The Press Thursday, December 8, 1927. Prohibition and Politics.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19178, 8 December 1927, Page 8

The Press Thursday, December 8, 1927. Prohibition and Politics.

In the statement in which it expresses its annoyance at the Legislative Council's treatment of the Licensing Bill, the New Zealand Alliance has made some observations which ought not to go uncorrected. The Alliance protests that it is "a glaring violation of the " principles of democratic govern- " ment" that the Council should upset the decisions of the House "on "questions which were clear issues be"fore the electors at the last General " Election "—these issues being the triennial poll, the two-issue ballotpaper, and the bare majority. Over half a million electors voted, and every one of these voters knows that the Alliance is talking nonsense when it says that these issues were clearly before the electorate. There has perhaps never been a General Election in the history of the Dominion in which the choice of the members of the House was more clearly decided on purely Party lines. The electors never heard of the licensing question, and the problems arising out of it, as an issue in the election of members, although, no doubt, the extremists in the Prohibition ranks privately selected their men —as privately as the Alliance asked for its notorious pledges—for their views on the cardinal points of Alliance policy. It is therefore contrary to fact to say, as the Alliance says, that the House was elected on a mandate to pass the Bill which the Council rejected. It is not only contrary to fact, but very unwisely so. For, although the people, in electing members, did not as a whole consider the licensing question, they did, most emphatically, consider it when marking their Licensing Poll papers. We pointed out some time ago that the anti-Prohibition majority was \ selfevidently a majority which would vote against the bare-majority decision and against the two-issue ballot-paper. All the newspapers we have seen have agreed with The Press on this point, and on Tuesday Sir Francis Bell said that " we all know that the voters for " Continuance in effect voted against

"the bare majority." He could have added that many who voted for Prohibition, believing that the country would be the better for it, are yet sensible enough to wish that the majority should be large to indicate a strong and stable public conviction. It goes without saying, also, that the anti-Prohibition majority is entirely against the elimination of the third issue. Possibly, even probably, the majority of the electors favour a sextennial poll, but, as we have said before, this is not self-evidently certtain. The Council, therefore, instead of violating the principles of democratic government, actually protected those principles against violation. The Alliance may talk as much as it pleases of "the declared will of the elected " representatives of the people," but it is significant that it is careful to avoid referring to the declared will of the people themselves. A second misstatement in the Alliance's declaration is that "since 1918 the bare majority "has been the accepted principle in " licensing legislation." As Sir Francis Bell has pointed out, the law recognises in some cases the need for a threefifths majority. So long as there is in ,the 'licensing law any denial anywhere of the right of a bare majority

;o decide any question, it is impossible

to maintain that the bare majority has for nine years been "the accepted "principle." The Alliance's declaration concludes with & notification that it will ask the Prime Minister to give facilities next session for passing such a Bill as the Prohibitionists desire, and a threat that if they do not get their way they will make the liquor question the main issue at the next General Election. Hitherto the Alliance has contented itself with obtaining private pledges from candidates, and has not openly made the liquor question an issue in the election of the House, because it has hoped to get Prohibition through the direct vote of the people. Now, however, it is hoping to secure,

through the management of block votes, to elect a Prohibitionist House. It might succeed in doing this, but the voting at the Licensing Poll will certainly show a majority against Prohibition, and ipso facto, against the cardinal joints of Prohibition policy. The people in that case would certainly not tolerate a law engineered against their declared opinion.