BAR-HOURS POLL

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31379, 26 May 1967, Page 15

BAR-HOURS POLL

Brewer’s View On Form

The referendum on drinking hours should ask voters only whether they wanted hotel bars open after 6 p.m M said the chairman of directors of Ballins Industries, Ltd. (Mr N. W. Millner). “If the referendum questions voters on exact hours of opening, I think the Government will run into a lot of trouble.

The fixing of opening hours should be left to the Licensing Control Commission,” Mr Millner said.

Evening drinking had been carried in New South Wales by a referendum, he said. The hotel bars had shut for a period so that customers could go home for tea. Later, this closing period had been abandoned. In Victoria, evening drinking had been made legal without a referendum, and the hours, fixed by a commissioner, did not include any break for an evening meal. Mr Millner said he did not think hotels would have to be greatly altered if the referendum in New Zealand was carried.

“The day of the great, long bar in a huge room where hundreds could stand round it has already gone. The trend is for sit-down drinking. “There will probably be more bars with even more facilities. A man will probably want to take his wife along on one or two evenings a week,” Mr Miljner said.

Brussels Fire.—As a mark of respect for the dead and as a sign of sympathy for the families of those who died in the recent Brussels department store fire, members of the Canterbury, Westland, Nelson, and Marlborough Operative Industrial Union of Workers stood in silence at their quarterly meeting in Christchurch.