Hawkers' Licences

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 16, 12 October 1937, Page 3

Hawkers' Licences

"PRO BONO PUBLICO."

Sir, — The embargo on Australian oranges being lifted le.d us to expect cheaper fruit, but when we tsee the vory high prices stili maintained in the fruiterers' shops, at a figure which is really prohibitive to the ordinary individual, we feel that we hav© been hoaxed. It seems to me that the public is being exploited in all directions, and any spirit of coxhpetition sueh as was in evidence when the street hawker

was permitted to sell fruit and fish in the borough limits is eliminated by illegal by-laws. Your news columns mad© us aware of the fact that 1000 cases of oranges were jettieoned at one port xecently because there were no buyers, and no buyers ,because the pric© must be too high for ready saies. The Rarotonga growers some time ago were complaining of the tactics of middlemen preventing them getting their fruit shipped, so what with rogues abroad and Togues at home we must stifle our great expectations. The same thing oecurs in relation to fish supply. Combincs to mainfain 'high prices make fish a very expensive article of food. Tenpence a pound for schnapper and terakihi, and a shilling a pound for flat fish, and 1/3 for smoked fish; how can working folk buy fish? And the great Paeific Ocean all Tound about us. A cablegramT" not long ago stated that a isyndicate had been formed with the object of fishing in sNew Zealand waters to supply the Australian market. In my youth I lived in London and in order that the poor people in the east end of London might be able to procure fish cheaply a philanthropic lady, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, built the Spitalfields Fish Market, a very handsome edifice, where the supply was so abundant that fish was so cheap that the poorest could purchateed it — plaice, mackerell, cod, haddoek, all at marvollously low price. Now, with reference to the existiag by-law passed by the Hastings Borough Council restraining the hawking of fisb about the town, a year or two ago, perhaps rather more^ a magistrate at Waipawa inflicted a fine on A. Hamilton, a hawker, for hawking without having paid his local licence fee, which had been fixed by the Waipawa County Council at £5 for the half-year. Mr Hamilton appealed and in a reserved judgment Mr Justice Ostler in the Napier Supreme Court upheld the appeal against the fine. In his judgment his Honour pointed out 'that the fee was placed so high as to prohibit or discourage hawking to protect ratepaying shopkeepers. His Honour said, "However laudable such an object may be, a local council ha© no power to make a by-law for that object. The trade of hawking is a lawful trade and local councils have not been given statutory powers to restrain such trade. Here it is admitted that the fee was ( fixed so high for tho purpose of re- i stricting hawkers in favour of shopkeepers; the fee is so high that its effect is prohibitive. Although the power is not given to prohibit, therefore the by-law is void for unreasonabloness. The appeal therefore is allowed with costs." Now, where does the Hastings borough by-lafr coine in? The Labour administration is being blamed for all sorts of excessive measures to ease the burden of the "bottom dog," but some stricter supervision is needed to check commercial bodies' influence to stifle lawful competition and I hope the Labour Government will give Its attenti.on. — Yours, etc.,

Hastings, Oct. 9^ 193^.