Southland liquor outlets have been given the green light to continue trading up to 16 hours a day, despite Health NZ calling for shorter hours.<\/p>\n
By Matthew Rosenberg for Local Democracy Reporting<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, district councillors voted almost unanimously to stick with the status quo for off-licence operating hours, meaning bottle stores and supermarkets can continue to sell liquor between 7am and 11pm daily.<\/p>\n
The decision went against a staff recommendation to shave off three hours a day, and an even tougher stance from Health NZ to cut back four hours.<\/p>\n
Arguments in support of sticking with the status quo included councillor Matt Wilson saying he had not seen data to support change and consultation was split down the middle.<\/p>\n
Councillor Paul Duffy said he had not seen a need to sell alcohol as early as 7am but recently approved a special licence for the Garston dog trials, and it might suit them to buy alcohol before 9am.<\/p>\n
Philip Dobson was the lone voice in support of reducing daily trading hours<\/p>\n
\u201cJust in review of listening to everyone here, a lot of it seems to come back to inconvenience, and I just wonder where inconvenience fits with our responsibilities around harm reduction,\u201d the councillor said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hearing about guys that need to pick up their booze on the way to the dog trials, when you\u2019ve got a chill trailer, and I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a fridge in Garston. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s at least one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wednesday\u2019s decision followed a public consultation late last year, and presentations from Hospitality New Zealand and Health NZ Te Whatu Ora.<\/p>\n
In January, Health NZ medical officer of health Michael Butchard told council alcohol caused 900 deaths, 1250 cancer diagnoses and 30,000 hospitalisations every year in New Zealand.<\/p>\n
The burden of alcohol was large, and justified a local alcohol policy which did more rather than less, he said.<\/p>\n
Health NZ recommended trading hours of 9am to 9pm, or four hours less a day.<\/p>\n
Although the council opted to keep trading hours the same, it did okay some changes.<\/p>\n
That included removing \u201cno restrictions\u201d wording from on-licence trading hours, considering glass vessels at events, and new owners not needing to consult with neighbouring properties.<\/p>\n
It also reduced the timeframe for review to four years and added health centres, rehabilitation centres, Marae, and Fale Pasifika as sensitive places.<\/p>\n
The final policy is yet to be adopted by the council, which will take place following public notification.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Auckland brought forward off-licence closure times to 9pm, while Christchurch followed suit last year.<\/p>\n
– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southland liquor outlets have been given the green light to continue trading up to 16 hours a day,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,15488],"class_list":{"0":"post-313689","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-southland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}