The Licensing Bill.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19172, 1 December 1927, Page 8

The Licensing Bill.

Before the Licensing Bill can become law it must he passed by the Legislative Council 'without any amendments except such as the House will agree with. Whether the N.Z. Alliance has been successful in obtaining promises from members of the Council similar to those which it extracted from members of the House is not known, but it would seem that the Alliance expects that a majority of the Council will vote for, the two-issue ballot-paper, the bare majority, aid the triennial vote. Perhaps, however, the Alliance has no assurance that the Council will give it what it desires, and is relying upon what it supposes will be the moral value of the fact that the elected Chamber has declared for the three major points of Prohibitionist policy. There is no further usefulness in discussing jiist now the case against the Prohibitionists' claims on these three points — they have been very thoroughly discussed over and over again—but it is worth while considering the moral value of the House's decision on the Bill. It may be said at once that that moral value is nil. In the statement concerning his position wiich he made on Tuesday (and which we printed yesterday) Mr Coates reminded his followers of the fact that many of them were returned not only on their personal qualifications, or as a result of their own appeal to electors, but largely by virtue of the fact that they announced their adherence to the Reform Party and their intention to support him as their leader. Although the Bill was presented to the House as a nonparty measure, Mr Coates introduced it on his own personal responsibility as Prime Minister, and those Reform members who gave pledges to the Alliance must realise that they have kept their pledges at the cost of something very like disloyalty to the banner which guided them to victory at the polls. The lesson to be learned from this has already been set forth in these columns, namely, that political order and good government require that the political Parties shall agree to refuse official recognition and support to any candidate who gives pledges outside the Party programmes. This would not import into the Reform Party's programme the iron uniformity and abandonment of individual freedom that the Labour Party imposes upon its members, for every member would be left free to act on his private judgment, in the House, on all matters outside the declared programme of the Party. He would be required only to owe no allegiance to any alien section

or organisation. It is quite certain that many of those members —of all the Parties —who gave pledges to the Alliance did so without fully weighing the consequences, and this fact greatly weakens the moral value of the voting in the House.

What deprives the House's decision on the crucial points of all moral weight, however, is the indisputable fact that that decision is repugnant to the public. A majority of the electors declared against Prohibition more emphatically in 1925 than in 1922, and this majority is, in the nature of the case, composed of electors who are opposed to a two-issue voting-paper and to decision by a bare majority. It is an extraordinary thing that at a time when public feeling against Prohibition is growing stronger the House of Representatives should act as if it had a commission from the people to pass the legislation demanded by the N.Z. Alliance. There is no likelihood that Prohibition will be carried even if the Bill were to become law, but that fact does not make less necessary a strong protest against the House's defiance of public opinion.