Wider liquor rules wanted

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34129, 15 April 1976, Page 14

Wider liquor rules wanted

(New Zealand Press Association/ WELLINGTON. April 14. The Licensed Restaurants and Cabaret Association has supported moves to allow liquor to be served in unlicensed restaurants, but has asked that such restaurants comply with minimum standards.

In submissions to Parliament’s statutes revision committee today on the Sale of Liquor Amendment (No. 2) Bill, the association said unlicensed restaurants should have to meet the same standards as licensed restaurants before being granted a liquor permit by the Licensing Control Commission.

But the association said the commission should have to revise its minimum standards for all restaurants every two years, and should hear submissions from interested parties before setting the standards, some of which at present were “seemingly unreasonable and arbitrary.” Cabarets should be allowed to remain open until 2 a.m.— one hour later than the 1 a.m. closing proposed for restaurants. The drinking-up period should be stretched from the proposed 30 minutes to one hour. Restaurants should not be restricted as to what types of liquor they could sell before, during, or after a meal, the association said. IDENTITY CARDS In its submissions, the Wholesale Wine and Spirit Merchants’ Federation supported the lowering of the drinking age to 18, but said this should be coupled with the introduction of an identification card with a photograph. “It appears to the federation that a decision has to be made whether to lower the drinking age with provision for an identity card so that people under 18 will not purchase liquor, or not reduce the drinking age at all. We regard the former alternative as being more satisfactory,” the federation said. The federation also asked the committee to relax the law forbidding wholesalers from holding wine resellers licences which would allow

them to sell single bottles of New Zealand wine. It was hot the federation’s desire to interfere with the existing principle of giving preference to applicants offering specialist outlets for New Zealand wine, but the change would overcome the problem which arose when there was no such outlet in a locality. In such cases, the local public could be denied the opportunity to buy a single bottle of New Zealand wine for consumption away frontlicensed premises, the federa-' tion said.