LIQUOR CONTROL SCHEME

Evening Star, Issue 18288, 30 May 1923, Page 5

LIQUOR CONTROL SCHEME

NATIONAL USE OF EXCESS PROFITS AN INTERESTING DEVELOPMENT. £Peh United Press Association.] . WELLINGTON, May 30. Challenged to produce an acceptable scheme for the reform of the liquor traffic, four members of the Anglican Synod at Auckland some time ago produced proposals which more recently have been considered and amended by a conference of the various branches ot the trade. The amended proposals, which the conference desires to see mads the issue on tho licensing ballot paper in place of the present issue of State Control, provide for tho vesting of the liquor trade in a corporation, on the directorate of which the State will bo represented by a majority of members, and which will bo required to limit its dividends to 10 per cent, devoting the excess to national purposes. Under the scheme suggested the ownership of licensed promises, tho manufacture and importation and the wholesale distribution of alcohplio liquors in the dominion will be exclusively vested by Act of Parliament in tho corporation. All owners of hotel premises, or lessees from local bodies of hotel premises, and all holders of brewers’ licenses and wholesale licenses would bo required to sell to tho corporation their properties; and, in tho case of brewers and wholesale licenses, their business as manufacturers and wholesale vendors. The scheme involves the removal from tho ballot paper of the State Control issue and tho -substitution of a third issue, called " corporate control,” providing for the carrying into effect of the system above described._ It is understood that those comprising tho conference favored the idea that if the corporate control issue were carried there should be no "further poll on the licensing issue for nine or ten years.