Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2)

I move, That the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) be now read a second time. The bill has been reported back from the Commerce Committee. I would like to thank the members of the select committee for the work they have done on this bill. In most respects the bill is identical to the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 3) that was introduced in 1999. While the original bill proposed a complete deregulation of licensing trusts, removing all monopoly trading rights, this bill takes a different approach. It allows, but does not require, licensing trusts to reconstitute as community trusts. The Government’s approach recognises that some communities may want to retain their existing licensing trust arrangements until a majority of the trust’s electors vote in favour of competition.

The main purpose of this bill is to provide licensing trusts with the option of reconstituting as community trusts. It gives community trusts freedom to operate in industries other than the hospitality industry, while ensuring that their activities remain accountable and transparent. Community trusts have a broader community focus and, unlike licensing trusts, their activities need not require them to be engaged in the sale of liquor. The members and electors of each licensing trust will determine whether the trust becomes a community trust. The process can be initiated by a resolution of the trust’s existing members. Electors will also have the option of calling for a poll on the issue, as well. The residents of the former licensing trust district will elect the members of the community trust. Elections will be held at the same time as the triennial general elections for other local authorities.

The bill also contains provisions that are designed to improve the financial performance and accountability of all licensing trusts. Those provisions will apply irrespective of whether or not a trust restructures itself as a community trust. Local licensing trusts will be able to carry out business outside their area without the need to first hold an expansion poll. All licensing trusts will be required to disclose in their annual accounts the remuneration paid to employees and senior managers. Licensing trusts will be required to hold annual meetings to account to electors for the effectiveness of their performance.

There have been some amendments to the bill through the select committee process. After considering submissions on the frequency of elector polls, the committee has recommended that it would be fairer for the polls to be held less frequently. The committee has changed the bill to ensure that an elector-requisitioned poll cannot be held within 3 years of an earlier poll. That is consistent with the regime in the Act that governs competition polls. The change does not in any way limit the ability of licensing trusts members to initiate a reconstitution of the board by resolution on an annual basis. Electors will continue to have the right to call for a poll whenever the members pass a resolution in favour of reconstitution.

The committee also recommended the addition of a provision to clarify that a licensing trust would lose its exclusive trading rights upon its reconstitution as a community trust. It would be unfair for a community trust to hold a monopoly right within its district, while being able to trade freely outside that district. The committee has therefore amended the bill to clarify that monopoly rights do not transfer to the new community trust. In response to a submission from the Auditor-General, the committee has also amended the financial reporting provisions for licensing and community trusts. That change will improve the accountability of licensing and community trusts, by requiring their financial statements to comply with generally accepted accounting practice.

Part 2 makes a number of changes to the principal Act that are not related to licensing or community trusts. The bill incorporates amendments to the conditions applying to off-licences, so that wineries can sell their own wine on Easter Sunday if they either grow the fruit or grapes on site, or make the wine on site. The intent of this aspect of the bill is to reintroduce an earlier provision of the principal Act that allowed wineries to sell some of their own wines on any Sunday, including Easter Sunday. Wineries will have to hold an appropriate off-licence to take advantage of that provision.

Submissions to the select committee proposed that the bill be changed to allow wineries to sell the full range of wine produced under their labels, regardless of where it is made or grown. However, the committee considered that if that were permitted, wineries would have a new, broader right than they had previously enjoyed. The purpose of the provision is to aid local tourism, and the committee considered that an extension of the nature proposed in submissions may erode the restrictions Parliament approved when it considered off-licence sales in 1999. The committee has therefore made no change to that aspect of the bill.

The bill contains an important amendment to the principal Act to provide a legislative basis for controlled purchase operations. The amendment will ensure that the police can continue with those effective enforcement operations. The police, district licensing inspectors, and public health officials currently join forces to conduct enforcement operations to test whether bottle stores and other liquor outlets are complying with the Act. Those operations catch liquor outlets that break the law by selling alcohol to young people under the age of 18. Under-age volunteers go into licensed premises at the request of the police, and attempt to purchase alcohol. Under-age volunteers are fully briefed by the police beforehand, and only take part in the operations with the agreement of their parents or guardians.

