House has not been informed of so far, the Minister now considers that it is wise to depart from that form of oath and no longer to bind an officer or a soldier by oath to refrain from membership of a secret society or a political organisation. We discussed that on the Second Stage.
There is an amendment down here to reinclude those words in the oath. It is opposed by the Minister, but he sidesteps the point by putting a paragraph into the Bill prohibiting membership of such organisations. That is not the same thing. If the Minister argues it is the same thing, what is the objection to extracting that declaration from the individual? What is the objection to having it in the oath? There is something very puzzling and very mysterious about all these antics with regard to this oath. The Minister, we must take it as a matter of policy, considers it inadvisable to ask for a declaration from officers and men that they will not belong to political organisations nor to secret societies.
There is another omission from the old oath in regard to which I would be anxious to hear what defence the Minister has. In the old oath the Parliament was referred to and the officer and the soldier swore obedience to Parliament. At that time they held their commissions directly from the Executive Council, and the higher officers of the Army held their appointments directly from the Executive Council. Now there is to be a change. The commissions will be held from the elected President, not from Parliament or the Executive Council. The appointments of the higher officers, the Chief of Staff, etc., will be made by the President and not by the Parliament. In that set of circumstances the declaration which was previously taken, swearing obedience to the Parliament of the people, has been completely deleted from the present oath. There are three significant deletions: (1) direct recognition of Parliament by the declaration of the officer or soldier; (2) a direct declaration by the officer or soldier not to belong to a political organisation; and (3) not to belong to a secret society.
Those are three very significant omissions from the old oath, and I want the Minister to advance some justification for those very significant omissions. It is not sufficient to get up with a nonsensical argument such as: "Are you expected to put everything in an oath that you desire to prohibit or make illegal?" That is merely a chaffish argument and unworthy of the Ministerial Front Bench. The old oath was there and it is the normal procedure of Governments to follow established precedents. There must have been some very grave reason for deleting those words, a reason which weighed with the Minister and his advisers. The reason may be quite a good reason, but I suggest the House is entitled to hear what it was.