The Guardian (And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times.) FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12th, 1923. LIQUOR POLL IN QUEENSLAND.

Hokitika Guardian, 12 October 1923, Page 2

The Guardian (And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times.) FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12th, 1923. LIQUOR POLL IN QUEENSLAND.

The Prohibitionists have explained the

Queensland liquor poll, says the “Press’’, as Prohibitionists explain every I : °H that (joes against- them; it is the result of some other cause than the obvious one that the people do not want Prohibition. This latest result, they say, is due, first, to the largo fighting funds of th e Trade; second, to eight o’clock closing; third to misrepresentation of the working of Prohibition in America; and fourth —though w _ e are sure not finally—to the personal influence of the Premier. There is clearly no reason why we should not get four more causes to-morrow or next week or any time, since there is no natural limit to the products of the imagination. But, of course, the important thing is the poll itself, and not the prohibitionist explanation. The people of Queensland were invited to express an opinion on th<?«e three proposals:

(a) .State management of manufacture, importing, and sale of fermented and spirituous liquors. (I>) Prohibition of manufacture, importation, and letail of fermented and spirituous liquors, to take effect in July, 1925. (<■) Continuance of the present system of manufacture, importation, nnd retail of liquors;

and although the returns are not yet complete, there can ,l c no doubt tlr.it the reply is overwhelmingly against Prohibition. Three years ago the voting was:

State Control 28,294 Prohibition 145,510 Continuance • 175,020 That also was as completely “explained” as the expression ot opinion given, but for some unaccountable reason the people of Queensland have allowed themselves to I>,. duped again. I'irst ■by the Trade, which .should clearly have stood aside, spent no money on .self-defence, and saved its ill-gotten gains l’or the dry days coining: by eight o’clock closing, which, hieing a reform, and an indication of further reforms, ami of the absence of the necessity of closing altogether, should have been forbidden ; by misrepresentation of tin' workings oi Prohibition in America, which has been ‘'represented” by Prohibitionists themselves as a success so complete that in five months travelling Mr “Pussyfoot” Johnson found only live drunk men; and by tne maii of all men who should have known better, the Premier, whose party happens to believe in State Control, hut who should surely have done nothing to advance what the people who put him in office exacted as a pledge Iroin him before they exulted him. 4 he Prohibitionists have been very shabbily treated to have been opposed -by honesty as well ns bv logic, aiul by commoiisense as well as by a first instalment of reform. Nor do their troubles seem yet at an end. It is quite' likely that the Queensland referendum will have tin influence on the ‘'State-wide periodical referendum” which is one of the chief features of the new liquor law proposed in Now South Wales. But whether it does or not it must have an inlliience. unpalatable to the Prohibitionists, in tlit' State in which it has just been taken. The Labour fiovernnieiit of Queensland is, as we have said, in favour of State manufacture and control; hut at the last annual Convention it was decided (alter a reaffirmation of the policy of State manufacture) that, if the 1923 poll confirmed the vote of 1920. “the Liquor Ait should be amended to eliminate these polls, and to provide for the tint her limitation of the hours ot trading.” Cnless, therefore, Mr Theodore cun le driven at once from office, Prihibition becomes a dead issue, and reform the only live one.