HOTELS GOING DRY
SOME CASES OP HARDSHIP. Some discussion look place in the House of Representatives, on Saturday afternoon on tho petitions of S. A. Lyillo and others and Edward Pearson and eight others praying for an amendment of tho Legislature Act, 1908, so far as it relates to the alteration of electoral boundaries and tho necessity for placing licensed premises in no-lieonso districts as the result of alterations made- The Public Petitions Committee reported that while recognising that the estrone hardship of' tho petitioners' caso is so evident ns to warrant the petitions worthy of the immediate and serious consideration of the Government, find tho question is one of policy, and therefore the committee is unable to make a recommendation.
Mr. Scott complained of the injustice done to hotelkeepers in that part of Otago Central district which had been joined to the Bruce district, a dry area. One old lady had run an hotel for about fifty years with not a black mark against her. ; It seemed very hard on people like this, and despite the fact that the people in the surrouuding distict had voted in favour of continuance -at the last eleotion. He commended the petition to the favourable- consideration of the Government.
Sir Joseph Ward said hotels should not bo included in dry districts through changes of boundaries if the Electoral Commissioners could possibly avoid it. He knew of some very hard cases. It was no good effecting reforms if they were to be done in an irregular way. It was for the people to decide. Mr. Malcolm, said that so long as they provided for a two-thirds majority of electors to carry licensing changes, anomalies must arise and injustices happen to both sides. The bare majority was the proper solution. .Mr. f. A. H. Field said it was impossible for the Commissioners to make a more satisfactory rearrangement, of the electoral districts because the adjustment quota was too small. He hoped the Government would take stops to increase ths quota,
Mr. Parata referred to the fact that two hotels had been transferred from Kaipara into the dry district of Eden. This was not fair to the licensees.
Mr. W. H. Field contended that it was a defect in the law that hotels should be closed at the'whim of the Commissioners.
The Prime Minister said serious injustice had been done in the past ow.ing to the transference of hotels from wet to dry districts. This time the position appeared, to be worse than before, in spite of the legislation of 1914 intended to remove the possibilities of injustice. The Act .of 1914 stated that whenever the transference of hotels could be avoided it was not to be made. The worst complaint came from Central, Otago, where ton hotels had been transferred from wet to dry districts. Tho Prime Minister went on to say that the new botmdaries had not yet been definitely settled. They would probably not be settled for another month. In the North Island objections would be received up till November 5, and in tho South Island till November G. ( Even now there was sufficient time to raise objections.. Until tho boundaries were finally fixed it would be impossible to legislate. In tho meantime those who were aggrieved should get their objections in. If when the House met again it was fonnd that the spirit of the 1914 Act had not been complied with, and that the transferred hotels, wero'still included in dry districts, tho Government would tnhe tho matter into its consideration and endeavour to find a remedy. It had been etatcd that the margin was too small. Ho was not suro that this was the real difficulty, but ho did not see any serious objection to increasing the margin. Mr. M'Combs hoped that tho margin would not be increased. The difficulty v might be overcome if a system of proportional representation were _ adopted with permanently fixed boundaries. Tho electoral boundaries would be different from the licensing boundaries.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19171029.2.42
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 29, 29 October 1917, Page 7
Word count
Tapeke kupu
665HOTELS GOING DRY Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 29, 29 October 1917, Page 7
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Dominion. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.