DRINKING FACILITIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 37, 12 August 1942, Page 5

DRINKING FACILITIES

CURTAILMENT IN AUSTRALIA

(Rec. 9 a.m..) MELBOURNE, Aug. 11. The State Premiers' Conference has decided to reduce by at least one hour a day the hotel trading hours in the capital cities and in such other towns as the States decide. The Prime Minister, Mr. J. Curtin, announced that the Commonwealth will give the States the necessary authority for the imposition and drastic penalties on hotelkeepers who serve inebriated servicemen with liquor, also to banish women from public bars. The Prime Minister added that a proposal by the Commonwealth Government that drinking in parks and public places should be made unlawful had been agreed to by the State Premiers. A recommendation that mixed drinking in hotel lounges should be prohibited was not I adopted by the conference. ; Victoria will not employ barmaids "merely for the sake of war conditions," declared the Victorian Premier, Mr. A. A. Dunstan, speaking at the conference today. War needs might make it necessary to over-ride the Victorian State laws, said Mr. Curtin, in replying. "We are getting into a most paradoxical position when we say in one breath that women shall not be permitted to drink in bars, and in another breath that women shall be permitted to serve in bars," remarked Mr. Dunstan. f "It is necessary ;.o encourage a policy which will" produce discmployment so that, people who arc disernployed can be placed in the war industries." re-, plied Mr. Curtin. "We are not going to deprive ourselves of men merely to provide masculine dispensers of beer in Melbourne hotels." Victoria voted against the employment of women in hotel bars in 1924, and licensed those then in that occupation. No more licences have been issued. ■