Simon Court: West Auckland MP pushes to end liquor monopolies in West Auckland

West Auckland MP, Simon Court has lodged a new members bill to abolish New Zealand's last remaining liquor monopolies.

He says its frankly condescending to the nearly 300,000 people who live in West Auckland as well as the people who live in Invercargill and Gore - that they can't enjoy the same access to hospitalityand purchasing beer or wine than everywhere else in New Zealand.

Court believes that they deserve the same rights as the rest of New Zealanders.

He says that not only are they lacking choice but there's also a huge opportunity in terms of jobs and economy for West Auckland to participate that they don't currently have.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now to something that I do care about. Less so
at the moment, but most of the time I do.
The ACT Party have launched a new members bill to
abolish the remaining liquor monopolies around the country. Now, the
bill would repeal the current trusts model. It would allow
locals to sell booze under the same nationwide scheme like
the supermarkets and bottle stores and stuff like that. Simon
Court is a west Auckland based act MPN is with us.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Now, Hey, Simon, good afternoon, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Is this born from your own personal frustration at not
being able to get the booze from the normal places
like the rest of us do.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
It's incredibly frustrating, it's confusing to visitors who come to
west Auckland, and it's frankly condescending to the nearly three
hundred thousand people who live in west Auckland that we
can't enjoy the same access to hospitality, being able to
buy beer and win.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
New Zealand because we don't trust the bergains with the booze.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Well well, yeah, indeed, but yeah, the same also applies
to Invercargo and Gore, Matada also have like hotspots. Is
that yeah, Well, we think we deserve the same rights
as all the rest of New Zealanders. And I'll just
give you one stat that really triggers me. There's three
hundred thousand people almost of west Aukland. We've got eight bars.

(01:16):
The rest of Auckland has one bar for every three thousand,
two hundred people. We've got one for every thirty seven
thousand people. Not only are we lacking choice, but there's
a huge opportunity here in terms of jobs and economy
for west Aukland to participate that we currently don't have.
So what my members bill does is said, look, you
can these lock of licensing trusts can keep owning bars,

(01:39):
they can keep selling alcohol, but they will no longer
have a monopoly.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Okay, So if your if your bill passes and becomes law,
does it just basically wipe it immediately, And it's it
just it starts from from the get go. It just
resets it so that it becomes like everywhere else in
the country.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
That's what it is. That would mean that they can
continue with business, but that any and will now set
up the hospitality.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Business famously in the past, and I don't know what
the situation is at the moment. But famously in the
past Invercargol actually used this model for a lot of good.
Do they not do that anymore?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, the trusts have had a real struggle in the
past few years. Their overheads have gone up in Auckland
from three to four million a year to nearly fourteen million.
They struggle to make a profit. They've closed stores, but
when you actually look the hood, eighty percent of their
profits come from Pokey's and not from selling alcohol or
having bars. So our proposition is quite simple. If they

(02:35):
want to give back to their community, if they want
to fulfill what they think is this community need, then
they should do it. But they shouldn't have a monopoly
in selling alcohol, and they shouldn't have a monopoly on
running hospitality venues in West orcond.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
You realize that you would be moving West Auckland in
a completely different direction of travel to the rest of
the of the wider Auckland region. At the moment where
the council is basically trying to shut down the places
you can get booze from.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Well, unfortunate. We're also subject to the local alcohol policies,
but we have even less opportunity to participate in the
hospitality lifestyle that people who live in the rest of Auckland,
I mean Westis spend over one hundred million dollars a
year on hospitality outside of west Ackland because we simply
can't get it here. We can order alcohol to be

(03:21):
delivered to our door, we can order it from a
supermarket through Quick and Collect, but we can't go and
buy it in the supermarket. So we're living in a
really throwback era here to prohibition and temperance. And what
my members bill will do say, Look, the government has
this Commerce Commission that's meant to be smashing monopolies. Unfortunately
we've got this law that says that we're enforcing a

(03:42):
monopoly on liquor licensing. We're going to open that up
and we're going to give West's and the people of
Southbound freedom back.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Brilliant stuff. Hey, so I'm a best of like that
Simon called Act MP for Westalkland. For more from Hither
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