I move:—
In sub-section (3), paragraph (b), line 33, page 2, after the word "person" to insert the words "being a member of the committee".
This amendment is related to sub-section (3) of Section 2. I would like to draw attention to what is provided in the sub-section which reads:—
"Nothing in the Act of 1934 or in any regulations or rules made thereunder shall be construed as...
(b) prohibiting the Referee, in investigating an application for a service certificate, from authorising or permitting a person to hear the applicant".
That section is retrospective and its purpose is to validate investigations carried out by members of the committee and persons appointed by members of the committee, in other words, civil servants appointed to carry out these investigations. The Minister complained, when we were discussing this Bill on Second Reading, that I was not a realist. He deeply regretted that I should have fallen from grace in respect of this matter. I suggest that he entirely missed the case I endeavoured to make. I did not make a case, in the circumstances in which we are now situate, against accepting the broad principles of the Bill. The main case I made was that the Bill was brought in to validate irregularities which had been going on, with the connivance of the Minister, for a period of ten years. The only question at issue now is as to how far we are to go in validating those irregularities.
I am willing to go this distance— that wherever an investigation was conducted by members of the committee set up in pursuance of the Act of 1924, that investigation should be accepted as if it were an investigation by the Referee. I want to stop short at the point at which interviewing officers, who were not members of the committee, were authorised or permitted, under rules or regulations, or without rules or regulations, to conduct these investigations. In other words, if there were some thousands of cases in which applicants for certificates were interviewed solely by those interviewing officers, who had no status whatever under the Act of 1924, I am endeavouring to ensure that, if the persons concerned are dissatisfied with the result of the investigation, they should have the right to a new hearing by members of the committee or the Referee, or by members of the committee and the Referee acting jointly. That is what I am endeavouring to meet by this amendment.
It is going very far, indeed, to ask the House to say that people who have no status whatever under the law can be appointed by the Department of Finance or the Department of Defence and told to go in and usurp the functions of the Referee and the Advisory Committee. I want to lock the door against that and to secure that, if people desire a rehearing in cases in which the original investigation was conducted by interviewing officers, they shall be entitled to that rehearing. It is quite possible that many of the applicants whose cases were investigated by interviewing officers are satisfied, as a result of their discussions with these officers, that there would be no use in proceeding further. I am not making the case that they should automatically get a rehearing. All I am doing is asking the House to alter the sub-section in such a fashion as to enable applicants, if they so desire, to get a rehearing in cases in which the investigation was solely and entirely conducted by interviewing officers. The Minister should have serious regard to that position. If what is proposed here is written into our laws, it will be cited to us again and again by other Departments and other Ministers in relation to other types of legislation and we shall be asked to accept the principle that, when a Government Department goes off the rails, it has nothing to do but come in here and have its irregularities validated.