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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 38, Number 19. May 29 1975

Implications

Implications

The breweries are or have been involved in fraud, corruption, law-breaking and considerable political gerrymandering. The fact that many of these activities are technically legal says far more for the two-faced nature of New Zealand law than it does for the virtues of the breweries. As we noted above, the Breweries are truly national concerns - in everything apart from placing the profit motive above social concerns and in returning their profits to a small minority of New Zealanders rather than to all the people they make profits from. Mr Muldoon has made great noise about the inability of some Polynesians to hold liquor - he has revealingly said nothing about the monopolies that are serving them. The breweries' power is such in New Zealand society that they can hire the best accountants to juggle their books (legally), the best lawyers to fight their cases and intimidate the opposition, and provide the money to make otherwise reprehensible activities (e.g. the attempted take-over of the Porirua Licensing Trust) all the easier. The Breweries also have many friends inside the major political Parties who ensure that their policies do not attack the Brewer's interests in any way.

The clear need is for something realistic to be done about the breweries - and that something realistic can only be nationalisation - as Conrad Bollinger's book clearly points out, any regulations so far on the breweries have been circumvented add any commissions emasculated. If Parliament is incapable of providing the guts to do this - as it clearly is - then the impetus must come from outside and beyond Parliament, clearly by mass action of the New Zealand people. The fight against monopolies must be extended to a fight against the Parliament where both parties, one with platitudes of free enterprise, the other with platitudes of state supervision, are integrally involved in building up and supporting monopolies. As they don't have the political guts to do the necessary job then we're much better off without them and the interests they serve. Fighting the breweries is undoubtedly a long, hard, up-hill battle - but it's far better than sinking into a booze-sodden stupor, occasionally grumbling as more profits are ripped off from us.

Photo of a brewery