PRICE OF LIQUOR

Dominion, Volume 39, Issue 28, 27 October 1945, Page 9

PRICE OF LIQUOR

Need Seen For State Fixation QUESTION OF MEASURES

Evidence showed that prices for liquor were and had in the past been excessive, said Mr. J. D. Willis, counsel assisting the commissioner, in his final address before the Royal Commission on Licensing .yesterday. "If the trade is to remain in private hands with a limited number of licences, then I submit that prices must be fixed,” he said. "The trade cannot reasonably expect that the State should grant it a monopoly and leave it free to fix its own prices.”

The present practice of charging the same price whatever the measure would be tolerated in no other trade, and there appeared to be nothing to justify it under normal conditions. There appeared to be no difficulties in the way of adopting the standard weights and measures. The customer would then know exactly what he should be getting. Mr. Willis said that he had been asked to make certain submissions on behalf of the Price Tribunal, answering criticism by Mr. R. Hardie Boys (one of counsel for the allliauce. On the subject of standard measures, he said that it was not the function of the tribunal to rationalize and re-organize the economic system, and it had no power to do so. Further, there had been the difficulty as to glasses; the probability that had measures been standardized larger measures would have cost more; the custom of the trade in the past, and the tribunal had not interfered with trade cu«toms.

Mr. Boys had said that the trade had been able to avoid what other distributors could not, namely, the restriction of profit percentages on cost and the bearing of the increased costs out of accumulated reserves. The tribunal said that that statement was incorrect because it had applied to the trade the same policy as that applied to all other trades, the only increase authorized being a proportion of the increased duties,

“May I suggest,” said Mr. Willis, “that it falls to this commission to take ft longterm view of prices as related to the whole licensing system, while the Price Tribunal has merely been called upon to hold down increases in prices in wartime. It may be that taking a long-term view, and-the much wider evidence before it, the commission will come to the conclusion that prices and profits have been excessive, but it does not follow that the Price Tribunal has fallen down on its job.”