A legal product that required a legal war to sell
When Wellington’s District Licensing Committee reported its 2023-2024 numbers, the absurdity was right there in black and white. Fifty new on-licence applications granted. Zero refused. Of 161 renewals, zero refused. Of 682 manager’s certificates, two refused. The licensing system was not catching bad operators. It was taxing good ones with hearings, legal fees, and months of dead time before rubber-stamping them through anyway.
The bill Associate Justice Minister Nicole McKee introduced in March finally concedes the point. The Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill restricts objections to local community members, gives applicants a written right of reply, and stops councils from using Local Alcohol Policies to kill existing compliant businesses on renewal. McKee called the current law “increasingly complex, bureaucratic, and disconnected from the harms it is supposed to address.”
That is a polite way of saying the 2023 amendments broke the system.
How Labour’s 2023 law handed anyone a veto
The Community Participation Amendment Act, passed under Labour, made four changes that combined into a procedural weapon. It allowed anyone in New Zealand to object to any licence application, regardless of whether they lived anywhere near the premises. It removed the ability to cross-examine objectors. It extended objection windows from 15 to 25 working days, giving organised campaigns more runway. And it created a trap for renewals, allowing councils to retrospectively refuse licences that were inconsistent with a newly adopted Local Alcohol Policy.
The result was predictable. Operators who had traded lawfully for years suddenly found themselves fighting procedural guerrilla warfare against objectors with no skin in the game.
Empty bars and abandoned investment
The Springs Tavern in Auckland’s Onehunga filed its licence application in August 2023 and received 114 community objections, despite the council inspector, medical officer of health, and police all reporting without opposition. The venue’s courtyard sat empty while directors waited for an appeal outcome. Ryan Dill-Russell of The Gaff described the objection content as farcical, with complaints about “branded umbrellas and colourful cocktail menus appealing to kids.” Some operators reported waiting up to eight months for licences.
In Gisborne, bar owner Ben McCann spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating Anjuna Beer Garden before discovering his approved licence had been appealed by a school 30 metres away. Nobody told him. He only found out months later when he requested a copy of his own licence. After continuous hearing delays and thousands in legal fees, McCann withdrew his application entirely in June 2024. That is not regulation. That is a business killed by process.
The fix is welcome but not finished
The industry response has been cautiously positive. NZ Winegrowers CEO Philip Gregan called the restriction to local objectors “a sensible change that ensures that a business is not unfairly burdened by objections from those without genuine local knowledge or interest.” Hospitality New Zealand CEO Kristy Phillips acknowledged the bill addresses “vexatious objections from outside the applicant’s territorial authority” but flagged that operators still face too much uncertainty on renewals.
The sharpest diagnosis came from Spirits New Zealand CEO Robert Brewer, who described the DLC sections of the Act as “virtually broken.” His critique goes deeper than objection rules. Dozens of DLCs applying the same law inconsistently across the country means operators cannot rely on a level playing field. Brewer wants fewer DLCs and legislated criteria defining what a good licensed operation looks like.
The Ministry for Regulation’s own data backs the complaint. Liquor licensing and events accounted for 10% of all red tape submissions in the January-March 2025 quarter, making it the sixth most complained-about regulatory category in the country.
A correction, not a rebuild
Regulation Minister David Seymour framed the bill in economic terms, noting the hospitality sector “supports tens of thousands of jobs and contributes billions of dollars to our economy.” A leaked Cabinet paper revealed ministers considered tougher off-licence restrictions before opting for the deregulatory path.
The bill fixes the worst excesses of the 2023 amendment. It stops nationwide objection campaigns, gives applicants basic procedural fairness, and protects existing businesses from retrospective policy changes. What it does not do is address the structural inconsistency Brewer identified. A bar owner in Wellington still faces a fundamentally different process than one in Queenstown or Gisborne, and the bill leaves that fragmentation intact. For hospitality operators who have spent years fighting a system designed to approve them slowly, this is a necessary step. It is not the last one.
Sources
- Newsroom: Bars sit empty as law change enables liquor licence naysayers (2025-03-21)
- RNZ: Liquor licence hurdles halt Gisborne bar plans (2024-07-10)
- Scoop: Bill Introduced To Cut Red Tape And Modernise Alcohol Law (2026-03-16)
- Hospitality NZ: New Sale And Supply Of Alcohol Amendment Bill Supports Commonsense Changes (2026-03-16)
- NZ Winegrowers: Sale And Supply Of Alcohol Act Amendments Take A Sensible Approach (2026-03-16)
- Spirits NZ: Welcomes Changes To Alcohol Rules (2026-03-16)
- Ministry for Regulation: Red Tape Submissions Quarterly Report Q3 2024/25 (2025)
- The Spinoff: Government ditches tougher alcohol rules in favour of red-tape cuts (2025-08-29)