Controlled purchase operations have been conducted fairly widely throughout the country for the last 3 years. They are a highly effective method of assessing compliance with the Act. The police also obtain evidence from them for prosecutions and other enforcement actions. However, a recent District Court decision has raised a concern that the young people who assist the police with these enforcement operations may be inadvertently breaking the law by purchasing alcohol. To address that concern the bill amends the Act to specifically provide that under-age volunteers who purchase alcohol at the request of a police officer during an enforcement operation do not commit an offence under the Act.

The bill also contains an important technical amendment to provide for the staggered introduction of the requirement for a general manager of licensed premises to hold a prescribed qualification. The amendment is needed in order to provide for a transitional period during which general managers can obtain the qualifications they will need to comply with the general manager requirements introduced by the Sale of Liquor Amendment Act 1999. Submissions to the select committee generally indicated strong industry support for managers to be qualified. Concern was expressed in a few submissions over the content of the prescribed qualification, and the possible consequences of the changes for existing trainers and their training programmes. The qualification itself is to be prescribed in regulation, and is not a matter that is dealt with in this bill.

The Hospitality Standards Institute, which is the industry training organisation for the hospitality industry, developed the Liquor Controller Qualification in 2000. I understand that the Hospitality Standards Institute consulted widely when it formulated the units that currently make up the Liquor Controller Qualification. The qualification is registered with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and is now widely recognised across the industry. However, the Hospitality Standards Institute, in its submission to the committee, proposes a review of the prescribed qualification, to ensure that it is still fit for its purpose. In view of the time-lapse since the development of the qualification, further consultation concerning its content should take place in the course of developing the regulations prescribing the qualification. Consultation over the content of the regulations will allow the concerns raised with the select committee over aspects of the content of the qualification, the status of existing trainers, and their training programmes to be considered.

Finally, I understand that the committee also received a number of submissions on the restrictions that prevent supermarkets and grocery stores from selling Asian cooking wine and other food condiments containing alcohol. Asian cooking wines are prepared for culinary purposes and have been rendered unsuitable for drinking, normally by the addition of salt. At present there is uncertainty as to whether supermarkets and grocery stores may sell Asian cooking wines and other food condiments containing alcohol. Although the committee was not in a position to address that issue, I signal my intention to put forward a Supplementary Order Paper during the Committee of the whole House that will allow supermarkets and grocery stores to sell those products under an off-licence.

I commend this bill to the House.

This is not a complex bill; it essentially falls into four parts. But I have to foreshadow that there is devil in the detail, and it is somewhat unfortunate that the bill is constructed in the way it is. I am one of those members who sat on the Commerce Committee and foreshadowed our concern as noted in the commentary.

The first part retains the existing monopoly rights of licensing trusts, and makes minor changes to the powers of district-licensing agencies. I do not particularly have a problem with that component of the bill, and will not be revisiting it. The second part permits wineries to sell their own wine on Easter Sunday. I strongly support that component of the legislation, and will come back to that throughout the course of this debate. The third part provides exemptions for under-18-year-olds, to assist police during controlled-purchase operations by ensuring that they do not commit an offence. That aspect of the bill does trouble me, and I will argue against it. The fourth part establishes in statute that general managers must hold prescribed qualifications. On the surface that appears reasonable, but I have some reservations that I will also address during the Committee stage of this debate.

Clause 14 deals with Easter Sunday selling of wine. As I have foreshadowed, I strongly support that. Essentially, as the Associate Minister of Justice pointed out, it will enable wineries to trade on Easter Sunday if they choose. As members can imagine, it is strongly supported by winemakers across the country. The clause essentially reinstates a provision that was operating prior to the passage of the sale of liquor reforms of 1999. It was eliminated by a drafting mistake, and this bill simply attempts to correct that error. Before 1999, Easter Sunday trading by wineries operated without public outcry; in fact, the contra-position really did prevail, as can be witnessed by the huge number of people who visited our wineries.

