Tourists and Prohibition

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 4387, 18 March 1909, Page 3

Tourists and Prohibition

Invited by a Sydney Daily Telegraph reporter to speak in regard to the licensing question in New Zealand, Sir Robert Stout replied that there had undoubtedly been a great advance in the No-license vote. “ Anyone who has lived there knows that the attitude towards liquor is quite different from what it was forty years ago. Of course, a great many people still drink, and there are drunkards, but the public feeling aroused against the use of liquor is quite different as compared with that of forty years ago. On steamers and anywhere you go when travelling, you see nothing to approach the consumption of liquor that was witnessed in earlier days.”

When the objection frequently made that No license was likely to affect the tourist traffic was mentioned, Sir Robert ridiculed it. “If a man cannot come and see our scenery unless we fill him with whisky, be had better stay away. Ido not think any tourist worth having who will refuse to come to New Zealand unless he can get liquor. In any case Ido not think that New Zealand is going to be dominated by the tourist traffic.