THE ASHBURTON DECISION.

Evening Star, Issue 20778, 28 April 1931, Page 8

THE ASHBURTON DECISION.

Asuuuirrox wont “dry” in 1903, and looks like staying so acl infinitum. Tho Privy Council Ims dismissed tho appeal against the Licensing Committee’s decision that it had no jurisdiction in the matter of granting licenses for premises that had for twenty-seven years dispensed no alcoholic liquor. Tho reason is that tho district which voted itself dry in 1902 has disappeared as such. Ashburton has been absorbed into Mid-Canterbury. This is not a drj r district, but tho New Zealand Statute Book, though it provides for cancellation of tho license of any hotel which, by a change of electoral boundaries, is transferred from a wet to a dry district, makes no provision for the reverse process. Tho New Zealand Court of Appeal commented on this legislative Haw when tho ease occupied its attention nearly eighteen months ago, but, of course, bad to administer the law as it found it, and now the Judicial Committee of tho Privy Council has evidently taken tho same view. From our own benches it has been hazarded that Parliament did not intend to perpetrate this anomaly; but we are not so sure on that point. The more fact that it has been perpetuated for about twenty-seven years, since the late Mr Justice Dcnniston commented somewhat forcibly on it, suggests that the legislation as it stands coincided with the intention of a majority of members at the time, and that there has not since then been a body of members courageous enough to insist on the matter being reopened. Tho lino of reasoning probably is that, if in a district there were once three people who thought licenses should cease for every two who thought they should disappear, it would bo llonting the wishes of the majority to intrude the boundary alteration question. Tho irony of tho position is that Ashburton, while it retained its separate voting identity, was slowly progressing or backsliding, according to the point of view, towards reversing its decision of 1902. It can, however, have no further opportunity to vote on tho matter, except possibly in tho remote contingency of so great ,a flow of population from North Island to South as to necessitate the allocation of more scats to tho South Island. With Ashburton’s failure to regain license ■Lawrence’s chance in tho same direction vanishes also, as well as those of one or two other places. It cannot bo said that the matter has boon a live issue throughout the community generally. At the time of tho magisterial announcement on behalf of tho Licensing Committees there was a mild interest aroused, but finality has hcen delayed for so long—almost from one election to another—that the matter had almost been dismissed from mind, except perhaps in those districts directly concerned. On tho whole it is satisfactory to find the Privy Council upholding our Appeal Court on what is purely a domestic matter. It would be interesting to learn whether tho former body animadverted on the rather anomalous nature of our law touching licenses in one district absorbed by another in which different liquor-vending conditions prevail. But criticism even from a source so weighty would probably not disturb our Parliament’s obvious inertia in the matter. The present situation in the United States suggests that once a revolutionary decision lias been given olfeet it takes something like a revolution to disturb tho existing order, however wide may ho dissatisfaction over its actual working. Wo assume that the net result of the raising of the point at Ashburton will bo tho transfer of money to owners of one-time licensed houses by expectant speculators who secured options over them, while legal expenses over the two successive appeals would probably aggregate no inconsiderable sum. Had tho “No License, No Liquor” clause which the Prohibitionists declined to insert in Mr Scddon’.s 1904 legislation been operative there would have been a much more live interest attaching to the dispute.