Probably the most compelling reason why this part of the bill needs to be supported is that it facilitates tourism. This Easter many Kiwis will visit some of our most productive wine regions: Central Otago, Hawke’s Bay, Gisborne, Nelson, North Canterbury, and. in case the good folk of mid and central Canterbury are listening, those two areas are budding wine areas as well. Imagine going to a region over Easter and not being able to visit one of our world-class wineries! It would take the shine off the visit entirely. I see Mr Speaker is nodding, and I am sure he and I agree very strongly on this issue. If this aspect of the bill is not supported, then there will be 2 days over the Easter period when tourists will not be able to visit a winery, and I believe that will have a negative impact on tourism. Tourists will simply go elsewhere, and that, I believe, will be a tragedy. The impact on local tourism, as I have foreshadowed, will be significant. Tourists will become frustrated with our wineries and their owners. Tourists will not understand the machinations of our legislators. They will simply talk the industry down and, by implication, will talk the New Zealand tourism industry down.

Clauses 25 and 26 are drafted to allow under-18-year-olds to purchase liquor on licensed premises at the request of the police—that is, during controlled-purchase operations. I am a very strong supporter of the police, but on this issue I draw the line. It is nothing less, in my view, than entrapment. If under-age drinking is a problem, then let us fix that issue. If we have to reinstate a drinking age of 20, then let us do that, but let us not turn hitherto law-abiding citizens into lawbreakers by simply entrapping them. That, in my view, is neither fair nor reasonable.

Some submitters to the select committee argued—and, I have to say, very reasonably, articulately, and intelligently—that the damage from alcohol-related problems is immense, and I believe them. I have seen it with my own eyes. But sending in children to trap people into selling them some grog—people who otherwise are extremely busy and law-abiding citizens—is simply not on. Sure, some people will sell anything to anybody, but the majority of our people in this country who work in this industry are responsible. Let us not punish the 99 percent of people who do a good job and try their utmost to uphold the laws of this land. A 17-year-old female who has gone the whole 9 yards in terms of putting on make-up and dressing to look older than she is—who is dressed to kill—could look anywhere between 20 and 30 years of age, and I for one would not want to try to pick that person’s age. Such operations are simply not the answer. An owner may be vigilant, and I am sure most owners are, but they cannot be everywhere. I know a number of publicans. Ashley Johnston in Rakaia is one publican I know who drums into his employees that they must be careful. But mistakes will be made, and it is unreasonable that publicans then get belted up, regardless of their efforts to ensure that those mistakes do not occur.

If we are really serious about this issue, let us make proof of identity and age compulsory for everyone who is involved in alcohol purchase. Let us put the emphasis on the buyer, and not just on the seller. Throughout the course of this debate I will be moving amendments to delete clauses 25 and 26.

Clause 21 substitutes a new section 117A of the Sale of Liquor Act that requires general managers to hold a prescribed qualification. A number of submitters thought that was necessary, but an even larger number thought it was overly bureaucratic, unnecessary, and extremely expensive. I am somewhat persuaded by the latter group. I will deal with it in more detail in the Committee stage; suffice it to say that I think the third unit that is being prescribed is big on theory and does not do much for common sense and good old-fashioned management in this industry. Experience and common sense count for a lot in my book, and I cannot help but think that this matter is just another example of legislation and qualifications for the sake of them. No wonder compliance is eroding the very soul of our commercial workforce!

Through the course of this debate I will canvass a number of issues that I strongly support and some I simply cannot. As we go into the Committee stage I will be looking to the Minister in the chair to listen to my concerns and try to accommodate me so that I can vote for this legislation, but as it is drafted at the moment I simply cannot.

I shall make a brief contribution on this bill. As always, the quicker we get this bill through the House, the better it will be for the people involved in the sale of liquor in our country. The bill will provide more certainty for many of those within the sector. As has been stated, the main purpose is to provide licensing trusts with the option of reconstituting themselves as community trusts, if they so wish.

I shall comment very briefly on Mr Connell’s comments about identification for people wanting to purchase alcohol. If I were on the other side of the counter and unsure of somebody’s age—and I agree that sometimes it is very hard to tell exactly how old people are—my policy would be: “No ID, no alcohol.” It is as simple as that.

As I said at the beginning, let us get on and get this bill passed so that we can provide some certainty for those who are involved in the sale of liquor.

I would like to deal with two main aspects of the bill: first, providing existing licensing trusts with the option to reconstitute themselves as community trusts; and, secondly, the amendments to the conditions applying to off-licences so that wineries can sell their own wines on Easter Sunday.

