Invercargill Mayor Persuades ACT MP To Meet Personally And Discuss ILT Proposal
ACT MP Simon Court is making at a trip south to meet Invercargill Mayor Nobby Clark on December 17, after backlash about his proposed private members bill.
Invercargill City councillors also voted yesterday to support the Invercargill Licensing Trust’s concept of continuing with its trading privileges, and oppose the bill.
Mayor Clark told the council meeting yesterday the members bill hadn’t been drawn yet and it could still be a long way off, but wanted to meet Simon to “educate” him on the wider benefits of the trusts in the south.
“It will give him a chance to reflect on some of the health issues that may come from that,” he said, regarding the proposed legislation that if successful would allow alcohol back into supermarkets.
The ACT MP said recently that in West Auckland, as well as Invercargill and Mataura, the licensing trusts that operated liquor stores, taverns and licensed hotels were “outdated,” a nanny state throwback to the 1970s, as well as limited choice and inflated prices.
The Invercargill trust (ILT) was set up in 1944, Mataura in 1955 and the two Auckland-based trusts in the 1970s to control the sale of alcohol in the area, with surplus profits to be reinvested back into the community.
In Invercargill, $9 million in donations/community returns were at risk if the bill to repeal trading privileges was successful. That was just in one financial year.
Other than the late Louis Crimp, an Invercargill businessman who tried and failed in 2002 and 2009, nobody else had tried to stop the trading privileges in the south.
The ACT party also tried to initiate a poll in West Auckland two years ago, and failed when they fell short of the numbers (15%) required to trigger the poll.
Deputy Mayor Tim Campbell moved that the council oppose the bill and it was supported by all of the councillors.
Cr Lesley Soper described it as “ignorantly written” and very Auckland-centric, and expected strong opposition throughout the country.
Cr Grant Dermody said Simon “misses the point entirely” of the community benefit that Southlanders get from the initiative.
One of the well-known projects supported by the ILT was helping kickstart the Zero Fees scheme for tertiary study that later became self-funding.