LIQUOR ON BUSES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 71, Issue 36, 22 November 1950, Page 6

LIQUOR ON BUSES

PARTIES ARE ILLEGAL (P.A.) WANGANUI, This Day. “I have seen Maoris running down a hill, doing up their trousers with one hand and eating their breakfast with the other,” a bus driver witness told the No. 6 Transport Licensing Authority, Mr T. T. Murray, at a sitting here yesterday.

For the Authority’s consideration was an application for the transport of Maoris from their homes in the country to the Imlay freezing works, in Wanganui. It had been suggested earlier by counsel that the present contractor was sometimes out of favour because he refused to stop at an hotel on the way home, or to allow liquor to be consumed on the bus. Mr Murray remarked that the Maoris were on the same basis as Palcehas, as far as buses were concerned. If a . bus left their home town at a certain time, they had a duty to be there at that time. The bus driver was not obliged to wait for them. “I want all our Maori friends to hear this,” said the Authority, asking a witness to read an extract from the regulations, which prohibit any person from consuming liquor or handing liquor to another in a bus transporting passengers for hire or reward. Mr Murray added that the Maoris could not ask a bus operator to stop at an hotel. He agreed that if a man took a couple of bottles home in a bag no harm was done, but to make a partj r of a public vehicle was not playing the game.