Palmer: public protector or party pooper?

Nobody likes a bad drunk. Drunk people can be smelly, noisy and tend to expel bodily fluids without warning. Get a drunken mob together and you have the potential for danger.

We have a binge-drinking culture in New Zealand. It's not a good thing, no matter how much we laugh it off and boast about how wasted we were last night, how we don't even remember anything and woke up on someone else's front lawn.

Change is needed, but tougher legislation alone is not going to fix the issue. (Although I do agree with a zero-tolerance approach to drink-drivers.) We've got to get it through our thick heads (in our own time) that our drinking habits are unhealthy and a bit pointless. You can't just tell people that they're being very naughty and it has to stop. They'll just laugh you off and order another round.

Having said all that, I don't think the majority of New Zealanders drink to excess every single time we go out. Is there anything wrong with getting a little bit squiffy on an occasional night out? Not blind drunk, just... jolly. Is that so wrong?

Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who headed the Law Commission's review into alcohol in New Zealand, reckons it's got to the point where it should be illegal to be drunk in public.

Palmer says being found drunk in a public place should be an infringement offence, punishable by a fine.

He's open on whether the law would include drunk and disorderly behaviour (which I was pretty sure was already an offence) or only being drunk, and police would have discretion whether to charge someone or not.

Now, first of all, I'd like to hear what Palmer defines as a public place. Is a bar defined as a public place, or a privately owned business? A drunk person can be just as annoying to other patrons inside a pub, after all. But if not, what happens if he or she leaves an establishment and has to walk along the street (in public) to find transport home? Does that mean a crime is being committed?

Secondly, surely if someone is only 'being drunk' and not causing any kind of a scene, there can be no objections to their continued presence in a public place? Palmer says police can use their discretion as to whether or not they charge someone. What if they charge someone with drunkenness and the charge is disputed - are we going to start breath-testing pedestrians to determine whether or not they're allowed to be out?

Banning alcohol and the drinking thereof in central public areas is one thing. But telling people they're not allowed to move from one place to another if they've had one too many - even if they're committing no crime - is completely over the top.

What really gets me is that Palmer calls the amount of police resources used policing our "late night" culture "truly astonishing". But his plan would drastically increase the workload of a police force already spread thin.

What would it achieve? A few problem drunks might be apprehended more quickly, and CBD shopkeepers would probably be very happy if there were fewer suspicious puddles and piles of litter outside their businesses every morning.

But it would also increase the number of average, otherwise law-abiding citizens who have a negative view of police, and who think the 'pigs' are spoiling their (mainly harmless) fun in what looks more than anything like another revenue-gathering exercise.