REFUSAL OF LICENCE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23068, 20 June 1938, Page 10

REFUSAL OF LICENCE

With the publication this morning of an official statement on the refusal of the Bureau of Industries to grant a licence to a chemist to open a retail business in Mission Bay, the public has had both sides of the case placed before it. It is a case that is bound to give rise to a number of reflections, not to say misgivings. The personal or human side is bound to receive first consideration. Here is a young man seeking to launch out for himself in business and he is prevented by a committee the majority of whose members are already established in that business. Thus the young man's freedom is restricted and his enterprise killed. Because the young man anticipated the decision, he has lost money and his job. His assumption was reasonable, that a pharmacy to serve the fast growing suburb of Mission Bay was a community need. Here seemed to lie the public interest which the committee states is its first consideration. But the committee decided the public interest was best served by requiring Mission Bay residents to purchase their drugs at St. Heliers, a long distance in a direction opposite to that they daily travel and a long distance, also, when medicine is required in an emergency. Ordinary people might suppose that the public interest had been sacrificed to that of the St. Heliers chemist, who has been entrenched in a monopoly position, for the time being at least. The committee shows, however, that no chemist can rest on the fact of an established business. It is "in fact charged with the duty, if necessary, of reducing the number of pharmacies," a process of elimination that it will be very interesting to see at work.