LICENSING COMMITTEES: WHAT ARE THEIR POWERS?

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume VIII, Issue 370, 26 August 1897, Page 12

LICENSING COMMITTEES: WHAT ARE THEIR POWERS?

’ At a recent sitting of the Wanganui Licensing Bench an application for transfer of the Rutland Hotel license from Mrs Scott to Mr F. J. Tasker was applied for. Mr C. C. Kettle, S.M., Chairman of the Licensing Committee, refused to sign the “certificate of fitness” of Mr Tasker, and the question of the transfer could not be considered by the committee at all. On the subject of the above we have received the following from a valued contributor on the West Coast: — We should very much like to know the powers of licensing committees, their extent and nature. So far as we know at present —and we must admit our ignorance about details- —a committee of six is appointed in a fair-sized town like Wanganui, who act, with the stipendiary magistrate as chairman, in the interests of brewers, publicans, retailers of wines and spirits, and the public generally. Now, in this list we have placed brewers and publicans first, because our common sense tells us that if there were no brewers or distillers there would be no publicans, and therefore, we presume, no licensing laws would be required, and, a fortiori, no licensing committees. Now comes the question : Does the stipendiary magistrate exercise supreme control over this committee or does he not ? For so far as our observation goes, it seems that the members of the licensing committee have very little very little voice in the deliberations. This suggestion is strengthened by the fact that one very capable man on the licensing committee at Wanganui is about to resign, and -we believe his example is to

be followed by another resignation. This can only be due to the fact that these two members, finding their voices are voiceless on the committe, have naturally more self-respect that to sit on a body where they are practically a useless nonentity. Now, we wish our readers to understand distinctly that we have not the slightest objection to the stipendiary magistrate ruling the licensing committee with despotic sway. AVe only want to know if it is a fact that the majority of licensing committees leave all questions to be settled by the chairman. If so, we say at once, let there be no licensing committees ; put all questions affecting licenses in the hands and in the power of the S.M., and we are perfectly confident that they will be dealt with in the same fair and impartial manner in which, be it said to the glory of the Mother Country and New Zealand, those who have to administer the law always have been and will be famous for acting. For our part we should like to see licensing committee abolished, just as we should like to see several other useless committees abolished. Don’t let us have a committee merely in name—a committee that is a sham and a farce. Don’t let us have licensing committee composed of men who have a rooted antipathy and aversion to the trades of brewers and publicans, who regard it a sin to drink a glass of beer, a crime to enter a public-house, and whose only aim and existence is to try and compel everybody to be teetotallers, and who would, if they could, shut up every public-house and hotel in which drink is sold to-morrow morning. A licensing committee should be composed of men of broad and liberal views, and no professed prohibitionist should be able to sit among its ranks. Let the publicans and brewers look to

this. Some of the latter—nay, even the former —are amongst the most educated and liberalminded men of the day. They are prominent in good works, they are capable men of business, men of long heads and wide understandings, and why don’t they look out for independent men — men with views of their own and voices that have the courage to declare those views. We are sorry to say that such men are very few and far between in this country, and we have been frequently surprised at the want of frank boldness and truthfulness that characterises a great number of capable men, who seem to think that the truth and nothing but the truth is never to be told except in a court of law, and noteven always there.