Ben Sims
speaker
209 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 10 May
Ben Sims’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
That was the Matakana Liquor Centre where he bought the spirits.
And no, he didn't.
But he did look like a young man and an adult, an ordinary adult would have checked his ID.
Towards the end of the evening, when he was in the Matakana Village pub, he was stumbling.
That was clear.
That was observed by the judge who sat on a very lengthy hearing to decide what the penalties would be, the license penalties would be for the businesses involved.
Well, yes, there is some small dispute around this.
But from Silas's parents' point of view, Sarah and Ben, their view, and I share it, is that banks have a social obligation to parents when they provide payment cards to children.
And that social obligation is that they should not be honoring payments in bottle shops and bars and vape stores.
They're known as restricted merchants.
And banks do know who they are.
Their systems do flag them.
Now, the banks say that this would be technically difficult to do.
However, banks are big, sophisticated, incredibly profitable organizations.
None of them have told me this is not possible.
And indeed, other people working in financial services have told me it's eminently possible.
It just takes a bit of investment.
So, yes, possible.
And the frustration of Silas's parents has driven them to take a petition to Parliament and to ask MPs to actually pass laws to force the banks to do this if they won't do it themselves.
Yeah, and Chris Penk is, you know, I mean, he received this in good faith and took it forward and obviously sympathises.
Showing 21–40 of 209 · page 2 of 11
← Previous
Next →