Raise a glass to new laws
Someone needs to buy that man a drink; preferably next Good Friday and preferably from a pub. Labour MP Kieran McAnulty is coming to the aid of the thirsty masses with a prospective law to remove the restrictions on Easter, Christmas and Anzac Day alcohol sales, and he has the support of his party to do it. It’s a move that’s long overdue, and a good start to fixing the mess of deeply strange Easter trading rules in general.
Local government has brandished the power to decide whether shops can open on Easter Sunday since the National-led government washed its hands of the responsibility in 2016. Since then, 39 of the country’s 67 councils have passed bylaws allowing retailers to open if they want, but Auckland, Wellington, and other major cities remain firmly closed.
Despite that, some businesses choose to flout the law; risking the whopping $1000 maximum fine for doing so. This year, two Wa¯ naka New World supermarkets and nine Oderings Garden Centres opened on Good Friday, while some Auckland retailers desperately wished they could do the same to try and mitigate the damage from four lockdowns.
If it isn’t weird enough that the ability to open your business depends on where you are in the country, when it comes to buying alcohol things get stranger still. The rules currently governing the sale of alcohol at Easter are a mishmash of nonsensical commandments which make about as much sense as a non-alcoholic beer.
Thou shalt not purchase booze on Good Friday or Easter Sunday, unless it’s from licensed premises that will also serve you a meal which, I discovered to my glee last week, can be a small bowl of chips or a tiny side salad. In saying that, they’re not allowed to serve you alcohol an hour before or after you eat, so don’t go getting any clever ideas.
You can, however, drink in a hotel if you’re living there, or at a vineyard because the law says wine made on the premises or ‘‘from produce harvested from land on which the premises are situated’’ can be sold on Easter Sunday. Just not on Good Friday.
Bottle stores and supermarkets shalt not sell you alcohol on either Good Friday or Easter Sunday, but you shall, of course, drink the alcohol you stockpiled the day before, or hop aboard a licensed ferry or train for a tipple. Duty Free stores can sell you booze as well.
New Zealand’s archaic Easter liquor laws appear to have stemmed from a mix of moral and religious beliefs of the Christian faith. The 1881 Licensing Act banned the sale of alcohol on Christmas Day, Sundays and Good Friday. (It also warned proprietors they could be fined; lose their liquor licence or have their establishment classed as a ‘‘disorderly house’’ if they hired dancing girls.)
All these years later we’ve cleaned up some of the act, but we’re still not allowed to buy a drink on the religious holidays; a nonsensical rule when the 2018 census found almost half Aotearoa’s population (48.2 per cent) had no religion. Despite that, more than 2 million of us non-believers are forced to uphold a doctrine stemming from one faith in which we don’t believe.
At its core, the issue of being unable to buy a drink on a religious holiday isn’t about quenching our thirst for alcohol, it’s about respecting each other’s right to choose; surely that’s something we should all be toasting.
Cheers.