CONDITIONAL LICENSES

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 357, 7 April 1910, Page 5

CONDITIONAL LICENSES

A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION. By Telegraph,—Press Association. Wellington, Wednesday. In connection witn the issuing v\ a conditional license to sell alcohoiic liquor at the Wellington .Racing Club's autumn meeting, some pronounced difference ot opinion exists among members of the Hutt Licensing Committee, in whose district the Trentham racecourse is. Three members declined to issue the license, but the two remaining members, with the chairman (Mr. Hasciden, •S.M.), granted the necessary permission. Messrs. Inglis, Cotton, and KyUer feel very strongly on the matter, their, contention being that the license should only be granted to a license-holder within the Hutt district. The purchaser of the bar privilege at the meeting is a Wellington hotelkeeper, and the objectors hold that th'e" issuing of a permit .to him, even if only temporary, is really creating a new and additional license in the Hutt district.

Apart from the moral aspect of the question, the three members referred to objected on the grounds that the granting of a permit would be illegal. "We do not," as one of their number put it, "want to drop in for a fine of £5 each, and that is what the whole thing amount's to." In questioning the legality of the procedure they affirmed that they were simply abiding by the decision of Mr. Fitzherbert, S.M.,' who in recently adjudicating upon a case in Taranaki, inflicted a fine of £5 on a hotelkeeper who had held a conditional license for a booth in a district in which he did not hold a license.

The whole mattea, ivith some other details, will he brought up at the meeting of the Hutt Licensing Bench in June next. The position Ims excited considerable interest in Petone.

There is evidently a juteoncPiiHon in Wellington concerning Mr. Fitzherbert's recent decision. The facts are that the Stratford Licensing Committee issued a conditional license to a publican in their district to take effect in the Taranaki Licensing District, on the racecourse at Lepperton. The Magistrate held that the committee had no power to do. so, and that only the Taranaki Licensing Committee could ■ issue such a license. Therefore he held that no valid license had been issued; consequently the man was selling without a license. Hence the fine.