LIQUOR CONTROL

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21697, 26 April 1945, Page 2

LIQUOR CONTROL

INVERCARGILL PLAN “difficulty” already" CARLISLE COMPARISON (.P.A.) WELLINGTON, April 26. Supporting the contention, of the New Zealand Alliance that when the right to sell liquor in Invercargill was given to the trust, an elective body like a licensing committee should have been established 1o control the whole of the trade, Mr. H. W. Milner, general superintendent of the Alliance, said in evidence before the Royal Commission on Licensing on Tuesday that the trust was already in. a difficulty because it did not control the brewery in the town. The absence ol' such a committee was one of the weaknesses of the Carlisle scheme. In view of the Invercargill experiment, of State control being still an issue on the liquor ballot paper and of almost certain increased interest in State control or trust control, the commission should have before it information about Carlisle, said Mr. Milner. The British Roya! Commission, in its criticism of* the Carlisle experiment, had pointed out that there should be an advisory committee of local people to help in its conduct. The Alliance had felt from the outset that a committee should be appointed in Invercargill to function like other committees. Another weakness in Carlisle was the activity of a brewery with 20 tied houses in the area. That also was the weakness of the Invercargill position. The Mary street brewery there, which had not'produced for 10 years, though it had had a. license, had begun to produce again and was a distributor. There was no monopoly in Invercargill, and it had been reported to him that ttie brewery was under-selling the trust. Other breweries had access to the Invercargill area and the trust had to meet their competition also. Philip Snowdon, ardent supporter of the Carlisle scheme and a member of the control board, had condemned it. because there was no incentive for the police to enforce the law and drunkenness had not been reduced in Carlisle to any greater degree than in the rest of Britain.