Club drinking ‘is what people want’

Press, 27 March 1980, Page 6

Club drinking ‘is what people want’

Sports clubs were providing the kind of drinking facilities and , background that people wanted to use, more so than some hotels, Mr J. H. Elworthy, chairman of the Parliamentary committee on ancillary liquor licences and related matters, said last evening.

He told a meeting in Christchurch to discuss the committee’s recommendations that Nev/ Zealand’s

licensing laws were messy, and that Parliament should lay down guidelines and leave detailed decisions to the experts, the Liquor Licensing Commission. If the committee’s recommendations were enacted, they would liberalise the laws governing sports clubs and liquor licences. Mr Elworthy said sports clubs had a very important role in educating the public about the use of liquor as an adjunct to social activities. The freeing of liquor laws would mean that clubs would have to discipline themselves and their members. The committee had recommended that Parliament consider lowering the drinking age to 18, he said. It had recommended that 18 and 19-year-olds should be able to

drink on club premises if supervised by a responsible officer of the club. Mr R. Lingard, organiser of the Canterbury Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union, asked Mr Elworthy how big a sports club should be before it employed paid bar staff. Mr Elworthy said that would have to be worked out by the Sporting Clubs Association and the union. Mr Lingard said selling and

dispensing liquor was an important facet of club life, and the people involved in it should be trained and skilled, not just amateurs. The union favoured establishing reasonable, responsible ancilliary licences in sports clubs, but it was concerned that sports clubs become reasonable employers. Mr T. Gault, an executive member of the Sporting Club Association, generally favoured the committee’s recommendations. But he said the association objected to the yearly renewal of licensing fees as recommended by the committee. The graduated scale of fees suggested would act as a disincentive to smaller clubs. The committee has recommended that a club licence for the first year should cost

$l5O, and that for every subsequent renewal the fee be 1.5 per cent of liquor purchases for the club during the previous year, with a maximum of $5OO and a minimum of $3OO.

The sportsmen at the meeting generally favoured the committee’s recommendations.

Further meetings will be held throughout New Zealand by the Sporting Clubs Association.