Bars welcome booze law overhaul as health sector sounds alarm
Friday, 29 August 2025
Pubs and clubs are popping the bubbly, celebrating the proposed changes to booze laws, but health groups are shaking their heads.
Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee’s reforms will make it harder to oppose liquor licences, allow hairdressers to serve booze without a licence and make it simpler for pubs and clubs to serve alcohol during major televised events outside of trading hours.
She’s also seeking to tighten up rapid to-the-door deliveries by requiring drivers to check IDs and that the people they’re supplying alcohol to aren’t intoxicated.
But she’s made a U-turn on a move to limit the hours alcohol could be sold.
Draft Cabinet papers, leaked to RNZ, show the minister originally sought to limit the hours alcohol could be sold at off-licences to 9am-9pm, with officials saying that could prevent 2400 violent crimes a year.
But this change is absent from those announced on Thursday. McKee said, after announcing the changes at Auckland’s Lulu bar, that she wasn’t comfortable with the Ministry of Justice advice.
“The 2400 wasn't based on a system that I had confidence in. It was a system that you just inputted the numbers into and I didn't have any trust and confidence in that,” she said.
Police and health officials both wanted to see alcohol shop hours reduced, she said. This advice was ignored.
“Well, of course, the police want lesser hours for those that are operating. They probably would like lesser controls as well, although they are cognisant of the fact that I was trying to find a balance.”
Alcohol healthwatch executive director Andrew Galloway said there was clear evidence that reducing access to alcohol reduced harm and he was disappointed the minister ultimately decided not to follow her own advice.
“More than likely, if anyone's going shopping for booze after 9pm at night, it's to top up.”
McKee said she was focused on reducing red tape for businesses without increasing alcohol harm.
“Our reforms recognise that responsible drinkers should not be penalised because of the behaviour of a few who do not drink safely,” McKee said.
“Most New Zealanders who choose to drink alcohol do so responsibly.”
But Galloway questioned where that line came from ‒ saying there was no safe limit for the country’s most widely used and harmful drug.
“It's a curious statement and it sounds a bit to me like it's an industry tag-line.”
The most recent New Zealand Health Survey showed one in six adults had a hazardous drinking pattern ‒ equivalent to about 720,000 Kiwis. And alcohol is estimated to cost the country $9.1 billion in harm every year and is responsible for 129,000 ACC claims.
McKee said her evidence for saying that “most New Zealanders drink responsibly” was that alcohol-related violence was decreasing.
Her reforms have mostly been welcomed by pubs and clubs ‒ though some wish they went further.
Greig Wilson, a co-owner of five Wellington bars, said it was “good to see some practical common sense in the liquor licensing space“.
Loosening of rules around big television events was a sensible move, he said.
But the changes didn't go far enough as, already, there was a big difference in how councils interpreted central government rules.
One example was bottomless brunches, which appeared to be allowed in Auckland but not Wellington City, he said.
For Tom Baker, the changes allowing licence applicants a right of reply to objectors was a great move but too late for his and his Station Kitchen co-owner.
The pair had planned to open the Khandallah on- and off-licence in about April but a single objector, followed by one more, meant a long delay.
By the time they opened in August, all the staff they had secured were gone, meaning they could only operate at semi-capacity. They hoped to be fully staffed in a couple of weeks ‒ four or more months after they had planned.
They had planned to sell occasional craft beer for people to take home but they also had to give up their off-licence aspirations.