LICENSING LAWS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23811, 18 May 1939, Page 7

LICENSING LAWS

EARLY CLOSING DEFENDED TOURIST’S VIEWS CRITICISED STATEMENT BY ALLIANCE OFFICIAL “Many overseas visitors are competent to criticise our laws, but we are entitled to expect that any such criticism should be based on facts,” said Mi H. W. Milner, general superintendent of the New Zealand Alliance when commenting yesterday on the published remarks of a South Afi’ican visitor who had expressed dissatisfaction with the licensing laws of Australia and New Zealand. The South African tourist had said among other things, Mr Milner stated, that “ he could not see any sense in licensing laws such as those in Australia and New Zealand which induced many men to drink more than they should because the bars were closed after 6 p.m. He had seen more drunken men in Sydney after 6 o’clock in the evening than during the whole of his travels on the Continent and in England.”

Mr Milner said this contention could not be borne out. “In England, before the war,” he said, “ the hotels were open for long periods each day and in one year—l9ll— were 188,000 convictions for drunkenness. War-time restrictions had the effect of reducing the trading hours from 16 or I 7 a day to five hours and a-half in a large part of the Old Country, with the result that in 1918 convictions for drunkenness were reduced to 27,000. The Act was repealed in 1921 and in that year, the number of convictions lumped to 77,000.”

The restrictions had reduced the drunkenness convictions for the whole of England by 39 per cent The repeal of the Act had reduced the trading hours in the uncontrolled areas from 18 to eight a day, and this had brought about a 32 per cent, decrease in convictions. With the introduction of 6 o’clock closing in Australia in 1916 there had been a similar result, Mr Milner concluded, the convictions in that country for drunkenness in 1915 being 9.43 per 1000 of population, and in 1917 only 4.2 per 1000. In New Zealand, during the 10 years prior to the 6 o’clock closing law, the average number of convictions had been 10.97 per 1000 of population, and in the succeeding 10 years this figure had been reduced to 5.8 ner 1000.