Let us look at the first provision, which gives licensing trusts the option to reconstitute themselves. Licensing trusts set up under earlier Acts of Parliament have continued to go before the electorate to find out whether people wanted them to continue as licensing trusts. Some licensing trusts have reached a point whereby they want to change their trading aspects and reconstitute themselves as community trusts. A community trust has a much wider means of trading and also has the ability to trade outside its limited area.

Unfortunately, an anomaly exists in this part of the bill. The principal Act, the Sale of Liquor Act, has a list of existing licensing trusts in its third schedule. That list will have to be amended once a licensing trust on that list reconstitutes itself as a community trust, and that is one area we will concentrate on during the Committee stage.

Let us now look at the amendments to the ability of wineries to trade on Easter Sunday. The bill simply reconstitutes a situation that existed prior to an amendment in 1999 that, for some reason, suddenly dropped the ability of wineries to sell alcohol on Easter Sunday. That is a sad situation because, as a previous speaker mentioned, wineries are a huge attraction for tourists in this country. At this time of the year there are a lot of tourists, and particularly over Easter local people will also travel—effectively becoming tourists in different areas. They will want to try the different wares of the wineries. Unfortunately, under the current Act, wineries are precluded from selling wine on both Good Friday and Easter Sunday, which means that tourists in this country do not have an opportunity to try the very, very fine award-winning wines of many of those wineries. The restriction put on by the Commerce Committee is that wineries must sell their own wines. That includes wines made from grapes grown on their properties but sent out for processing and brought back to the wineries. Those wines will be OK. We will explore that area further in the next stage of the bill.

Another area I would like to look at quickly is the matter of young people being sent into pubs to try to trap publicans into selling them wine when they are under age. I must admit that that is straight-out entrapment. Unfortunately, this bill has missed a golden opportunity to rectify a major problem in this country. We should have taken the opportunity in this bill to raise the drinking age and restore it back to 20. That would raise the age of young people found drinking on the streets. It is a shame that 12 and 13-year-olds are out on the streets drunk, and it is a pity that this bill will not in any way rectify that situation.

I agree with the amendment on the Supplementary Order Paper with regard to food condiments that contain liquor. It is an anomaly, and the practice has grown. I warn that many so-called food condiments, particularly those used by Chinese restaurants, are purely wines. They do not necessarily contain salt additives, as the Minister suggested. We need to ask the Minister to have the labelling of some of those condiments checked, because it is an area where there could be a major problem.

I have an amendment with regard to the reconstitution of licensed trusts. The bill contains a provision that when licensing trusts reconstitute themselves as community trusts, they must notify the public. Notification is important, because it signals a complete change of a trust’s structure. The amendment I have tabled reduces the percentage of electors requesting a poll from 15 percent to 7.5 percent. New Zealand First feels that it should be made easier to hold a poll, because 15 percent is quite a large number of local people to get a poll running and 7.5 percent would make it easier. We feel that 7.5 percent is the figure that should be substituted in the bill. I will raise that matter again during the Committee stage.

In summary, the provisions in this bill that enable licensed trusts to reconstitute themselves are sound, but we should be aware of the need to have the percentage required to hold a poll lowered. In respect of the ability of wineries to be able to sell wine on Easter Sunday, the bill corrects an anomaly that should not have occurred in the first place. Finally, we do not think the situation is satisfactory whereby children under the age of 18 are sent into pubs by the police to entrap those selling liquor.

The ACT party rises to oppose this legislation, and asks the House some basic questions about its attitude towards liquor licensing, the consumption of liquor, and the sale of liquor. Would we not have thought, in this day and age, that we in this House would well understand the dangers of a monopoly? Why is it that we are entrenching in this bill monopoly licensing trusts for the sale of liquor in New Zealand? Is it not time we recognised that monopolies are bad? They do not look after the customers or the community, and they do not provide a good service. Why do we carry on with the myth that a licensing trust, elected and with a monopoly, somehow protects people from the debilitating effects of excessive alcohol consumption? Are we in this House going along with the pretence that by having a licensing trust, and a monopoly, we are dealing with a serious problem? I do not think that any member in this House who votes for this bill believes that monopoly licensing trusts are the answer to any problem. In fact, I would be very interested to hear a member in this House stand up and say that a monopoly and a licensing trust fixes the problem of X—and I would like to know what X is. How is it that in some areas we can get away without having a monopoly, but in other areas we have to have them? Of course, it is just raw politics, pure and simple—no principle, no philosophy, and to hell with the consequences and effects of not doing the right thing.

