Untitled

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 162, 20 June 1884, Page 2

The Licensed Victuallers of Dunedin have memorialised Parliament to dispense with elective Committees as having proved a lamentable failure, and that the Act be amended in the direction of reverting to non-elected benches ; such amendment to apply to the whole Colony. Previous to this memorial being forwarded, a Bill with the same object had been framed, to be introduced into the House this Parliamentary Session. It was found that the vagaries, eccentricities, and crass ignorance displayed by Committee men, while doing no good, was doing a deal of mischief. Numerous acts of these Committees have been quite ultra vires, which by appeals to the law courts have, in many instances, been upset. If, for instance, Committees, upon their own authority, forbid the playing of a piano in an hotel, or decide what room a piano shall or shall not be placed in, then there is no saying what other arbitrary acts they will go on perpetrating. It is high time such Committees were abolished, or the limits of their powers more strictly defined. One of ihe Licensing Committees in Otago, decided that every

hotelkeeper in the district should provide, at any hour of the day, a “ full and plenty ” meal of meat, bread and vegetables, to every poor man who demanded it. {Another Committee instructed the Inspector to see that the sheets of hotel beds were properly aired. But as showing the contradicto y commands given by these Committees. One set will not grant a licence to a house unless there is a side entry to the upper floors for females. Another set will not permit these side entrances, as women of loose morals, and men with perhaps no morals at all, gain admission for improper purposes. These two contradictory orders belong to Christchurch Licensing Committees.