DOMINION ITEMS

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 April 1934, Page 2

DOMINION ITEMS

[PUR PRESS ASSOCIATION.] SURPLUS OF £30,000. WELLINGTON, April 12. An announcement that there was a total surplus of - income over expenditure of £30,000 on the municipal operations for the financial year ended on March 31, was made by the Mayor, Mr. T. C. A. Hislop, at a meeting of the Wellington City Council to-night. The main cause was a surplus of £20,000 over the estimated receipts for rates. MONETARY COMMITTEE. WELLINGTON, April 13. In the course of his evidence to the Monetary Committee, Mr. Field said that; the exchange policy has not been the benefit that it should have been. The banks had not approved of this exchange policy, and had set out to make it unpopular. In Australia, the banks seemed to have wanted the higher exchange, and there hail not been the contradiction of advances that had gone into circulation. Australia’s unemployment had decreased steadily, whereas New Zealand’s had not improved very much. LIQUOR IN RESTAURANTS. WELLINGTON, April 13. Several prosecutions brought by the police to-day emphasised a littleknown fact, that it is against the law to drink intoxicants in restaurants in those hours when licensed premises are required to be closed. The principal case was one in which, after a dance, a party called at a restaurant, and later one member bethought himself of a bottle of beer in the car outside, and went and got it. The defendants were convicted and discharged, the Magistrate accepting the view that this section of the Act is not well known. Decision was reserved in respect ot the charges against restaurant proprietors of permitting liquor to be drunk at. a time when licensed premises were required to be closed. COMPENSATION CLAIM. WELLINGTON, April 13. When the Full Court resumed the hearing, this afternoon, of the case stated by the President of the Compensation Court, concerning the claim made against the Minister of Public Works by Mrs Annie Elizabeth Finlayson, of Dargaville, for £B9O, as compensation for the loss of land taken for the purposes of the Dargaville branch railway, Mr Goulding, for the claimant, submitted that the’ right to compensation arose, when the land was actually taken by proclamation, and not when the first entry on the land was made. Under the Statute, betterment was limited to the increase in value likely to be caused by file execution of works. Actual construction work ceased more than a year prior to the taking of the land, and, therefore, if (as he submitted) (he mere taking of land was not the execution of works within the meaning of the Statute, then no award in respect of betterment could be made.

After Mr Currie had replied brief ly, the Court reserved its decision.