What can the Council do to support city vibrancy and minimise alcohol-related harm?

@simonmargrett - a block is a strong position. If the closing time was even an hour earlier, it could make a real difference. In my experience, the idiots are the last ones standing. Would you support that?

Preloading is done to keep costs down and socialise/meet up before heading into town. Closing town at 2am might send people home early (in a big crush) but they'll still preload and they'll still go out to get/stay drunk with a budget of $whatever to do it with. It won't increase profits as people won't have more money to spend - if anything it'll reduce profits as people can't drunkenly continue to spend more than they intended.

Lived in the UK with it's set closing times and all the same problems. People get drunk, doesn't matter when they go home they'll fight/vandalise/make noise unless you deal with them swiftly and directly. No effect on costs - you need a spike of services to deal with the spike of closing time, and it scatters people who want to continue to party around all residential areas (who don't want them to party).

I dislike the taste of prohibition, the vast majority are sensible drinkers and should be able to go for a drink whenever they like; not told no because of a damage limitation effort on a tiny minority of hooligans who could just as well be fined to cover the cost of removing them from the street.

@megan1 I strongly oppose prohibition, it does nothing to solve problems. Education solves problems in the long term, direct intervention in the short term. Educate people about the bad side of booze, make it socially unacceptable to be drunk in public (as it has become to drink and drive). In the mean time make the idiots pay for the costs of their own removal (and storage if necessary) - self funding, and hopefully the financial cost is an incentive to not do it again.

@simonmargrett so, if it is about not penalising the responsible ones, why have a closing time at all? In fact, why have any laws or rules? All laws are made for the majority, I think in the instance of alcohol consumption, that the majority consists of police, concerned parents, ambulance and security, hospitals, apartment dwellers, motorists and truckdrivers, property owners, women's refuge, taxpayers etc vs the rights of a few good drinkers to stay out as long as they want.

I'm in favour of lock-outs, maybe starting at 2.00pm. If you leave after that you can't get back in. Having licences finish at 2.00am seems overly harsh.

To anyone concerned about today's article in the Dominion Post '4am close set to play havoc with city revels'.

Let me be clear...

Wellington City Council does not yet have a position on trading hours for the hospitality sector

This request for Local Government NZ to raise the issue with the Minister is about inappropriate legislative time frames that, if imposed, have significant local implications (transport, hospitality, public expectations) for what is likely to be a short transitional phase

It has been my advice to The Council that the time frames are inconsistent with the intent of the legislation - which is to allow each jurisdiction to implement the legislation in a manner that is consistent with local data on alcohol related impacts and community interests be they more or less restrictive than the default position

We are committing significant resource towards producing a policy that takes account of local data and community interests and the public will not understand why, for 3 months, we may well have to implement an operating environment that differs to our policy position

I hope this puts the article into context. If you would like to read the full paper, visit:

http://wellington.govt.nz/your-council/meetings/committees/strategy-and-policy/2013/04/18