Still not listening!

Are you surprised that we spend more than $85 million on alcohol each week in New Zealand? More than 62,000 physical assaults and 10,000 sexual assaults occur every year involving an offender who has been drinking.

Car crashes involving someone else’s drinking were responsible for an annual average of 5535 injuries to innocent victims, including 60 deaths. Alcohol harm is a serious issue for us all.

Nothing beats a good bit of theatre, and that was quite evident when councillors dealt a death blow to the Provisional Local Alcohol Policy (PLAP). Having been in development for the past six years, claims that the costs were blowing out were enough to scare some into beating a hasty retreat. More concerning, in my opinion, was Cr Court’s contention that there was no ‘causal nexus’ between licensed premises and alcoholrelated harm.

Having worked for more than 10 years across Northland specifically on reducing harm from alcohol and other drugs, this troubles me. Ten years ago, three Far North premises regularly featured as the worst in New Zealand according to the Police Alco-link data (which record where offenders had their last drink prior to offending).

At that same time, Far North police prosecuted 2049 offenders where alcohol was a factor. Four out of 10 arrests were related to alcohol.

A further 1238 offenders were arrested for family violence-related offences, 447 of them identified as alcohol-related.

The law defines alcohol harm as “. . . any crime, damage, death, disease, disorderly behaviour, illness or injury, directly or indirectly caused, or directly or indirectly contributed to, by the excessive or inappropriate consumption of alcohol,” and “any harm to society generally or the community, directly or indirectly caused, or directly or indirectly contributed to, by any crime, damage, death, disease, disorderly behaviour, illness, or injury.”

As part of a multi-agency approach to reducing such harm locally, the FNDC joined with the Northland DHB and the police in 2007. One of the key changes — curtailing closing hours to 1am — had a dramatic result. In Paihia, violence-related offences reduced by 84 per cent. Across the district, arrested offenders who had their last drink on licensed premises reduced by almost a third.

There is strong local and international evidence proving that reducing the hours when alcohol is available, particularly later in the evening/early morning, is an effective way to reduce harm from alcohol.

The Far North had an effective alcohol policy, which has now been passed over in favour of national default closing hours of 4am. The draft local alcohol policy was intended to give you a say on how alcohol is sold. Council’s guiding principle “. . . to empower local communities and support local decision-making and action on local matters,” has little credibility in my opinion.

Your councillors and mayor have let you down by not listening and giving effect to your concerns. What do you think?

"There is strong local and international evidence proving that reducing the hours when alcohol is available, particularly later in the evening/early morning, is an effective way to reduce harm . . . "