LOCAL OPTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIV, Issue 149, 20 December 1907, Page 6

LOCAL OPTION IN NEW SOUTH WALES.

'While Now Zealand has been copying ? the stringent anti-gambling laws of Victoria and New South Wales wholesale, the latter State has elected to imitate the local option legislation of • this country, which, in one form or another, has now been fourteen years on the statute-book. In its provision for compensation the Now South Wales law is decidedly less drastic than ours, but otherwise the parallel is very close. The identification of licensing districts • with electoral districts, the taking of the electoral and the licensing polls on the same day, the- submission of the three issues — continuance, reduction, and no-license — and the provision that a three-fifths majority is necessary to carry no-license— all these essential features are faith fully reproduced. In one important respect the- New South Wales system of talcing the vote is preferable to our own. Following the New Zealand law of 1893 and avoiding the confusion of the double vote, it provides that if tho votes for no-license are not sufficient to carry lha,t issue, they shall bo added to the reduction votes, on the assumption that the no-license voter will regard twenty-five per cent, of the Temperance loaf as better than no bread. But in making or attempting to make this provision the New South Wales Legislature has again followed very closely the lines of its model. Tho whole Act is so loosely drawn as to have presented to the Locil Option Court to which its administration is en- i trusted a series of conundrums of tho most embarrassing character, and in this particular clauso there is a botch which may entirely paralyse its operation. ( Oil (.ho ground that though tho clause provides for tho addition of tho noliconse votes to tho reduction votes, whore tho former jssue has not been carried, it does not say what is to bo done •if tor the addition lixs boon made, a rule nisi for a writ of prohibition lias been obtained from tho Surpemo Court, which hangs up the whole proceedings itill aflor tho vacation. The muddle is a delightful oue, which does equal credit to tho bungling of the draftsman and tho ingenuity of counsel for tho licensees. For a humblo parallel, wo may refer to a Divorce Act Amendment Bill, which a private member of the New Zealimd House of Representatives introduced a few years ago. This measure pioposcd to provide new giouxds of divorce of a somowha't drastic character, but even if it hud not boon rojocted on its mewls, it would have beau validated ahsdluLolv injaacu,...

ous by tho fact that though it empowered a person to present a petition for divorce 'on contain grounds, it did not enable the court -bo do anything after tho petition had been presented ! An exactly analogous contention is now being mado on behalf of the New South Wales licensees with regard to the power of the Local Option Court, after tho votes for no-licenso and for reduction have been added, and that there is some reasonable ground for ii is shown by the attempt of the Government to setitlo tho matter by an amending Bill. After a sovere fight tho Bill has be-en passed to carry out the obvious intention of the Legislature, but not before a proviso had been added to prevent its affecting pending litigation.. It will therefore be still for the Supreme Court to decide whether the original clause has any other effect than to add to the Returning Officer's duties a gratuitous and futile mathematical exercise.