AUSTRALIA TOO DRY

Grey River Argus, 29 January 1946, Page 7

AUSTRALIA TOO DRY

EXTRA BEER QUOTA A Doubtful Quantity SYDNEY, Jan. 28. The Minister of Customs (Senator Keane) has just increased the beer quota by 25 per cent, with a warning that breweries might not be able, to supply the difference. In the heat of the Australian summer, New Zealand exiles in Sydney remember their home country as the place where you can walk into a hotel practically any time during daylight hours, order beer and get it. Over here where thirsts mount with the temperature, the acquisition of beer in even the smallest quantity is hedged around with a mass of bewildering and often contradictory rules and regulations which have the effect of making Australia for all practical purposes a Prohibitionist country. This is not consonant with even recent history. Between 1936 and 1941 Australians drank an average of 84,000,000 gallons while in 1941 they put up the all-time record of 109/55,107 gallons. Early in 1942 the Cui tin Government reduced sales and distribution to civilians by a third, allegedly to assure an adequate supply for the Australian and American forces. This cut was based on 1941 and early 1942 figures. For this vear the estimated beer production is over 100,000,000 gallons. FewAmericans are here to-day and the Australian forces have fallen from 800,000 to under 300,000. On these figures, which are certified, Australians should be receiving nearly a hundred million gallons of beer over the bar counter—more than was •available in 1939. On th? face cf it there seems no problem here. Nevertheless, beer made available to hotels through the Customs Department is so limited that selling hours have to be reduced to ten hours weekly. Before the war hotels were open for the sale of beer and spirits from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., a total of 72 hours weekly. The result, to the average man who would sooner drink beer than orange juice as a thirst quencher, is nothing short of disastrous. Once quiet bars have become scenes of confused and hasty drinking complete with zoo noises and oven temperatures. Hostelries, where courtesy and cleanliness were once the rule, now splash inadequately cooled beer into dirty glasses and slap them across the counter in a frenzied, hopeless attempt to satisfy customers. With drinking compressed into less than an hour at lunch time and a similar period in the later afternoon queues form in the streets and the opening of the doors heralds a surge to the bars. Some hotels remain closed except for the evening session. Others stagger hours. Still others leave their main doors closed, while those “in the know” may make a flank attack. The policy in many cases is to make the limited supply as inaccessible as possible. Bottled beer is the hardest of all to get, for here bottles are short also. Now organised bands of would-be drinkers are picketing hotels, at which they allege they are “not getting a fair deal.” At once such hotel a meeting of customers with the licensee evolved a complicated twohour daily drinking table and customers on their part undertook that, each man was in honour bound t.o take one “schooner” only, and then leave the counter and make way for someone else. In this case, the licensee was allotted only a thousand gallons weekly to cater for a clientele which included workers in a neighbouring tramway depot, glassworks arid tobacco factory. Despite any such gentlemen's agreement it is obvious that it is not the real solution. At least one other picket which was put into operation on less fair grounds was dispersed by the police. A recent action of this kind illustrates the fact that people are beginning to abandon the old question “when will it end?” and are substituting the more pertinent one, “why is there a shortage at all.” So far, there has been no satisfactory answer. Contradictory reports of! failures in the supply of hops and barley, made by Senator Keane and the Minister of Commerce (Mr Scully) leave the average man with a hazy idea of what it is all about. Shortly South Australia is to renew the exports of barley to Belgium. All this is taking place in a country, the beer production of which is actually higher than before the war.