Fire crews battle to contain a large fire in Canterbury's West Melton overnight and Syria celebrates the end of the Assad family's 50-year regime. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Nick Smale
Nick Smale is a spokesman for the West Auckland Licensing Trusts Action Group.
THREE KEY FACTS
After a multi-year legal fight with our two largest supermarket chains, Auckland Council is on the verge of introducing a new Local Alcohol Policy today.
Central-city bars and restaurants will be able to sell alcohol until 4am. Those outside the CBD will be capped at 3am. Sports clubs and RSAs will have a 1am cut-off.
Supermarkets and bottle stores throughout the city must cease alcohol sales by 9 pm.
Though the broader policy has been in place since September, restricting licences in ways most might not have noticed, the upcoming trading-hour restrictions will have a more visible impact.
This marks a shift in New Zealand’s alcohol regulations, a pendulum swing back towards control with a distinctly political flavour.
From Monday, Auckland bottle shops and supermarkets will no longer be able to sell alcohol after 9pm. Photo / 123rf
“Giving communities greater say” has been the catch-cry, but communities are rarely of one mind.
Empowering activists might be a more accurate description because the licensing balance tips slightly from technocratic to democratic. Evidence matters less and public sentiment matters more. Vibes, it seems, have entered the regulatory equation.
Thankfully, this isn’t a return to the bad old days of booze barns and dry suburbs.
These relics of New Zealand’s earlier alcohol licensing regime disappeared with the Sale of Liquor Act 1989, which replaced strict licence control with a more liberal approach based on the belief that limiting outlets and bars did little to curb alcohol harms.
Liberalisation in the 1990s led to an explosion in bars and bottle stores, and supermarkets entered the game, first with wine, then beer in 1999.
Despite the explosion, alcohol consumption per capita in New Zealand declined throughout the 1990s and has continued a slight downward trend since.
Nick Smale. Photo / Jason Oxenham
The pendulum swung again in 2012. Reforms recognised that alcohol availability, particularly in certain circumstances, probably contributes to alcohol-related harm.
The purpose of the act shifted from reasonable control to harm minimisation, and councils were empowered to create local alcohol policies (LAPs) tailored to the specific circumstances of their communities.
However, implementing these LAPs proved fraught. Licensees – particularly the supermarkets – mounted appeals and judicial reviews, causing years of delays and incurring substantial costs. These challenges were not without purpose; they established precedents for how reasonable and evidence based LAPs needed to be.
Supermarkets argued LAPs must not impose arbitrary rules or create disproportionate burdens. Councils, on the other hand, argued the law intended restrictions to reflect community sentiment even without robust evidence, invoking the precautionary principle to justify experimental policies.
Council ultimately won, with the Supreme Court confirming councils could adopt policies with little or no evidence of harm reduction, saying: “Little (and perhaps no) likelihood of reduction in alcohol-related harm may be required, particularly where the restriction accords with the preference of the community.”
Shortly after, the Government removed the right to appeal proposed LAPs. Councils now have a relatively free hand to impose restrictions provided they enjoy reasonable public support.
Aggrieved licensees and stakeholders are left with limited recourse: lobbying, political activism or judicial review.
The consequences are already evident. Palmerston North City Council has withdrawn its proposed LAP to introduce a new, probably stricter, version under the new rules.
Other councils are likely to follow, capitalising on the political appeal of addressing community concerns about bottle store proliferation and late-night drinking.
Public health advocates and self-appointed moral guardians will undoubtedly seize the opportunities this presents.
In some ways, this is a step backwards. The technocratic alcohol licensing system, for all its flaws, provided a safeguard against arbitrary decision-making. But it had lost a great deal of public confidence.
Greater democratic control may restore that trust, but at the cost of liberties and the risk of ineffective, populist policies.
A positive side effect of these changes could be the final dismantling of outdated licensing trust monopolies.
The four remaining trusts – clinging to their outdated control models in West Auckland and the deep south – are now redundant from a regulatory perspective.
With their assets underperforming compared with other investment options, there is little justification for their monopolies to remain. The Repeal of Licensing Trust Monopolies Amendment Bill presents an overdue opportunity to consign these relics to history.