There is another problem this bill alludes to: our crazy rules and, I say again, our attitude towards the purchase and consumption of alcohol—as if banning the sale of wine or allowing the sale of wine from wine shops at Easter will solve any problem, real or imagined. What is going on in our parliamentary colleagues’ minds if they think that, hitherto, not allowing wineries to sell wine on Easter Sunday has served a good purpose? We commend the move to allow that sale, because at the end of the day it is up to the person who is buying the wine to make the decision to buy it and the person selling the wine to sell it. But does this exemption not underscore a problem we have with the minutiae and the detail we get into when we start looking at—the phrase of the bill—the sale of liquor.

Here is another problem. How smart is it to prevent Chinese supermarkets from selling cooking wine, and to have the time of the House taken up with the subject of whether a Chinese supermarket or a minimart can sell cooking wine? I look across at the Labour Party and ask its members whether they think a good purpose is served by preventing Chinese minimarts from selling cooking wine? Not one person’s hand has gone up. Then we have those members saying: “Oh, it’s technically very hard to define what is cooking wine and what is not cooking wine.”, but is that not the problem?

Here we are in Parliament trying to divine these minute rules. What problem is our sale of liquor law trying to address? I listened to the Hon Rick Barker when he introduced the bill. He told me what the bill was about, and I appreciated that. He said there were some moves forward, and I appreciate those. But I did not hear once from him an explanation of what the amendments to the Sale of Liquor Act are to do and how successful they will be—not one. So what we have is a crazy set of rules that has grown like Topsy, and there is no inspection by this Minister or this Government of its underlying rationale.

Can we not trust people with some freedom? Can we not trust people with some responsibility? Can we not let the Chinese supermarket sell Chinese cooking wine? I have not seen the boy racers, who so exercise the minds of members of this House, out there sucking on cooking wine before going off on a drag race.

💬 John Carter: They’re pretty oily.

Well, I do not know about that member’s electorate, but that is not so in my observation. Again, what is the problem we are attempting to address?

Let me go to another concern—[Interruption] It is always good to have Jill Pettis interject on a speech, because whenever she gets up to speak we discover she has nothing to say. But when anyone else in this House gets up to speak we discover she has a lot to say. So I suggest to that member, Jill Pettis, that she do her work, stand up, and give a speech on the bill rather than sit on the side and interject.

There is concern over the prescribed qualifications for general managers. What a lot of nonsense that is! It means more costs, more requirements, and more bureaucracy, and the Minister never got up in this House to explain the problem he is attempting to address. It is just more expense. Here we have a Minister who is led by the nose by his officials to come up with more rules and more regulations.

Do members know what we heard at the Commerce Committee? We heard the view that those regulations and requirements were put to this Parliament to favour one group of trainers over everyone else. I go back to the point, made right at the start, that that is to retain the monopoly. So why has this Minister allowed himself and this House to be used by a legislative process to give advantage to some trainers and to disadvantage others. Listen to this—this is unbelievable. I am reading from the commentary on the bill: “Concern that existing trainers and training programmes could be penalised by requirements that trainers be NZQA accredited will also be considered in the course of developing the regulations.”

When that work has not been done, does that not tell us this bill is wrong? Yet we are to take the Government on its word that, yes, it will do this and, yes, they will take on board those concerns. The ACT party is against this bill and will be putting forward some amendments to help this Parliament and to help New Zealand fix it.

The Green Party is supporting the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2). Despite some of the comments made by members in this House, we think it is a relatively non-controversial and straightforward bill that simply tidies up a number of regulations in bits of legislation around liquor sales that are well due to be tidied up.

There is a saying about people who swallow camels and strain at gnats. Sometimes I think that is what happens in this House. I have seen some quite draconian pieces of legislation pass through this House unremarked upon by most parties, but a piece of legislation like this seems to occupy a lot of members’ time, attention, and concern. So I was quite curious.

