News

The Alcohol Reform Bill has entered the Select Committee phase, with over 650 written submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee.
The Bill is the legislative response to the Law Commission report, Alcohol in our Lives: Curbing the Harm. It seeks to significantly amend the law governing the sale and consumption of alcohol in New Zealand, with several of the proposed changes likely to affect students and Dunedin alcohol vendors.
 
The most significant change mooted is increasing the purchase age to twenty for off-licence alcohol vendors, while maintaining the age limit of eighteen for on-licence sales. If passed into law this would effectively bar most first years from being able to purchase alcohol for consumption in the university colleges.
 
It would, however, likely benefit local pubs and bars, many of which have been struggling to survive. Last year the Gardens Tavern was sold to the University of Otago; prior to the sale the pub’s owner stated that the current culture of binge drinking before going out to bars had made the Tavern unprofitable. The owners of the Captain Cook Tavern, meanwhile, adopted a cover charge on some nights of the week, saying that only around one in eight of those entering the pub were purchasing a drink.
 
Other changes proposed by the Bill are the adoption of national closing times for off and on licences. Off-licences would be restricted to selling alcohol between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., whilst on-licences would only be allowed to be open between 8 a.m. and 4 a.m.
 
In presenting the Bill for its first reading in Parliament, Justice Minister Simon Power described the previous law change which reduced the drinking age to eighteen as a failed attempt to introduce a moderate ‘European style’ drinking culture. He stated that the Bill “zeroes in on alcohol-related harm, crime, disorder, and public health problems, especially where our young people are concerned”.
 
Progressive Leader Jim Anderton, however, slammed the Bill, stating “the only reason I will vote for the Alcohol Reform Bill to be referred to a select committee is so that the government can experience the public’s outrage at the abject weakness of its cringing approach to one of New Zealand’s most significant social and economic problems and the damage that alcohol abuse causes to New Zealand and New Zealanders”.