LICENSING TRUST FINANCE

Evening Star, Issue 25462, 18 April 1945, Page 10

LICENSING TRUST FINANCE

CHAIRMAN ANSWERS CHAMBER COMMENT (Special.) IXVERCAItGILL, April 17. " 1 note that Mr A. P. Greenfield, chairman of Dunedin Breweries and also chairman of the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce, has .taken me to task us being childish in my reply to the chamber's inquiry .about the finances of the Invercargill Licensing Trust," said Mr Hugh Ritchie, chairman of the trust, to-day. " I can assure him that I was never more serious.

" I want to say that if those so interested in the trust had been genuinely thinking of the success or failure of the trust from the social aspect they would have known that the members of the trust would have been only too pleased to give information to which the p.eople are entitled. What 1 took exception to was the method of approach—first to the Government, which advised the chamber' to go to the trust, then to the Invercargill Chamber .of Commerce, and then the suggestion by a member of the Invercargill Chamber of Commerce that the secretary of the trust be approached, and still they did not come to the' right source.' To me it savours too much as if the real inquiry came from the licensing trade members of the Dunedin Chamber.

"The Government only asks us to table annually a statement of accounts for submission to Parliament," Mr Ritchie added, " and I can see no reason why the trust should give the Dunedin' Chamber of Commerce pre-ferential-treatment by giving it financial details before the Government,' which inaugurated and fathered the scheme, receives them. We can assure our worthy Dunedin friends, however, that everything is being carried out according to the Invercargill Licensing Trust Act, which, I assume, has been well scrutinised by Mr Greenfield."