The grandmother on a zimmer frame who fights booze and pokies in her community

Thursday, 2 May 2019

From her hospital bed, a determined grandmother lodged her objection against a license for a local bar. Glenn McCutcheon is part of the 'Unlikely Avengers' - an unusual coalition of activists battling industry and bureaucracy to squeeze out booze and pokies in their communities. Steve Kilgallon reports.

Glenn McCutcheon is a smart, funny grandmother with a pink rinse and a walking frame.

The frame is an unfortunate byproduct of a fall which caused a ruptured blood vessel; her sciatic nerve was accidentally severed during the subsequent surgery, leaving one leg virtually useless. She was told she nearly died.

McCutcheon was in hospital recuperating when the licence renewal came up for Grace's Place, a bar near her home in Mangere East. Bars must renew their licence after 12 months of operation, then every three years after that.

The time limit for public objections to Grace's renewal closed on McCutcheon's 69th birthday. She had family at her bedside when lawyer Grant Hewison - a close colleague in the battle against pokie dens - arrived with the paperwork for her to sign.

She describes Grace's as seedy, dark, dingy, horrible. She went in once, to say that she had. Her feet stuck to the carpet. 'All the pokies were full. They wouldn't have even known if there was a fire. They wouldn't have looked up.'

McCutcheon's neighbours, she says, are heavy drinkers and gamblers. 'It's the money they are wasting that's not going to their kids or their homes. I've been a teacher aide for 22 years and I've had to put shoes on feet, and clothes on backs and breakfasts in mouths.'

McCutcheon was the only public objector - though the council's licensing inspector also objected. The licensing committee heard that the 'dark and dingy' bar made much more from pokie rent than bar sales; the owner admitted she didn't have a till, and just tracked sales in a notebook.

At the hearing, McCutcheon says the licensing cop said he saw her jaw drop when they mentioned the pokie turnover from Grace's. 'I couldn't believe they were taking that much out of the area.'

But it still took over a year of bureaucracy and appeals by the pokie trust, Lion Foundation, for the pub's pokie licence to finally be surrendered and the poker machines to be removed from McCutcheon's community.

McCutcheon, now 70, has objected 18 times in the past four years, firstly against off-licences, then against taverns. She believes there's an over-supply of both in her deprived suburb. At one hearing, the applicant's lawyer turned and said: 'Would I be able to classify you as a serial objector?'. 'Yes,' said McCutcheon, 'and I'm proud of it.'

McCutcheon is a core member of Communities Against Alcohol Harm (CAAH), a small but vocal south Auckland group which mirrors others around the country in taking a co-ordinated approach to fighting against bottlestore and pokie den licences. She also counts among the 'Unlikely Avengers' a loose coalition waging the same fight in a number of different locations.

If a single member of the public objects to the renewal or granting of a licence, it compels a public hearing to be called. The law says objectors have to have a 'greater interest' in the application than the average person on the street and this is usually interpreted as living within a one kilometre radius: which is why Hewison needed McCutcheon's signature.

The rules also allow the licensing committee to virtually disregard an objection if the objector doesn't front to the meeting: penalising those who can't attend, or are afraid to speak publicly.

At first, agrees McCutcheon, it can be intimidating. But after time, she's become used to the process and confident at speaking up. Records of licensing committee decisions suggest some regard CAAH and Hewison as an irritating presence.

INSIDE A HEARING

Their most recent battle against a planned bottle store in Flatbush, east Auckland - which went to a hearing forced by CAAH's graft - reinforced their reputation.

Retired maths teacher and activist Trevor Wilson door-knocked neighbours and tabled over 50 objection letters (half were struck out for being filed late). Hewison persuaded the principals of the local junior and senior schools to appoint him to represent them.

At the last moment, they found the chair of a local community organisation, Shiv Prasad, who lives 140m from the proposed store but didn't know about the plans. Prasad was too late to object, but was allowed to appear as a witness.

