KEY POINTS:
My council colleague Colleen Brown (Perspectives, May 15) rightly expresses outrage and indignation at a topless bar in Manurewa. As a politician she is representing a community that is suffering the severe consequences of rising living costs, structural poverty and creaking infrastructure. She chose this issue, of all issues, to rediscover her voice.
I, too, have visited that topless bar. Unlike Brown, I have no intention of giving that establishment thousands of dollars worth of free publicity. Instead I would sooner try to address the planning rules that allow such businesses to be established in Manukau City.
The topless bar survives on alcohol sales, not boobs. From 2001 to 2006 (which corresponds with Brown's first five years on the Manukau City Council), the number of on-licence (pubs and bars) and off-licence (bottle shops) liquor retail outlets in Manukau City increased from 375 to 455.
That 20 per cent increase represents a failure to respond to the community's call to change the planning and licensing rules that allow topless bars to become established.
Brown said she has "heard back very clearly from [her] community".
Really? Since when? Was she listening in 2001? Did she hear anything in 2006? Apparently not.
Politicians look opportunistic when they express indignation in response to problems they helped create. After all those years on council; after all the submissions and letters; after witnessing the decline in community standards, it is unacceptable to pull down a community that she helped create.
Fortunately for Manukau City, another one of our civic leaders, George Hawkins MP, has introduced a bill to amend the Sale of Liquor Act 1989. That bill would give local people more power to object to the licensing and operation of pubs, bars and bottle shops in their community.
Having lobbied Hawkins to introduce such a bill, I am hopeful Parliament will take the matter up and give it the urgency it deserves.
Brown needs to work with me to change Manukau City Council's District Plan. We need to move from the permissive plan that allows topless drinking bars to a prescriptive regulatory document that places controls on such commercial operators.
It is neither legal nor appropriate to confiscate existing use rights or property rights. But empowering our community and redesigning how businesspeople ply their trade in communities such as Manurewa, we have an opportunity to reverse the slide towards minimal community standards.
I hope that no community shares the experience of Manurewa, where long-serving city councillors have failed to challenge the skyrocketing number of liquor licences. But to prevent a fate similar to that of a community in Manukau City, people need to instil in their community leaders the knowledge to make real and positive changes.
* Daniel Newman is a Manukau City councillor, representing the Manurewa Ward.
