'Beer Houses’ Feared

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31017, 24 March 1966, Page 3

'Beer Houses’ Feared

GV Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON, March 23. Price uniformity promoted better standards, Mr R. B. Cooke, Q.C., said today at the beer and spirits prices inquiry.

Making submissions on behalf of the Hotel Association of New Zealand, Mr Cooke said the Examiner of Trade Practices apparently suggested that hotels offering bar services of low order should charge less than the better hotels.

But this would tell against the public interest in several ways, Mr Cooke said. Human nature was a relevant consideration in administering the Trade Practices Act. Mr Cooke said. There would be an inevitable tendency for many customers to drink where the beer was cheapest. In consequence, a system of varying prices would benefit the kind of hotels which should be discouraged, at the expense of those which should be encouraged. The hotels aiming at higher standards which had spent or were contemplating spending big sums on improved facilities would find their position or plans undermined by the beer houses. Mr Cooke submitted that arguments in favour of free-

dom of price competition in other industries were far from being automatically applicable to the bar side of the hotel industry.

“Competition in hotel facilities and services is very evi-

dent today and should be encouraged,” he said. “To foster price-cutting would be to encourage the swill and an appeal to the customer’s financial instincts only. In the submission of the association, this would be a retrograde step socially as well as economically,” Mr Cooke said.