On May 10 TVNZ's Sunday programme presented an item on Dunedin's ''booze culture'' (one always says ''booze'' when demonstrating disapproval). In the ODT of May 11, Prof Harlene Hayne, vice-chancellor of the University of Otago, commented on the programme and came to the conclusion that we (i.e. those of us who do research) have the answer, which is to apply the World Health Organisation's 5+ plan - increase price, purchase age, drink-driving measures, decrease availability and marketing.
My difficulty with both programme and comment is that they are superficial, not to say facile, and misleading.
First, the TV programme. Both conception and construction left a lot to be desired.
Its focus on three elements - the Hyde St party, a notorious inner-city ''party flat'' and two complainants - made it clear that little, if any, backgrounding was done.
Commentary was weak and did little more than express wide-eyed wonder at the horrors of excess.
Repeated low-angle camera shots of the Hyde St party, almost the sole take on the ''problems'' of North Dunedin, except for one trashed flat, were hardly representative of anything but the Hyde St party.
There was no intelligent questioning or even attempt at analysis.
Outrage expressed by the complainants was channelled simply into demands for liquor bans and implicit condemnation of authorities for not imposing them.
No-one asked, would they work? Would they be permanent? How would they be policed? Where would the boundaries be? Do the police not have sufficient powers now to deal with public misbehaviour?
The complainant, whose proximity to the inner-city flat makes her life a misery, has a legitimate beef.
However, a liquor ban would hardly affect what goes on inside the building. Perhaps, this is the time to find some means of pressuring the landlord of the flat, who, after all, makes money from his (her) business.
If any other business were to create a public nuisance, laws and regulations would be invoked to mitigate or stop the problem.
The other complainant, as a representative North Dunedin resident, was less credible.
I have lived for 18 years in North Dunedin, surrounded by student flats and with a large student hostel (sorry, college) 200m up the road.
In that time there has been one serious problem; the culprits were not students and were unlikely to have been susceptible to any rule or code, and the landlord eventually managed to move them on.
Aside from that a bit of noise around Orientation Week and after exams, fireworks in November and perhaps half a dozen times I have had to have a word or two. It's always been enough.
The incidents the complainant referred to, though reprehensible, are neither continuous nor typical of the North Dunedin that retains some mixture of inmates; there is no groundswell of discontent.
The post-apocalyptic part of Dunedin is the Castle, Leith and Dundas Sts ghetto, from which all the natives have been driven, and which is the result of years of unplanned expansion of the university.
With a considerable proportion of its 20,000 students crammed into a relatively small area, the pressure-cooker effect is rather obvious and no amount of bleating about ''culture'' is going to address it.
Both the city and educational institutions will need to be much more creative than hitherto.
The vice-chancellor's commentary was disappointing in that she did not address the real issues.
Her reflex resort to a well-publicised socio-medical agenda is quite simplistic.
There is, it seems, a degree of disconnection between the research, which proposes blanket legislation for something that affects the lives of almost the whole population, and specific problems of excess by small minorities.
The proposals offered by the professionals, which will no doubt be good for us all, whether we know it or not, don't amount to prohibition, but they definitely have the odour of it.
And no government, outside of Islamic nations, will fail to sniff it.
Still, a bit less marketing all round might be a very good thing.
