Māori wardens played a major part in Auckland Council’s decision to ban bottle shop sales after 9 pm.
The new local alcohol policy which comes into force at the beginning of December will also put an almost total freeze on new outlets in the city for two years.
Regulatory and safety committee chair Josephine Bartley says the policy gained unanimous support after councillors heard from wardens and health experts about increasing levels of harm.
She says the excessive number of outlets in low income areas means Maori and Pasifika children are 14 times more likely to see alcohol advertising on their way to school than those in leafy suburbs – and her visit to late trading outlets showed they weren’t just staying open for shift workers.
“There were shift workers there but there were also people, they were drunk coming in and buying alcohol. There were a lot of young people hanging around and this is just my own experience where you see a lot of young people hanging outside a liquor store late at night, they are waiting for someone they can ask to go and buy their alcohol for them and then they will go and drink in a park,” Ms Bartley says.
