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6. The grounds upon which a competent authority may declare an individual to be undesirable are set out in clause 4. They incor- porate the grounds upon which a prospective immigrant can be refused permission to enter under section 11 of the Immigrants Control Ordinance, 1949. But additional grounds are provided for by the last three paragraphs of clause 4.
7. An order of expulsion will be final and conclusive subject to revocation by the Governor. (Clause 11, which is so worded as to enable the Governor to revoke generally when the situation permits.) An order of expulsion, if not revoked, will be valid for five years (clause 8), whether or not the Ordinance continues to be in operation.
8. A competent authority will be any justice of the peace and any person declared to be such by the Governor. A justice of the peace is, by clause 11, empowered to authorize, by warrant, entry and search of premises upon which there may be undesirables or suspected undesirables.
9. Power to make regulations in relation, inter alia, to the management of and conduct to be observed in accommodation camps, is given to the Governor in Council by clause 13.
10. The need for legislation as envisaged by the Bill is, as stated, related to conditions of over-population of the Colony. At times when such conditions do not prevail such need would be diminished or disappear. For this reason the Bill (clause 14) gives power by resolution of Legislative Council to suspend the operation of "the Ordinance" and thereafter, as and when necessity to employ "the Ordinance" again occurs, to terminate such suspension.
EMERGENCY REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT) (NO. 2) BILL, 1949.
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL moved the First reading of a Bill intituled "An Ordinance further to amend the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, 1922.' He said Sir, this Bill, which seeks to amend the Emergency Regulations Ordinance of 1922, that is to say, an Ordinance some 27 years old, has two main objectives. The first objective relates to the question of the penalties which may be imposed for the breach of any regulations made under the Emergency Regula- tions Ordinance. Under the principal Ordinance as it stands today, the question of penalties is left very open. It merely provides that where no other penalty is named in any regulation, then the penalty shall not exceed the named maximum. Thus it is arguable that even as the Ordinance stands today, it is permissible to attach to regulations made under the Ordinance the penalty of death, but the first object of this Bill is to put that possibility beyond dispute and provide quite definitely that regulations made under the Emergency Regulations Ordinance may, in a case of sufficient seriousness, provide that the penalty shall be death. But clause 3 of the Bill also goes on to provide for a reservation where a regulation provides for the death penalty, and that reservation is that such regulations as provide for the death penalty as a penalty shall be subject to the approval of this Council.
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