City council booze rules need a rethink

that enjoys broad public support, particularly the wing-clipping of off-licence sales.

The LAP will give communities the muscle to meaningfully contest an off-licence invader in their neighbourhood. And given supermarkets and bottle stores account for roughly 80 per cent of all alcohol sales, restricting their trading hours to 9am to 9pm is reasonable.

After all, they are the power players of the pre-loaders and outof-control parties. The bully-boy supermarket barons previously threatened to close all their supermarkets if they couldn’t sell booze around the clock, but that’s proven to have been pure bluster and flannel, with a 9am to 9pm trading regime becoming the new normal, nationwide.

Our council is also keen to roll back on-licence trading hours, with a 1am close for suburban bars. In the great majority of cases that’s absolutely reasonable – but not all. In the face of disaster, the Lincoln Rd and Victoria St precincts gallantly led the revival of the city’s hospitality scene, on the CBD fringe.

Given the insatiable popularity of these pioneering precincts, nobbling them with a 1am shutdown is draconian. They should be treated as central city hospitality haunts, with unchanged closing times. Auckland’s model is the exemplar, where the Ponsonby and K Road precincts, along with the central city, have all been accorded a 4am closing time.

But the most misguided and indefensible aspect to Christchurch’s provisional LAP is the 1am lockout. Straight-jacketing the central city with a 1am one-way door policy reeks of puritan excess. It is completely out of step with our metropolitan brothers up north. Neither Auckland nor Wellington are implementing the oneway approach.

Unless we’d prefer monstrous Facebook-generated house parties to spiral across suburbia, neither should we. Q. Turning right from Grahams Rd into Memorial Ave is very difficult at certain times of the day. Will there ever be a green arrow or an arrow painted on the road to make it easier? – Marie Lloyd A. A proposal to improve the overall capacity of the Grahams Rd/ Memorial Ave signalised intersection was presented to the Fendalton/ Waimairi Community Board in May. The approved scheme allows for the introduction of dedicated right-turn lanes on both approaches of Grahams Rd and the introduction of right-turn markings at the centre of the intersection. This would be achieved by altering the lane configurations on Grahams Rd. The scheme is scheduled to be implemented before September. – CCC

Given the insatiable popularity of these pioneering precincts, nobbling them with a 1am shutdown is draconian.