Licensing Legislation.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4373, 13 February 1909, Page 2

Licensing Legislation.

AUSTRALIAN REPORT ON NEW ZEALAND RESULTS. STILL ON ITS TRIAL. PEhTH, February 10. Tiie report of Mr Carson, who recently visited Victoria, New South Wales, and New Zealand to study the various systems of licensing legislation, was presented to parliament to-day. Mr Carson says that the Victorian system, though bureaucratic in form has proved an admirable working machine for closing up the worst houses. These have to go from the districts where the licensed houses are thickest, while under the New South Wales / system of local option reduction is carried in districts where there are so few Tiubbchouses that one more or less hardly affects the temperance or intemperance of the community. As rjgards New Zealand, Mr Carspu acknowledges the rapid strides made by the No-license movement, and .admits the prospect of the lic Q nsed trade being wiped out altogether at no very distant date. He claims however, that the system is still on ’ts trial. the experiment had been confined to ij comparatively small towns, and not untityp one of the f«.ur complete metropolitan , areas with all its suburbs comes under No license can the experiment be regarded as having been thoroughly tested.

In No-license towns he admits that there is less open drunkenness, and that the removal of open means of temptation has tended to we »n some men from the old habit. On the other hand, the evidence, he says, is conclusive that the aggregate quantity of liquor consumed is practically unaffected, that much drinking still goes on in the No license districts that the closed bir has taken the place of the open bar, that there is more secret drinking and more drinking in the honst s of the people, that where a license district is contiiiguous to a Nolicense district much drinking is precipitated from the latter into the former, and that the strength of the No-license vote is accounted for by the enthusiasm and splendid organisation of the temperance party’s woman’s vote, influenced by woman’s natural desire for social reforms.

It is pointed out that the concrete re« suit of the New Zealand system does not compare favourably with Victoria. After a three years’ strenuous Nolicense campaign about 150 houses are to be closed throughout the Dominion, and not the worst houses at that. More had been done in Victoria in 18 months, with the supremo advantage that the worst houses had been closed, schile reduction has proceeded by judicial process.