LICENSING.

Feilding Star, Volume III, Issue 801, 11 February 1909, Page 2

LICENSING.

A COMMISSIONER'S REPORT. VICTORIAN SYSTEM SUPERIOR TO NEW ZEALAND. [by electeic telegraph — copybight.j [per press association.] Perth, February 10. Mr Carson's report on the licensing, legislation of Victoria, New South Wales, .and 'New Zealand, has been presented to Parliament. The report, says that the Victorian system, altuough. bureaucratic in form, has proved an admirauie working machine, closing up the worst houses. These have to go from the districts where licensed liouses are thickest, while under the New South Wales system of local option, reduction is carried in districts where there are so few public houses that one more or less hardly affects temperance or intemperance in the community. As regards New Zealand, Mr Carson acknowledged the rapid strides mades by the No-license movement and admits that there are prospects of the licensed, trade being wiped out altogether at no very distant date! He claims, however, that the system is still on triad, as hitherto the experiment has been confined to comparatively small towns, and that not until one of the four complete metropolitan areas with all its suburbs comes -under no-license, can the experiment be regarded as having been thoroughly tested. Mr Carson admits that in no-license towns there is less open drunkenness, and that the removal of the means of open temptation tended to wean some men from the old habit. On the other hand, the evidence, he says, is conclusive that the aggregate quantity of liquor consumed is practicality unaffected, and that much drinking still goes on in no-license districts, that the closed bar has taken the place of the open bar that there is more secret drinking and more drinking in the houses x>f the people, that where a license district is contiguous to a nc-Jicense district, mu^h of the drinking precipitates from the latter into the former, that the strength of the no-license vots is accounted for by the enthusiasm and splendid organisation of the temperance party's w&men's vote, which is influenced by woman's natural social reforms. It is pointed out that, for concrete results, the New Zealand system does nptrcompare favourably with that of Victoria. After a three years' strenuous no-Jicense campaign, about 150 houses will be dosed throughout the dominion, and not the worst houses at mat. More has been done in Victoxia in 18 months with this supreme advantage, that the worst houses are olosed while reduction proceeded steadily by judicial process.