The Licensing Bill.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19174, 3 December 1927, Page 14

The Licensing Bill.

The Licensing Bill has been killed by the amendments made by the Legislative Council, as we had hoped it would be. We have given our reasons for disliking the Bill as introduced by Mr Coates, asd as amended by the House, but it may be as well to make our position clear. If the Bill as amended by the House, in flagrant defiance of public opinion, had been passed into law, the result would certainly have been a heavier set-back than ever to the Prohibitionists. The Prohibition vote has been steadily declining, and this declination would have been accelerated by a law which brought the country sharply face to face with the naked fact that a bare majority on a two-issue ballot paper cyuld coerce the bare minority. If The Press had been concerned to defend the licensed Trade, it might have supported the Bill as passed by the House; but we have no concern to defend the Trade. Our concern is the defence of sound principles in government and social regulation, and it is for the sake of those principles that we have opposed a Bill which, whatever the Prohibitionists may think, would have turned public opinion more strongly against Prohibition than it was in 1925. There were three important principles at stake. In the first place, it is wholly wrong, as it is obviously gravely inexpedient, that a bare majority should in such a matter coerce a bare minority. In the second place it is unjust that the growing body of opinion that favours some new and reformed method of supply-: ing the public demand for fermented I liquor should be disfranchised. In the j third plaaa it is monstrous wl

entrapped majority in the House of Representatives should be able to give a decision which is demonstrably opposed to the opinion of a majority of the people. On not one of these points have the Prohibitionists in the House and Council had anything to say that any intelligent child could not easily refute. On the last two points, indeed, the Prohibitionists have been reluctant to speak. Tor the present the third point is the most important —the grave impropriety of forcing a two-issue bare-majority poll upon a hostile public. The Legislative Council did well when it declared against the bare majority, and also when it declared for a longer interval between polls. But it did ill when it neglected to complete its amendment of the Bill with the restoration of the third issue to the ballot paper. Still, if the Prohibitionists in the House remain firm in their adherence to their .pledges, the result of the Council's amendments will be the disappearance of the Bill. One other result, we hope, will be a resolve by the various political Parties to give no countenance in future to candidates who are in any way bound by pledges to allegiance to any outside sectional interest whatever. And the Government can profitably consider the advice we offered it long ago, that it should take suitable steps to obtain an authoritative report, with recommendations, upon modern licensing legislation in other countries.