A CLUB AND ITS CHARTER.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21640, 10 May 1932, Page 6

A CLUB AND ITS CHARTER.

In the history of the operation of the licensing law in New Zealand the Ashburton Club has unquestionably earned a place. The litigation in which it has been involved over the question whether its right to dispense liquor has been restored to it has resulted at last in its vindication, and the club will therefore in future be able to exercise its old privilege under its charter. When no-license came to Ashburton as a licensing and electoral district the club’s right to sell liquor under its charter was necessarily suspended. It lay dormant for twenty years. Then circumstances in the shape of the readjustment of electoral boundaries lifted the town of Ashburton, and the club with it, out of the area in which no-license prevailed, and planted them in the Mid-Canterbury electorate and licensing district, in which no veto is imposed upon the sale of good liquor. Then it was that the club, finding itself in a “wet” district once more, and having a charter which permitted it to quench the thirst of its members according to their tastes, saw no reason why it should refrain any longer from doing so. No attempt was made to interfere with its recovered freedom until the Privy Council ruled that publicans’ licenses could not be granted

in the Ashburton area. Then the club had to defend itself. The matter has been put to the test in the courts, and, ultimately reaching the Appeal Court, that tribunal has with unanimity given the Club its benediction. The judgment of the'. Court is both interesting and important. The Club is not in the’same position, it has been pointed out, as an hotel under the Licensing Act. In the course of his judgment the Chief Justice expressed the view that the conditions that made the Club’s charter inoperative, as regards the right to sell liquor, no longer existed, and said that if the conditions no longer existed he failed to see how the suspension, which depended on their existence, could continue. Mr Justice Herdman put the matter in another light in saying that it was inconceivable that ■ the Legislature intended to produce so grotesque a consequence as that the whole of the Mid-Canterbury district should be directly affected by a national poll and that part of that whole should also be affected by the result of another poll taken some years ago in a district which had ceased to exist. The magisterial conviction against it for selling liquor having been quashed, the Club now knows exactly where it stands, legally and geographically. The layman who, though unversed in all the niceties of the licensing law, considers he can tell a hawk from a handsaw, will have no difficulty- in believing that substantial justice has been done.