Drinking Age – Coalition Signing – Drinking Age – Water Quality – Dance Parties – Doctor Censured – West Auckland Murder – Brian Edwards – Special Votes – Editorial Coalition
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DRINKING AGE: Hundreds of drinkers in their 20s are being turned away from pubs and clubs because they do not carry Government-approved photo identification. The problems are spilling over on to city streets and frustrating patrons forced to queue at their regular bars. Patrons as old as 30 have been asked for identification. At the Viaduct Harbour in Auckland at the weekend, a number of bars struggled with the influx of first-time drinkers as queues stretched and tempers shortened.
COALITION – SIGNING: Same place, same purpose,
but a different cast and a very different plot.
Helen
Clark and Jim Anderton yesterday signed their skimpy
coalition agreement, just under three years after Jim Bolger
and Winston Peters initialled their 65-page tome.
After
dickering over possible sites around Parliament, the two
decided to face down history and sign at the same venue as
their ill-fated predecessors - in Parliament's Legislative
Council Chamber, the old Upper House.
DRINKING AGE:
Teenagers could soon be pulling pints and mixing cocktails.
In the past, minors were prohibited from working in
restricted areas, such as public bars and supervised
premises, which is the official status given to most
restaurants, pubs and clubs.
This has been eased under
the amended Sale of Liquor Act to allow under-18s to work in
supervised premises.
WATER QUALITY: Thousands of
schoolchildren and hospital patients risk contracting
diseases from contaminated water.
The Ministry of Health
has put schools and hospitals with their own water supplies
on notice after it found that the standard of their water
had declined since 1997.
DANCE PARTIES: The Ministry of
Health says dance-partygoers taking Ecstasy should drink
600ml of water every hour - and bins should be provided by
party organisers for the disposal of used syringes.
The
ministry has laid down official safety guidelines for dance
parties, which include advice about drugs, but the group
that helped to devise the guidelines says they do not go far
enough.
DOCTOR CENSURED: A respected Kaitaia doctor in
the "twilight of his career" slapped a 12-year-old girl and
pulled her hair while trying to take sand from her eye.
Dr Thomas Young yesterday appeared in front of the
Medical Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal in Whangarei,
where he pleaded guilty to a charge of professional
misconduct.
WEST AUCKLAND MURDER: A piece of skull
peppered with shotgun pellet marks was found in the plumbing
of a murder victim's toilet - the only part of his body
police have recovered.
A jury in the High Court at
Auckland yesterday heard how the dead man, West Auckland
Greek electrician Stavros Stavrianos, was blasted with a
shotgun at point-blank range in the toilet of his Green Bay
home.
BRIAN EDWARDS: Broadcaster Brian Edwards may have
to choose between National Radio's high-rating Top o' the
Morning show and an advisory role in the new Government.
Radio New Zealand chief executive Sharon Crosbie said
last night that she expected to hear Edwards' intentions
when they discussed his annual contract, which expires at
the end of the month.
SPECIAL VOTES: Jeanette Fitzsimons
and Winston Peters should know today or tomorrow whether
they and a handful of followers have jobs in Parliament.
The New Zealand First leader stands a good chance of
holding Tauranga once 3618 special votes are counted. On
election night, he held a 323-vote margin over National's
Katherine O'Regan.
EDITORIAL - COALITION: True to its
word, the next coalition Government has signed an agreement
that could not be more different from the first. In fact, so
little of substance has been settled between Labour and the
Alliance that they may have erred at the other extreme.
National and NZ First tied themselves to so much precise
policy and expenditure that they practically wrote a Budget
for three years. The document issued by Labour and the
Alliance yesterday is devoid even of decisions that will
have to be made for their first Budget.
The first
coalition agreement was the product of weeks of wrangling
between parties that did not really want to be associated.
The second has been wrapped up in a few days by two parties
that campaigned in comparative harmony and appear to be
genuinely well-disposed to each other. The goodwill that is
positively gushing from Jim Anderton these days is probably
more important than any words on paper for the immediate
prospect of stable government. Still, it must be wondered
whether Labour might live to rue an agreement conceived in
haste.