LICENSING REFORM

Evening Star, Issue 14512, 2 November 1910, Page 12

LICENSING REFORM

THE BILL CONDEMNED. ISraCIAL TO THE STAR-! CHRISTCHURCH, November 2. Writing to the ‘Lyttelton Times,’ the Rev. Edward Walker strongly condemns the Licensing Bill. “I must say,” he writes, “that further consideration since tho first reading of the Bill has neither reversed nor modified my view of it in any particular. It is undemocratic, in tho failure to recognise tho rights of the majority, and handicaps reform. In tho form of the voting paper it embodies obstruction instead of aid to a fair expression of the popular will, and it recognises an utterly unwarranted and exploded claim in the form of time compensation to still further obstruct the realisation of the will of the people.” Having elaborated these objections at some length, Mr Walker goes on to say: “Nothing better can bo expected from the present Parliament, which was not returned to give the people any improved measure of licensing reform. The Government could possibly do little better with the present House. The true wisdom is, in my judgment, to reject the Bill and anything this Parliament can be expected to offer, and accept the proffered help of the Labor organisations to return a Parliament at the next General Election pledged to embody in the legislation full popular rights in relation to the liquor traffic, by which the Temperance Reform goal will be the sooner reached, and the reform be legitimately assisted, instead of hindered, throughout the Empire.”