Acting Premier Troy Grant said in the national media on Monday he will push for country pubs to be able to do over-the-counter alcohol sales after 10pm.

Since former premier Barry O’Farrell’s 2014 lockout laws created a statewide closing time of 10pm for bottle shops, anyone wanting takeaway alcohol sales after 10pm has had to go without.

Mr Grant also admitted it was hard to see where the justification was for the 10pm bottle shop closures in the first place.

Robert ‘Stumpy’ Taylor, from the Dudley Hotel, said it was “about time” the decision was reviewed, calling the statewide closing time a “knee jerk reaction” to a problems facing Sydney areas, not regional communities.

Stumpy has been a long time critic of the 10pm closing time saying it adversely affected Bathurst and other regional and rural areas.

“This is a major gripe for me – we’ve had an alcohol plan in place for years which has been very successful,” he said.

“And they aren’t thinking about regional communities who have a different demographic.”

He described Bathurst a pioneering city when it came to addressing alcohol related problems, evident by the harm minimisation model initiated in Bathurst for the V8 races, which has since been copied by both Newcastle and Sydney.

“It [the review] should have been done years ago,” he said.

“That statewide decision was based on problems occurring in Sydney, hundreds of kilometers away.

“We’ve had alcohol related issues under control in Bathurst for years,”he said.

“It was a knee jerk reaction, and I’m glad it’s being reviewed,”he said.

Scott Macallister, licensee of the Knickerbocker couldn’t agree more.

“The only reason [later] takeaway sales were scrapped was because of issues in one area of Sydney.

“The problems that existed there didn’t happen in Bathurst.”

He said later takeaway sales would be beneficial for events like the Melbourne Cup, V8 races and Christmas, and like Stumpy said the city’s liquor accord meant any potential issues were controlled.

“That’s what the liquor accord is there for; if there are any issues, it addresses them.”