Hewison normally works in shorts, a floral shirt and a fedora, befitting the former corporate turned car-boot community lawyer he's become. But on the morning of the hearing, he's in a suit, and he pauses outside the tired weatherboard Clover Park Community House to add a blue tie.

Inside, the panel sit in a meeting room. They are old and white and chaired by an irritable former cop named Gavin Campbell.

When the high school head cites her school counsellor's report in her evidence, Campbell strikes it out, saying he'll only hear it if the counsellor is present.

When Prasad references a report commissioned by the local board on social issues in Flatbush, he does the same. He bars Wilson from speaking as a witness, and only reluctantly allows Hewison to cross-examine the police and licensing inspector.

Hewison does land two blows on the applicant, Jay Bath. Bath denies ever having any licensing or employment issues, until Hewison produces details of a restaurant of Bath's getting a temporary liquor suspension for serving a minor, and an employment case which also went against him. He wants to ask the cop if he considered these when passing Bath as 'suitable' to hold the licence, but Campbell stops him (later, in his written judgement, he calls this line 'drawing a long bow'). Hewison is also prevented from asking about the licensing inspector's view on the bottlestore being directly opposite a kindy. Campbell notes McCutcheon down the back and makes a pointed remark about CAAH.

The two school principals had planned to leave at lunch, but stay on, saying they are horrified at how the hearing is being conducted. They feel personally slighted that by refusing the comment from the counsellor, their integrity has effectively been questioned.

When Prasad talks of possible negative outcomes from the store opening, panel member Gwen Bull says: 'Might, might, might'. Prasad points out he's talking about the future, so can hardly be certain.

Eventually the hearing is adjourned because Campbell tells Hewison he expects he won't be able to give his closing address because so many parts of his evidence have been ruled out. Hewison agrees to submit it in writing.

Afterwards, Hewison seems rattled. 'The question you could ask me is 'why do you bother Grant?'' he says. On the drive home, as he reflects on what's happened and likely avenues of appeal, he comes up with an answer. 'It's the injustice of it all, that's why.'

But weeks later, when the decision is handed down, to Hewison's absolute shock, the licence has been declined.

Campbell's decision notes that community groups - by this, he presumably means CAAH - have been given extended courtesies at many hearings but 'there's a limit to that discretion'. He also disregards the objectors who didn't turn up, saying it's 'likely their objections will have no value'.

But Bath's apparent lack of homework counts against him, with the decision saying the application was poorly researched and paid no attention to the law's demand that they minimise harm to the community. By opening up they would increase liquor stores in the area from one to every 780 people, versus a national average of one to 1100. It's another victory for the unlikely avengers.

'TWO GENERATIONS OF HARM'

The Unlikely Avengers' campaign extended beyond Auckland to the East Coast when Hewison spoke at a problem gambling conference. He told those assembled of his big, bright idea of using the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act - which sets rules around revenue from food and drink as opposed to pokie machines - to oppose licences. Lizz Crawford approached him afterwards, and said: 'I'm in.'

Her Gisborne suburb of Kaiti, she says, is 'a neat place, I love it'. But as a problem gambling worker, she could see the impact booze and pokies had on her neighbours. 'I know the harm that happens to people in those places - I've seen two generations of harm.'

Crawford was a member of a local community action group, Ka Pai Kaiti (she's now the chair), so originally, she and Hewison used them to lodge protests against pubs and liquor outlets.

There were several defeats, but one big victory: the closure of the Kaiti Hotel. The hotel appealed the licensing committee's decision to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority (ARLA) and lost. One reason was the lack of food on offer. The hotel's lawyer argued that there was a good range of food available, because the pub had four frozen pies - in four different flavours. 'It was a classic lawyer thing,' says Hewison, 'watching another lawyer trying to dig themselves out of a hole.'

But then one of Ka Pai Kaiti's hard-won successes - against the opening of a new liquor store in Gisborne CBD - was overturned on appeal. One reason was that ARLA said Ka Pai Kaiti didn't have standing to object, because despite their community work and position on alcohol, they didn't have a greater interest in that particular store and because their office was 2km away across a river, they were too far away.

