THE LICENSING ISSUE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23637, 22 October 1938, Page 12

THE LICENSING ISSUE

It may be a service to a correspondent who writes from Tuapeka Mouth in censorious tones concerning our “ obviously unreasonable ” attitude toward the licensing question if we seek to clarify his own thought on the subject. We had suggested that the result of this last and earlier polls on the national prohibition issue had raised a doubt as to whether the practice of holding triennial licensing polls ought to be continued, and the view finally expressed by us was that there was no longer any reason for requiring the electors to. vote* on a_ question on which they had expressed themselves in sufficiently emphatic terms. Our correspondent, with less judgment than fervour, complains that such an attitude is “ amazingly inconsistent ” with that taken by us on the political issue which was also before the people. Why, he inquires, do we not argue that because the Labour Party has such an overwhelming majority in the newly-elected Parliament, the Nationalists and Independents should be denied the right of representation? In a democratic country, he asserts, even the minority is entitled to express its opinion through the referendum. The minority has been accorded that privilege on the liquor question, but whether it is entitled to it as a right is distinctly another matter. And that is where the unsoundness of our correspondent’s premises has betrayed him. The electors’ privilege of choosing, at statutorily fixed intervals, their parliamentary representatives exists as a right that is constitutionally conferred. There is no constitutional requirement to hold a poll on the licensing issue. Last week’s national licensing poll was only the fifth that has been held in New Zealand. Prior to the issue becoming a national one there were merely local option polls. But, when it appeared that there was a public demand for a vote 'on the wider question, special provision was made by Parliament to permit of that demand being satisfied. The privilege thus conferred could be withdrawn in the same way, since no constitutional principle is involved. Our correspondent’s lack of knowledge on that point seems to have led him into the error of supposing that the electors have an inalienable right to vote regularly on the licensing question, whereas the holding of such polls is at the absolute discretion of Parliament. If the Legislature takes the view that public money is being wasted in submitting this issue to a poll it may withhold a privilege that has never been desired by other than a minority of the people. That is the gist of the matter. Our correspondent is entitled to his conclusions on the effect of the intrusion of State Control as an issue. It is sufficient to say that we do not agree with them and that we would have no regrets if that alternative proposal, which seems to us to imply a most objectionable form of State socialism, were deleted from the voting paper.