QUEENSLAND LIQUOR POLL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18999, 23 October 1923, Page 15

QUEENSLAND LIQUOR POLL.

CONTINUANCE WINS. A BITTER FIGHT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) , SYDNEY. October 11. All the forces, hostile and friendly, to the liquor traffic were strongly mobilised in opposing camps for the poll regarding the future of the trade which was taken in Queensland on Saturday. There was preferential voting on throe issues—abolition, State control, and continuance. The fight had been unprecedentedly bitter liecause under the recently amended legislation it was the last poll that would have prohibition as an issue, and the result was more than. Usually uncertain because compulsory voting, which was applied to a liquor poll for the first time in Australia, introduced an unknown quantity into the factors to be counted on. The result has been an overwhelming victory for continuance, the majority of three thousand secured at the previous poll in 1920 having been more than doubled. In only four electorates out of 75 was there a majority against the trade, although at the last poll the number was 25. Without, doubt the greatest contributing factor to this result was the recent amending legislation under which the trade voluntarily consented to a curtailment of hours. Right through the war and ever since up to the recent legislation the hours were maintained at IV Gaily—6 a.m. to 11 p.m. During the war in particular there was a strong demand that Queensland should fall into lino within the ncighbouring'Statc of New South Wales, and enforce u o'clock closing. But nothing was done, and in the border towns such as Tweed Heads on the New .Soutla >i ales and Coolangatta on the Queensland side —really one town, and one of the most popular seaside resorts of Brisbane people—there was for years the nightly spectacle, of a straggling procession of those seeking liquid rnlreshnicnt making their way over the bridge which spans the little no-man’s-land across the double lick fence which traverses the entire southern border of Queensland. At 11 o’clock regularly there would bo the ret urn procession to the less convivial New South Wales side—a little more struggling and a litllo less certain of the exact location of the bridge. The publicans on the southern side of the border protested strenuously at the deprivation of their trade, but. tiieir puny interests could not affect the (stale laws, so the nightly border forays went, on unchecked, (shortly before tlie recent, poll, however, the trade submitted to the curtailment of the hours from 17 to 12 daily, and they are now from 8 a.m. till 8 p.m. This, reform had a profound effect on public opinion, and if it did not actually determine ibe result of the poll, undoubtedly affected it. to a very great extent.