I do not know whether I am in order in raising this particular point on this Stage or not. I think this Bill and the Treason Bill purport to be comprehensive legislation giving the Government full powers to deal with every treasonable activity against the State. In view of our knowledge of current happenings, I fail to see in this Bill what I think should be there, namely, provision to introduce machinery to deal with activities which are actually committed outside this country. It would be an outrage upon our liberty in this country if the Government fail to take any action against people in this country who are fomenting outrages in another country. Only yesterday in the newspapers there was a report that a rather ludicrous body set out to chide the President of the American Republic on the grounds that it was rumoured that he might take action against a man who was self-declared to be the originator of outrages in England. I think it would be disastrous if we were going to spend the whole of our future explaining that a natural inferiority exists in us by reason of our past history. We are told that we have the responsibilities of freedom. Anybody owning a house has the responsibility of seeing that it is not used for disorderly purposes, and every country is bound to assist other countries in that negative way of not permitting, or not being benevolent towards, the organisation of outrages in those other countries. I could not get up in court and swear that I know that the outrages happening in England have been organised here, but I think everyone of us is morally certain that the real guilt for what has been happening in England belongs to people in this country, or people who were in this country.
I do think that the Government for its own protection, for the well-being and good name of this country, should include in one or other of these Bills adequate and comprehensive powers to deal with men who shelter behind the security they find they have here, to order unfortunate dupes in England, or elsewhere, to embark on a career of crime leading to disaster to themselves, and bringing damage upon a country with which, although some people love to say it is our only enemy, we maintain friendly relations, and leading to the detriment of the good name of our people. I think it is eminently the Government's duty to see to it that they will have power to save our country and our people from the reproach of being an inferior people who allow criminal organisations to flourish provided they commit their outrages only in another country. We are responsible for any outrages committed in another country which have been fomented in this country under the benevolent gaze of our Government, and I, therefore, feel that if the Government cannot point out that in these Bills, or in other legislation, they have power to impose the severest penalties upon people morally and legally responsible for outrages in other countries, the Government has failed very grievously in fulfilling the responsibility which rests upon the Government's shoulders.
