SUGGESTED REFERENDUM.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1748, 3 November 1917, Page 3

SUGGESTED REFERENDUM.

ON LIQUOR TRAFFIC. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance made important statements in the House of Representatives on Thursday with regard to the liquor question. 'When the Six O’clock Closing Bill was before the House, said Mr Massey, there had been a good deal of unrest and excitement, and the opinion had been expressed by himself and the Minister for Finance that something required to be done to put matters’ on a more satisfactory footing. He thought that they expressed the opinion that it might be well to give the electors an opportunity to decide the question, according to the recommendations of the Efficiency Board—that was to say, whether they would have continuance on the one hand, or prohibition, with compensation to be paid, on the other. Cabinet had not been able to consider the matter this session, but during the recess, however, it would be the business of Cabinet to consider proposals with the object of putting them before the House next sission, with a view to putting the whole question in a better position than at present. He wanted to make it clear that the bare majority was not intended to apply to the usual continuance, no-license, or national prohibition poll, but to the proposal of the Efficiency Board for a referendum on continuance or prohibition with compensation. Sir Joseph Ward said that he did not wish to enter upon the controversial aspects of the matter at such a time. He only wanted to say that he, for one, recognised that they had not by any means seen the end of this great and difficult problem in this country; and he had made his own position clear by voting against anything and everything that meant a reduction in the revenue of the country at this moment. He did so from the point of view that they did not know’ where they might be six months from now’, and there was no man living wdio could decide what the country might have to do financially and otherwise until the end of the war. Without committing himself to any course at the present time, lie was quite satisfied that they all required to consider the position, and that, whatever their view’s might be for or against national prohibition or continuance, they must recognise that there was a great problem still to be solved.