KEY POINTS:
At the risk of being labelled a wowser, you have to wonder what hallucinogens fuelled the decision-makers who decided 24-hour liquor trading would help make downtown Auckland a world-class city.
Perhaps there is a Utopia where people can sit around 24 hours a day, supping ambrosia and engaging
in witty banter without falling down drunk or hitting a contrary passerby over the head with a glass bottle.
Perhaps there's even a place where a tipsy maiden can disappear off with a team of rugby players and emerge from their hotel some hours later having seen nothing more than their etchings.
But such a place, Auckland is not. As Downtown police boss, Senior Sergeant Ben Offner succinctly sums it up: "Nothing good happens after 3am."
Mr Offner is firmly of the view that forcing the all-night bars - 298 have 24-hour licences, around 50 actually use them - to cork their alcohol after 3am might start to turn around the sorry state of affairs that now exists.
Indeed, reading his report to Auckland City Council, you have to wonder whether he shouldn't be calling for even earlier closing hours than that.
In 1998, before 24-hour closing was introduced, the most violent hour in central Auckland was between 1am and 2am.
Last year, with 24-hour boozing in full swing, the two hours between 11pm and 1am were equal winners, with 115 violent crimes apiece. As the Offner report admits: "24-hour licensing has not spread the workload of violent crime as expected."
What stands out though, is that 44 per cent of violent crime in central Auckland in 1998 and 42 per cent in 2007 occurred between the dark hours of 11pm and 5am. Compare that with the rest of the country where in both years, the figure was only 27 per cent.
The report puts this difference down to Auckland City's more liberal licensing laws which, among other things, entice the young and thirsty thrill-seekers from surrounding cities to the centre, like moths to an alcohol-fuelled flame. Only 23 per cent of the nocturnal offenders live in central Auckland. The rest come from the city's outer suburbs, North Shore, Waitakere and Counties Manukau.
An alco-link survey at Auckland Central Police Station last year assessed 49.75 per cent of arrested violent offenders as affected by alcohol as were 77.73 per cent of those arrested for various disorderly offences.
There is no breakdown for time of arrest, but a similar survey by Wellington police recorded 95 per cent of those arrested for violence or disorderly behaviour between 11am and 5am were alcohol affected.
Auckland City's teetotaller mayor and one-time Minister of Police, John Banks, has strangely lammed into the police saying that as they originally supported 24-hour trading, they can now live with the consequences. In an even odder twist, although he once opposed the open slather drinking policy, he now intends to fight those who want to "shut down" his international city "in the interests of safety."
Mr Banks' solution is a "zero tolerance" policy to weed out drunks and the errant bar owners serving booze to them. He and what army?
But really, can anyone still not be drunk come 3am and out on the town? I'm certain if I was still standing at that hour, I'd be demanding the cops arrest the bar owner for watering down the beer.
According to the police report, Auckland's drinking hours are now more liberal than countries we like to compare ourselves with, such as the US, Britain, most Australian states and the rest of New Zealand. The vomit stains each morning on the expensive new inner-city paving slabs hints at how world-class Auckland is not, despite - or because of - this open tap approach to boozing.
Mr Banks wants the bars open 24 hours because of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. He's wrong to confuse that with being world-class.
By 3am, most of the youngsters propping up his city's downtown bars, or wandering the streets with a bottle, need a help home, rather than access to more alcohol. I'm confused I'm the one having to remind him of what he's said a thousand times before.
