Concern liquor outlet application not properly publicly notified

JULIA WADE

A debate whether Mangawhai needs another alcohol outlet is on the horizon with a Liquorland outlet looking to ply their trade via a store in Mangawhai Central.

If successful, from the Village to the Heads, Mangawhai will have potentially eight alcohol off-licence retailers from supermarkets to wine specialists and breweries.

Under section 36 of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Regulations 2013, applicants must publicly advertise their intent in newspapers which circulate within ‘the district concerned’, with a repeat publication following five to ten days after the first ad. Publication lists are nominated by secretaries of the licencing committee with Kaipara District Council’s [KDC] comprising of the Northern Advocate, Kaipara Lifestyler, the NZ Herald and Rodney Times. [NB: the Mangawhai Focus may not apply to this list being a bi-monthly publication]

Liquorland applicant Bacchus [Mangawhai] Ltd’s advertisement appeared in the January 26 and February 2, 2023 editions of the Rodney Times and attracted 20 submissions. In a letter to the editor published in the Mangawhai Focus (Feb 27), former police officer for 29 years, Derek Parrott, outlined his concern regarding the selected publication due to the Rodney Times being an out-of-district newspaper and not distributed widely through Mangawhai and how the low-level of notification could affect submission numbers, as well as the correlation between multiple alcohol outlets and community harm.

In respect to Derek’s views, the Focus put the following question to KDC; if Liquorland's application was not advertised in local newspapers, would this not make the notification less notable to people in Mangawhai and therefore less likely to draw submissions/be disputed by the local community who the application/business will affect?

In response, KDCs chief executive and secretary of the Kaipara District Licensing Committee, Jason Marris. says the list of publications provided to applicants meet the requirements of section 36 of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Regulation 2013.

“Publications are not chosen on the basis of content produced by publications, but by the frequency of publication and the publication’s geographical distribution,” he says. “To my knowledge, we have not previously received any feedback on the publications selected, however, we will review the publications list against the legislative requirements for future applications.”

Up-to-date details on the current state of the Liquorland application and submissions are not currently available, however KDC inform the request is moving through the formal process. The matter will eventually be reviewed by Kaipara’s District Licensing Committee who determine applications for liquor licences and managers certificates and will consider evidence and arguments for and against the application at a hearing.

Once decisions on application are made, they can be viewed at kaipara.govt.nz/services/alcohol-licensing/kaipara-district-licensing-committee-dlc/kaipara-dlc-decisions/dlc-hearing-decisions-2023