The extension of the Wellington City Council’s liquor ban into Aro St and Aro Park is not the answer, says Wellington Central Workers Party candidate Don Franks.
“Banning alcohol in public is not the answer” says Franks
“This is a class issue. As more and more people find it harder to buy a drink in the pub, they find somewhere that doesn’t charge them an arm and a leg.”
“Mayor Kerry Prendergast says that the bylaw will only affect those who display anti-social behaviour. Public drinking is not anti-social behaviour.” says Franks.
“It’s true, there is an issue of homeless people in the parks,” said Franks.
“Many of those people will never afford housing at current costs”.
“We live in an alienating capitalist system, which actually restricts people’s choice”, states Franks.
“If I get elected to represent Wellington Central I’ll restore the option of half a dozen public bars with plastic jugs of cheap draft, damp sticky carpets, bar tables you can lean on and a covered part with a heater somewhere where you can smoke. There will be quart bottles, meat raffles, an old upright piano, a pie warmer and a guitar behind the bar.”
I like your proposal Don. I’d drink there! There are still a few places like that in Newtown though, right?
There’s one just down from the Hala butchershop. We should get together for a beer there sometime.
Do you think that New Zealand has a drinking culture that is a terrible impact on society as a whole? If so, don’t you think you should be promoting policies that are aimed at reducing drinking in general? Is it not irresponsible to be advocating greater access to cheap liquor?
The problem with blaming cheap alcohol for problems of social breakdown is that it mistakes the surface manifestation for the problem itself. The availability of alcohol is not the root problem – nor contrary to what the middle class liberal PC control freaks in the Labour Party say is the number of liquor outlets, since as we wrote recently on this blog the number of liquor outlets in suburbs such as the North Shore is actually much higher than in areas like Manurewa where they are supposedly to blame for the rising incidence of violent crime.
The real root problem WP argues is the breakdown in social solidarity over the last few decades in NZ, which combined with rising poverty leads a small but significant section of the working class to despair and latch on to ‘alternatives’ such as gang culture or fundamentalist Christianity.
see:
http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/08/07/violent-crime-in-capitalist-new-zealand/
P.S. as someone who has the misfortune to work as a part-time shift supervisor at an inner city Christchurch supermarket on a Friday night, I am well acquainted with the problem of alcohol-related youth disorder. However attempts to control access to alchohol will do nothing to address the reasons why most of these kids are out on the street or their anti-social behaviour (and probably won´t even succeed in stopping them from drinking either!).
Next time I’m in Wellington Don! Thanks for the offer.
And totally agree that the rise in problem drinking is the result in a breakdown in society and the neoliberal atomised culture we’ve been foisted with.
Sometimes it’s easy to dull your mind and forget about how shit the world is. That’s a bad space to be in but an easy out.