THE LICENSING PROBLEM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 224, 21 September 1928, Page 6

THE LICENSING PROBLEM.

The Licensing Bill was killed in the House on the third reading. A number of members, including several of the Labour Party, after voting in committee for the bare majority, voted against the Bill as a whole. With Labpur the principle of one vote one value is cardinal. Probably some of those who helped to kill the Bill did so because they thought its introduction a farce in the circumstances. The vote on the Bill, however, is far less important than the future of this controversy.' The new Parliament will have to take up the licensing problem, and the question that candidates and electors should consider seriously now is how far pledges should be imposed on the next House. This session and last have shown how the rigid pledge, operating regardless of circumstances, works against the public interest. In this coming contest care should be taken by candidates to preserve a reasonable measure of freedom, so that when the licensing question comes up the House will be able to approach it with some liberty of action. It is undesirable that legislators should be required to bind themselves to a certain way of voting regardless of what may happen, and that the acceptance or refusal of this pledge should be held to transcend all other political considerations.