The prohibition vote

Press, 28 December 1978, Page 10

The prohibition vote

Interpretation of this year’s liquor poll is complicated by the use—some might say the abuse — of the poll for a cause entirely unrelated to liquor laws: abortion. The 22.3 per cent of votes 'represented by the prohibition option is the highest vote for prohibition since 1960, when 22 per cent of the electorate voted for prohibition. In 1963 the prohibition option won 19.9 per cent of the vote, in 1966, 16.7 per cent, and in 1969, 13.3 per cent. Since then the trend has been reversed: 14.8 per cent tn 1972, 15.9 per cent in 1975, and 22.3 per cent in 1978 — about 5 per cent, or 84.000 votes, higher than might have oeen expected from an extrapolation of the 1972 and 1975 figures The swing of 6.4 per cent to prohibition has given the temperance movement “its greatest impetus this generation,” according to a statement from the Temperance Alliance. The statement acknowledges that the “dishonest political ploy of the proabortionists” explained part of the increase in “some” metropolitan electorates, but points out that the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child had launched a counter-campaign and

arged its supporters to vote continuance.

If, as seems likely, most S.P.U.C. supporters, like most advocates of more liberal abortion, would normally have voted for continuance, the S.P.U.C. counter cannot have been very effective. Any interpretation of the big rise at the prohibition vote must therefore make allowance for some “proabortion” votes in the total; but 84,000 of them?

The prohibition lobby, the proabortion lobby, and the liquor lobby may each be tempted to answer this question in the way that suits them. None of them can be proved wrong until the next liquor poll is held in three years, if then. In the meantime, the liquor lobby, particularly, would be well advised to interpret the 1978 pronibition vote provisionally as a rebuke. Putting the abortion issue on one side, there is ample evidence that more people in the community are concerned about the abuse of alcohol and the social consequences of this abuse. The liquor trade could, and should, show itself more responsive to its social responsibilities.