'New Zealand's booze culture” has become one of the year's most repeated slogans. Here's a story from the belly of the beast.

It's going to be a slightly vague story, because I am told that a number of the occurrences in it are actually illegal and I don't want to get anyone into any trouble with The Law (should The Law be bored enough one day to read this column, which seems unlikely). We'll leave that muck-raking journalism side of things to others for whom readership or viewership numbers are more important than actual debate.

So here we go. It was Labour weekend and on the Sunday afternoon I decided to go and hear a local band. They will not be identified for reasons mentioned above. The boys were playing in a small town within an hour's drive of Tauranga at a pub, which will also go unnamed. It seemed like a good way to spend a holiday weekend afternoon.

When we arrived the band was already playing, and sounding pretty good. It was early in the day, not long after lunch, and since the pub served food - largely of the cholesterol-killing deep-fried variety – some people were still eating. It was one of those oldish country pubs that looked like it hadn't changed much since Rob Muldoon's time, big bar, kitchen in the corner, nothing you wouldn't find in a thousand Kiwi towns. But it was a bit quiet.

When there was a break in the music the band seemed perturbed. The boys told me it had been full when they started and then almost everyone had left the room. Since their music was relatively unthreatening this seemed odd.

Then I noticed another room off the bar, right behind the stage where the band were playing. I didn't have time to think much more about it because the stage was now being set up for a prizegiving. Turns out there was a sports tournament happening (I won't mention the sport but it was one of the sensible ones). They loaded prizes on to the stage and then a flood of people – mostly in their 20s, from what I could see - emerged from the back room. The bar was full again and the prizegiving took place with much good humour. I couldn't help but notice that most of the prizes seemed to involve cases of beer.

Then the band went to start again. But it was approached by the tournament boss, who asked if it could wait till the 'recreational activities” had finished. These had been planned well in advance and were obviously viewed as something of a weekend highlight.

So the entire sporting crew headed back into the other room and started the 'recreational activities”. Which were drinking races.

Note, they weren't drinking games, where losers drink and winners drink less. These were good old-fashioned boat races, as they call them: stand in line for a team drinking relay and put your glass on your head when you finish.

This went on for over an hour, as we waited for the band and watched jug after jug carried into the back room.

'I haven't seen this since the 70s,” I heard someone say, and I agreed.

So what do we think? Everyone was having a good time. Everyone was getting pissed as chooks. And this was the organised entertainment for young(ish) guys. But, if it was okay back in the 70s are things really a lot worse now?

New Zealand seems torn between wanting 'nanny state” to stop interfering in everyday life – that was one of the main complaints everyone had before turfing out the last Labour government – and wanting everything, from party pills and alcohol to leaky homes and mine safety, regulated.

Clearly in some cases there are good reasons for regulation, but often there is just confusion. Like the dog laws. Half the population hated the Labour government for its attempts to more tightly control dog owners but every time a dog savages someone another half of the country calls for tighter laws.

Alcohol is the same. We seem caught in an endless see-saw between the ghost of prohibition and a desire for personal freedom. Where do you stand?