ECHO OF WET POLL

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 118, 12 February 1926, Page 8

ECHO OF WET POLL

“RESTORED” OHINEMURI

WILL NEW COMMITTEE BE 100 PER CENT OR 50?

By Gazette notice tlie Minister of Justice, the Hon. F. J. Rollestqn, now formally notifies that at the licensing poll on November 4 neither the State-purchase-and-control votes, nor the na-tional-prohibition-without - compensation votes, amounted to more than orfe-half of the valid votes, so “national continuance is deemed to have been carried.” Continuance polled 299,590, State-pur-chasc-atid-control 56,037, national-prohi-bition-withoiit-compensation 319,450. Detailed figures for each electorate are also gazetted. At Ohinemuri, the number of valid votes recorded was 6777 ; 4114 voted for restoration; 2G63 voted against it. The number of electors on the effective roll was 7637. Restoration was carried.

To give effect to the first exercise (in New Zealand) of the electois’ right to restore licenses, a licensing committee is needed, and the date of the election was fixed in the last Gazette for March 9.

The Licensing Ac t provides, that, in a “restored” district, “thtr committee, at its first annual licensing meeting thereafter, shall grant licenses (if applied for) in the district to the extent of not more than the number nor less than 50 per centum of the number of each description of license that existed in the district at the time when the grant of existing licenses in such district was last prohibited pursuant to a poll taken under the Licensing Acts.’.’ In short, the new Licensing Committee in a restored district must not grant more than the number of licenses existing prior to no-license, nor less than half that number.

The presumption is that a Licensing Committee of “dry” leanings would grant half as many licenses as existed in the “wet” days; and a Licensing Committee of f'wet” leanings would grant the full number of the former licenses. There would therefore seem to be sufficient reason for making the election of Ohinemuri’s first “restored” Licensing Committee a partisan fight. Big interests hang on the issue. There are not so many goldminers as there usedto be in the good days of mining, and there is left little of the Bret Harte element of thirty years ago, but the amount of liquor imported into “dry” Ohinenmri, and particularly the amount, of home-brew, prove that there still exists a thirst the equivalent of which in pounds sterling is considerable. So an hotel license will still be an hotel license.