AUCTIONEERS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 117, 19 May 1909, Page 8

AUCTIONEERS.

DEPUTATION TO THE MINISTER. Local auctioneers, headed by Mr. A. L. Herdnian, M.P., waited on the Minioter for Internal Affairs (Jflon. D. Buddo) this afternoon to urge the necessity ot making certain amendments in the Auctioneers' Act, as agreed upon at a meeting on Monday afternoon, and already reported. The auctioneering fraternity, said Mr Herdman, was unanimous "in asking for the amendments suggested. One thing desired was that a person should not be able to get a license from one local body after he had been refused by another local body. Greater latitude should, they urged, also be given to the local bodies in regard to transfers of licenses, and that a company should be granted a license in its own name, and nominate a person to exercise it, paying a transfer fee when that person left its service, or it was considered necessary to make a change. Mr. A. Leigh Hunt dealt in detail with the matter mentioned by Mr. Herdman. He pointed out, for instance, that if a firm took out a license at a cost of £40 for one of its employees, that employee could in a few weeks later leave the company's employ and start in business as an auctioneer against his former employers. He urged that the company in whose employ an auctioneer is, should be made responsible for the carrying out of the Act in regard to account sales and so on. The public officer of the company could be made responsible. The deputation urged that an auctioneer should be compelled to take out a license for a full year, paying the full fee, and not be allowed to take out a license for a briefer period. The Minister, in tho course of his reply, said he was particularly intimate with the subject. He admitted the existence of anomalies in the Act, but in regard to the deputation's principal claim, it was against the principle that local bodies should have full control of the auctioneers. If a license was taken out in the name of a company, it would be possibe for the company to •control auctioneers by temporary transfers right through the Dominion, without having to apply to the local authorities. The company to which the license was issued should be made to declare an area within which the license should be oxercised. He was in sympathy with the proposal that local bodies should be notified of the names of persons to whom licenses were refused. He could not promise legislation, but would give the matter his very careful consideration. He did not think that any one would oppose the proposal that a license should be granted to a company, and that the company should nominate the person who should act under the license.