The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1926. SUSPENDED ANIMATION,

Evening Star, Issue 19349, 8 September 1926, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1926. SUSPENDED ANIMATION,

Mr Downie Stewart conducted tho graveside ceremony over the Licensing Bill on Monday afternoon with quite professional decorum. He admitted that during its ephemeral existence it had made many and bitter enemies. Nevertheless, that part' of the burial service which refers to the resurrection was not omitted. Tho Bill is to rise again next session at the bidding of the Government. Meanwhile, at the invitation of tho Government, recourse is to bo had to the old habit of compromise between tho “ organised bodies of public opinion,” to see if something acceptable cannot bo hung on tho 192 G skeleton. One of the organised bodies has promptly declared itself willing to negotiate. The New Zealand Licensing Reform Association has notified the Prime Minister, laying down the terms and conditions on which it will meet the representatives of the New Zealand Alliance. One of these stipulations is that tho proceedings shall bo open to the Press. This has much to commend it. Much of tho licensing legislation on our Statute Book is there as the result of bargaining behind closed doors. The public has to observe a law concerning whose origin it is profoundly in tho dark. Years ' afterwards, perhaps, it has leaked out that such and such an ordinance was tho price paid for the withdrawal of some other proposal, of which nothing had up till then been heard. Such a method of lawmaking is unsatisfactory. If the public’s interests are to be as a shuttlecock between two battledores, tho public might at least have the privilege of looking on at tho game. It is a very astute move on the part of tho Licensing Reform Association to take this attitude of championing tho rights of tho public, though it must he confessed that the insistence on publicity docs not seem to enhance tho prospects of successful negotiation and the drafting of a Bill that will have a smooth passage through Parliament, and emerge from it anything better than a battered hulk. But tho other condition which the Licensing Reform Association lays down seems to preclude the possibility of a conference being held at all, whether behind closed doors or in public. It is that there shall be no alteration of the existing ballot paper by the excision of the middle issue, State Control. It was the absence from the defunct Bill of any proposal to strike out State Control once and for all which so infuriated the New Zealand Alliance, and caused its executive to pass a resolution of ‘‘profound thankfulness ” that the Government had dropped the Bill. No measure with, in its eyes, so vital a defect can be tolerated. To be invited to discuss licensing legislation of that kind is to bo invited to discuss nothing at all. Wo do not see any likelihood of a conference, because it is impossible to conceive of the Alliance giving an inch of ground on this point, while the Reform Association is equally emphatic in its obstinacy on it. Should the Government endeavor to promote negotiation by the provision of raw material as a starting point for discussion, it is certain that one or other of tho parties will stay away according to the ballot paper ingredient in that raw material. The position is that tho parties on whom the Government is depending to arrange a compromise begin by shouting “No compromise,” and we behove they most sincerely mean it. Perhaps it is after all a good thing, because it may ultimately compel the Government to do its own work. It may ho an unpleasant, a difficult, a risky task. But it should not bo shirked on that account.

Why should not tho Government reintroduce the 1926 Bill in the 1927 Parliament? It appears to us a good Bill. The retention of the three issues is good. It does not preclude the elimination of the middle issue. There is nothing to prevent tho substitution of the two remaining issues being moved, debated, and voted on. The second objection which the Alliance took to the Bill was its proposal to take a referendum as to the Prohibition issue being put to the people’s vote every sis instead of every three years. We. see no possible danger in that. Tho people’s representatives in Parliament can surely be entrusted with tho very intermediary role of sanctioning or vetoing the passing on of such a decision to the people. In view of the claims to a superior numerical backing put forward insistently by the Alliance, that body should have nothing to fear from such a referendum. Why this singular aversion to a practical test when the tribunal is tho same as tho Alliance wants tho main issue to ho submitted to as often as possible until Prohibition wins—and then never again? For the existing (1918) law lays it down that, onoo Prohibition is carried, it stays; there is to be no more voting on the question. That is a blot on the law. One of the best features of the defunct Bill was its partial repeal of that injustice. It made provision that at the first General Election after the carrying of National Prohibition a vote should be taken for and against National Restoration, to take effect three months thereafter if the vote was favorable. The Bill might have gone further, and provided for a plebiscite on this issue being a regular concomitant of the triennial parliamentary elections.