LIQUOR CONTROL SCHEME.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18876, 31 May 1923, Page 10

LIQUOR CONTROL SCHEME.

t AN AUCKLAND PROPOSAL. CORPORATE CONTROL ISSUE. WELLINGTON, May 30. Challenged to product) an acceptable echeine for the control of the liquor traffic, four rneinbors of the Anglican Synod at Auckland some time ago produced proposals which more recently have been considered and amended by a conference of the various branches of the trade. The amended proposals, which the conference desires to see made the issue on the licensing ballot paper in place of the present issue of State Control, provide for the vesting of the liquor trade in a corporation, on the directorate of which the .State will be represented bv a majority of members, and which will be required to limit its dividends to 10 per cent., devoting the excess to national purposes. Under the scheme suggested the ownernhip of licensed premises, the manufacture and importation and the wholesale distribution of alcoholic liquors in the dominion ■will be exclusively vested by Act of Parliament in a corporation. All owners of hotel premises, or lessees from local bodies of hotel premises, and all holders of fcrewers' licenses and wholesale licenses ■would be required to sell to the corporation their properties; and, in the case of brewers and wholesale licenses, their business as manufacturers and wholesale vendors. The scheme involves the removal from the ballot paper of the State Control issue and the substitution of a third issue, called "corporate control," providing for the carrying into effect of the system above described. It is understood that those comprising the conference favoured the idea that_ if the corporate control issue 1 were carried there should be no further poll on the licensing issuo for nine or 10 years.