POLITICAL ITEMS.

Otago Witness, Volume 01, Issue 2123, 1 November 1894, Page 37

POLITICAL ITEMS.

(Fbom Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, October 25. THK LICENSING BILL.

Mr T. Mackenzie had something noticeable to say of the Licensing Bill during the discussion on the Appropriation Bill. The shelving of the bill, he said, was due to the Premier, who intentionally held it baok instead of pressing it forward early in the session, when it could have been passed. What was needed was not a large consolidating bill full of diflleult and debatable matter, but a short measure abolishing the half poll, facing the question of oolonial prohibition, amending club and railway licenses, and giving fees to the Government instead of to local bodies, thereby removing a pecuniary interest in the liquor traffic. He blamed the Premier for not I facing and settling the whole question. The country was kept in a state of constant unrest. Measures were determined, not on their own merits, but on side issues. Some of the best had been defeated, and some of the worst had been floated into the Houss by the incessant irritation that was kept up. While | recognising the disinterested efforts of earnest temperance reformers, he denounced the agitators on both sides who traded on th« question and fomented it, knowing that with its settlement their occupation would be gone. Quite as bad was the cant and humbug encouraged in the House, instancing certain hon. members who voted to close Bellamy's for all time as a sop to the Temperance party, while in the interest of the liquor trade they refused to close hotels for half a day in the week. ! On Tuesday the Premisr made a promise in the House that he would consider early in the recess the issue of instructions for a survey of the Heriot- Roxburgh railway.