Drink With Meals Found Successful

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29901, 15 August 1962, Page 14

Drink With Meals Found Successful

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 14. There is no known instance in which the police have been inforriied of an offence arising from a person having dined and wined at a licensed restaurant, says the annual report of the Licensing Control Commission, tabled in the House of Representatives today by the Minister of Justice (Mr Hanan).

“While an unblemished record is not expected’ indefinitely, it seems to the commission that there is far less likelihood of excessive consumption of alcoholic liquor in a licensed restaurant than in other circumstances in which liquor may be taken.” says the report. The fear has proved groundless that to legalise the sale of a very limited range of alcoholic beverages in selected restaurants would create or accentuate social evils. There were apprehensions too that a large number of places to which the omblic resorted for meals be licensed.

Twelve licenses are operating, four at Auckland, three at Wellington, two at Christchurch, and one each at Tauranga, Te Awamutu, and Rotorua. Dancing has been authorised at eight of the restaurants.

The licensing of restaurants has resulted in better control. service, hygiene, and management, the report says. “The commission has been conservative in its estimate of the suitability of the applicant and his premises but has probably been less strict than it could have been. But

it cannot be said that an undue number of licenses have been granted or that it has been made too easy to have an eating house licensed to sell liquor.” It is not really practicable to police the type of liquor being served, but licensing makes more simple the surveillance of unlicensed hotels, says the report. “Strangely, few hotels have sought to take advantage of the right to provide dancing and entertainment. Indeed, there have been a mere eight authorisations, mainly in tourists 'or holiday resorts,” the report says. No difficulty has been raised in suitable cases about dancing being allowed, but the commission has been hesitant about other forms of entertainment which could often be described only in general terms, and which possibly would not' be in good taste, it says

"However, the commission has now come to the view that if a hotel licensee is to be trusted with ah exemption, then he should be trusted to justify our confidence that decency and decorum will be observed.”