LIQUOR COMPLEX

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25940, 5 September 1945, Page 4

LIQUOR COMPLEX

NEW ZEALAND PEOPLE

MAGISTRATE URGES REFORMS (P.A.) WELLINGTON. Sept. 4. Mr J. H. Luxford, the senior magistrate at Auckland, submitted a long statement to the Royal Commission on Licensing to-day, covering all aspects of the liquor question and the licensing laws.

Mr Luxford said that temperance would never be advanced by pressing for prohibition or unreasonable or unnecessary restrictions. These made matters worse than no restriction. New Zealanders were the best behaved people in the world, but by reason of the well-meant and sincere beliefs of a comparatively small section of the community they had been made to feel that they would not be safe without the protection of restrictions and prohibitions which no other people in the world had to put up with. Thus a liquor complex had been built up and a problem created. « In his opinion, Mr Luxford said, alcohol had been wrongly blamed for a great deal of domestic unhappiness and crime. He thought the greatest danger from alcohol was surreptitious drinking by young people, especially when the sexes were together. Drink was not permitted to be taken to dance halls, but it was commonly “ parked ” for consumption after the dance. Mr Luxford strongly advocated licences for the sale of ale and New Zealand wines at restaurants, dance halls, and similar places of amusement. The most important reform was to extend the facilities both in respect of times and places for the retail sale of liquor other than spirits, for consumption by the glass on the premises. Heavy penalties should be imposed on licensees who permitted drunkenness or disorderly behaviour on their premises and on persons guilty of such behaviour

Regarding the quality of beer, Mr Luxford said it should be the aim of every brewer to keep his product at the minimum strength and he should be encouraged to do so by a sliding scale of beer duty, rising, so steeply for beer in excess of the minimum strength that the duty would be reflected in the retail price.