Night mayors beat ‘fun police’: report
Nights out in New Zealand’s cities have become ‘‘tedious’’, and steps need to be taken to revitalise their nightlife, a new report argues.
The paper, published by think tank The New Zealand Initiative, labelled New Zealand’s restrictions on night-time trading as being stuck ‘‘in the olden days’’ compared with other countries.
The country’s bars and clubs employ at least 20,000 people and generate $2 billion a year in revenue – but the report said the industry could be even more lucrative.
It claimed regulations, such as councils’ local alcohol policies and the nationwide 4am closing time for nightclubs, had failed to make going out at night in main centres safer and instead made nights ‘‘overly tedious’’.
While the number of restaurants and cafes per capita across the country had risen by more than 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively since 2000, the number of bars and nightclubs has fallen by 2 per cent and 7 per cent in the same period.
Natanael Rother, a researcher specialising in localism and a coauthor of the report, suggested New Zealand cities should follow the lead of Amsterdam by appointing a night mayor to create discussion about nightlife opportunities and to balance the concerns of residents and authorities with the desires of bar and club owners and revellers.
Local authorities should be allowed more power to make decisions on the supply of alcohol and opening hours of venues, he added.
‘‘[Currently] it’s kind of the fun police walking around trying to restrict people. It’s a lot smarter to support the people who are having problems dealing with alcohol.
‘‘The majority of Kiwis can handle alcohol perfectly well so they don’t need any help.’’
An initiative like the highly successful South Dakota 24/7 Sobriety project, which sees people who commit alcoholrelated crime kept out of prison as long as they stay sober, could be a better way of managing alcohol-related harm than blanket restrictions or raising the drinking age, Rother said.
The Auckland CBD’S business association, Heart of the City, supported the night mayor idea.
‘‘Proactively taking account of the various needs will be more effective than taking a punitive approach, as examples from other cities have shown,’’ chief executive Viv Beck said.