Then came another blow which has effectively stopped community groups protesting against alcohol. A legal opinion from Buddle Findlay partner Alastair Sheriff, who has long acted for pokie machine trusts and the alcohol industry, argued groups couldn't protest, because the law talked about 'persons' and that meant individuals only. Sheriff has also acted for a business opposing a liquor store.

So only individuals within that 1km radius had the 'greater interest' required to object. In Gisborne, it left Crawford standing alone. 'This whole ruling around individuals doesn't really give the community a voice, and doing it as an individual is a lot of work,' she says. 'When you've a community saying it, it gives it more weight. And it is about community: alcohol can harm communities. So you've got one person up against not only systems and processes, but also all these people working [for the applicants] who are exceptionally skilled at what they do.'

There's also the risk of intimidation. Crawford says she's never faced any direct threats, apart from some online criticism, but does expect some blowback when she lodges a protest against the Gisborne RSA's licence. 'I sometimes think 'oh my goodness, people will get upset about that. But I don't dwell on it.'

Crawford is now running workshops to educate others on how to lodge submissions and give evidence. In Auckland, CAAH is doing something similar. But there's another way around the inconvenience of the Sheriff opinion.

Dave Ratu is a Māori Warden whose warrant covers the entirety of South Auckland. Via the Māori Community Development Act 1962, Ratu does have 'standing' to oppose any liquor licence in his patch.

He's now opposed six (lost all but one, he says proudly). He'll keep fighting, he says, but has also taken another tack: the Waitangi Tribunal.

'After the first time I appeared before a District Licensing Committee and saw how the whole process operates and was geared against the community and in favour of the liquor industry and the applicant, I came out and said 'file a Treaty claim',' he says.

Ratu's argument is that the sale of alcohol disproportionately impacts poorer areas, and thus Māori in particular, and that the law takes no account of that. His aim, he says, is for the process to be forced to take much more account of the community's views and the potential harm on them. 'This isn't an argument or concern that has just come up now - this goes back to the 1800s. What we are arguing now is what my people were arguing way back then, about the harm it is doing. The Crown needs to take meaningful steps to mitigate the harm of alcohol.

'How are they going to respond to that argument? There's the evidence … so I pity the poor Crown lawyer that is going to draw that file, it's a poisoned chalice.'

AN OBSESSION

For Hewison, the fight has become an obsession. He and McCutcheon took a road trip to visit her former daughter-in-law in Shannon, Manawatū, because she mentioned a new bottlestore she didn't want in her community. They asked the local McDonald's for some old cardboard boxes, and made homemade signs so they could protest on the road outside.

Hewison's father Richard lives in the Tauranga retirement hamlet of Omokoroa. When a pub with pokies was proposed there, Hewison swung into action. CAAH submitted a 350-signature petition and there were 108 individual objectors, 19 of whom spoke at the hearing (Omokoroa only has 3000 residents). It was a partial victory: the Locals Bar and Eatery got a licence, but as a restaurant and without a late licence, a TAB or the nine pokies it wanted.

Hewison says: 'Lawyers with a conscience tend not to be very well paid, but that's alright.'

This is a fight that all involved accept will continue for many years. 'You've got to be in it for the long term,' says Crawford, 'and be really passionate about what you're doing, and believe in it. I'm happy to be doing my little bit.'

There is, with the pokies, at least an end game, says Hewison: their eventual eradication.

The nine machines at Grace's are gone forever. McCutcheon says her neighbours now travel to Manukau and Onehunga to gamble. Maybe, says Hewison, there's a chance they are gambling and drinking less, pointing to studies which suggest the more available alcohol and gambling are in a community, the more harm they cause.

In place of Grace is a discount retailer called Coin Save. 'At least,' says McCutcheon, 'people might be buying socks, or books for school, or drink bottles for their kids.'