Gordon McLauchlan: Wowserism raises its ugly head

COMMENT

Occasionally over recent summers I have joined a group of friends in the reserve at Mission Bay for fish and chips or pizzas washed down with wine. Not any more if the Auckland City Council has its way and the creeping bans on drinking alcohol in public continue - and let us remind ourselves that in this country the puritan impulse once released tends to want to strangle us.

And regular swimmers have sometimes held evening barbecues by the Kohimarama changing sheds and enjoyed a convivial glass or two of wine. We may soon be outlaws.

Other friends and I planned a similar gathering on the grass at Kohimarama this past summer but we discovered another friend had bought a house over the road and we joined him on his front lawn until latish in the evening.

I presume this front lawn won't be outlawed by a ban now suggested for the whole of Tamaki Drive.

But, given time ...

A couple from the apartment block I live in used to take what was left of their prandial wine to a seat in the small park opposite and finish it in the restful splendour of summer's orange crepuscular glow. The park is not yet outlawed for public drinking but you can bet a dozen of the best cabernet sauvignon that it soon will be because it abuts the CBD and every time I see a list of places in which it is proposed to ban drinking it is longer than previously.

I'm not going to take to the streets in protest at the council's desire to curb my freedom to drink responsibly in public - even though I suspect the edict springs from the heart of a bunch of wowsers who will rejoice in any perceived success and want more curbs.

I've often enough railed at the stupidity of people who make grand gestures at small issues. I used to say to my kids when they were young and still took any notice of me that they would be wrong if they expected me to join them at the barricades against trivial injunctions by their school about what they could wear and say in the school grounds.

When I was at school we were punished if we didn't wear our caps on our way to or from school. I can remember questioning the school's right to impose its will on me outside its gates. My father listened for a while and then said if I thought that was worth fighting for to count him out, but to keep in touch on any real injustices.

But the Auckland City Council law and order chairwoman, Noelene Raffills, seems to be pulling at the bit. She said 32 requests for liquor bans received by the council indicated strong support for prohibiting alcohol. "What this shows," she said, "is that alcohol in public places and the abuse of it is a significant safety issue for many people."

Of course it shows no such thing, and when I asked her what solid evidence she had that would convince me that alcohol in public places was a significant safety issue, she hummed and hawed and offered only two things: that the police had direly warned the council that alcohol would be a growing and dangerous cause of social unrest in the future; and that the ban on booze in the CBD had been an amazing success.

The police, she said, have the difficulty at the moment that they can't move until fighting starts. I said the same constraints apply to almost every situation - road rage and arguing neighbours, for example.

One can accept the need to ban drinking on the beach at, say, Whangamata on, say, New Year's Eve because of the history of that time at that place, and no one in their right minds would be there for a quiet civilised drink. But blanket bans of the sort the council is contemplating are insulting to adults.

Then Noelene R said the plan at present was for public drinking bans to start at 9 or 10 at night. Well, who is causing a significant danger on the length of Tamaki Drive at midnight from boozing there?

The long, sad puritan tradition of this country ensures that wowserism will from time to time raise its ugly head and smack its thin lips in disgust at any sign of public rowdy or ribald behaviour; and that same tradition suggests that these broad legislative prohibitions have never, but never, had the effect so desired by the shrivelled and fearful people so keen to impose them.

Shrivelled and fearful? Yes. For example, in that park opposite my place homeless bums camp from time to time and clutter the place up a bit.

They are dirty and not respectful of genteel ears when it comes to language. They take no notice of anyone who lets them be, yet some people are afraid of them. I suspect it's more the dirt than the dirty words.

However, what alarms me most is that Noelene R - who says she drinks and it would be unfair to call her a wowser has so little information at her fingertips. I would have thought this issue had been vigorously debated in the council, or at least in the law and order committee, with facts and expert opinion heaped on more facts and expert opinion; that she had led the case for the bans against the opponents and would, therefore, have been able to give me a solid case.

Nothing doing. Maybe there was no debate and these councillors are really as dumb as they seem and the turning-up money they earn is, indeed, just for turning up.