HOTEL HOURS.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 762, 20 July 1916, Page 9

HOTEL HOURS.

! MR HERDMAN SPEAKS STRONGLY INCREASED STRINGENCY OF CONTROL. i FFrom our own Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, July li). The vexed question of whether the hours for the opening and closing of hotels should be altered during the war was dealt with by the Minister of Justice, the Hon. A. L. Herdman, in the course of his speech on the War Regulations Bill. What we were concerned with, he said, was how good order could be preserved without interfering with the rights that people possessed. An election had been held since the outbreak.of the war, and the people expressed their opinion on the matter in a very convincing form. Since that declaration individuals had acquired rights and incurred obligations and property under the assumption that they could carry on for three years unmolested. It would be a gross act of injustice if Parliament were to curtail those rights and dake away what was a portion of their property. If they were going to do that the only way to do it was to give compensation. He had been told that in connection with the steps taken in England compensation had been paid. Mr Isitt: No. They are given the right to appeal. Mr Herdman: Have they got it? Mr Isitt: No, not yet.

Mr Hcrdman coiftinued that the only way they could lessen hours was to pay compensation, and if they did that goodness only knows what they would have to pay. OTHER REMEDIES. Being in charge of the police, he had to consider how order could hest he maintained. He had come to the conclusion that the best way to control the situation was to leave the hotels open fill 10 o'clock in the evening and stick to the Bill. There was provision in the Bill to enable the police lo deal more effectively with sly grog sellers, by entering suspected places without warrant. They wanted to prevent women going into hotels to get liquor. Many of the men got into sly grog shops rather than orderly hotels, and got drunk there. He did not admit that there' had been very great difficulties in connection with the soldiers. Was he to understand that when a man put on the uniform he required the special protection of the State —did they suggest that when a man put on a uniform he was not to be trusted? His evidence was that despite the temptations in their way the soldiers of New Zealand had comported themselves in such a way as to be a credit not only to themselves but to the British race. He had issued instructions to the police that they must take the greatest care in dealing with hotels. ANTI-"SHOUTING."

There was the proposal, and he ;was not very enthusiastic about it. If the Bill passed in its present form he proposed in Committee to move a new clause that would give the police the power of calling upon a licensee to appear at any time before the Licensing Committee to show cause why his license should not be suspended at once. STATE CONTROL. Mr T. M. Wilford (Hull) advocated Slate control of the liquor traffic. There was nothing novel in the suggestion. He was not a prohibitionist. The Stale should take over the whole of the liquor trade, paying a fair value for it. Then they could allow the people to say, on a Dominion basis, whether or not liquor should he sold in the country. His opinion was that hotels opened too early in Ihe morning. Thjw should not be opened before !) a.m., and 12 hours was a sufficiently long period for an hotel to keep open. He would vote for the hours being from !) till !). He had not found the drunkenness among Ihe soldiers thai was alleged. As far as anli-"shouting" was concerned, he would support it. Messrs C. 11. Poole, J. Craigie, A. Harris, and Dr Thacker also spoke.

The debate had not concluded when the House rose al 11.55 p.m.