Before I get to the specific clauses, I would like to address some of the comments made by the previous speaker, Mr Hide. He told us that ACT would oppose the bill, and he complained about a whole lot of different things—things that the bill is exactly intended to fix up. So it is quite curious to hear him say he that would vote against the bill, and then moan about the things the bill is actually intended to remedy.

It was also curious to hear him talk about the interjections made by Jill Pettis. I did not hear any interjections from Jill Pettis. I think the House has been remarkably quiet today, but, of course, Mr Hide is the king of interjections. It was curious to hear him complaining about interjections, and spending a lot of time talking about Jill Pettis and her contribution. That clearly indicated that he did not have a lot to say about the bill itself.

I move on now to the bill, which does a number of things. It retains the existing monopoly and privileges of licensing trusts, and Mr Hide talked about that. The Green Party supports those aspects of the bill. Mr Hide said that, in his opinion, those licensing trusts offered nothing to the community. He said they did no good service and were a hindrance to the community. But the issue is that the community chooses to have them, and communities have the right to vote these things out. Some communities choose to do that and some do not. The issue is really about community decision-making when it comes to licensing trusts. That is what the Greens support, and that is what this bill will continue to maintain in place—as opposed to corporate decision-making, which is what the ACT party stands for.

💬 Clayton Cosgrove: They’re mates.

That is quite right. One of the things the bill does is tidy up an inadvertent change made under the previous legislation that stopped wineries selling their own wine on Easter Sunday. Brent Catchpole talked about that, and we agree with his position on it. I have to say that the Green Party is usually opposed to extending the commercialisation of our public holidays. We think it is important that people have shopping-free days to spend time with their families and communities, rather than simply—

💬 Rodney Hide: What about marijuana-free days?

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Mr Hide knows he should not interject against the member in front of him.

I do not know if Mr Hide wants to smoke marijuana, but that is his business and not anyone else’s.

Usually, the Greens are opposed to the commercialisation of these things. We think it is important to maintain shopping-free days, because they are actually about enhancing relationships in the community. But this particular clause is just fixing up an inadvertent change that happened when the previous bill was passed, so of course we will support that. If there is a case for shopping to happen on Easter Sunday, I think that a vineyard is most likely to make that case.

One of the areas of concern—and the Green Party considered this a lot—is the issue around controlled purchase operations. This basically provides an exemption so that the police can conduct sting operations for alcohol, as they do for tobacco. There are concerns about the use of entrapment, and there are a number of areas in the law where entrapment is used. It is quite a serious civil rights concern, but we do not think it is a concern in this particular example. We think the benefits outweigh the costs in this regard.

The reason we took that position is that when this Parliament voted to lower the drinking age to 18—something I personally supported, although I was not a member of Parliament at the time—the key thing was that that change should have been accompanied by strict measures to ensure that the age limit was actually adhered to. That can be done in two ways. One is to have good messages out in the community, education about what is moderate use, and re-enforcement of the idea that there is an age limit, which is 18. But we have to police that age limit as well. When that legislation went through Parliament, we saw the introduction of drinking-age ID. At the time, I was concerned about that, because we very quickly see how those kinds of things can become a de facto general ID that people are required to carry with them at all times.

It is a curious thing, but it seems that in this country we now need to carry ID for just about everything except buying alcohol. Those ID cards are being used for all kinds of purposes, but because there is no policing of the sale of liquor to under-age people, they become essentially meaningless in that area. So we think it is important to allow the police to check that people who are selling alcohol from licensed premises are actually adhering to the law and to their obligations—both legislative and ethical—to ensure that they are not selling to under-age people.

The other point I will touch on quickly is the issue of district licensing agencies. Again, this is just about fixing some rigidities that exist in the current legislation, so we think that is a good thing. This bill does not address a number of other issues where some of the provisions need to be extended, and things like that. We think that some of those questions are more properly placed in a different bill, but in terms of what this bill is trying to achieve, we think it does the job.

The last thing I will touch on is the issue of rice wine—the Chinese culinary cooking wine—that Mr Hide again made quite a lot of. He criticised this bill because it did not address that question. Mr Hide will know, if he bothers to look on the Table, that a Supplementary Order Paper has been tabled by Mr Barker for consideration in the Committee, and that it specifically addresses that question. So it is rather disingenuous for Mr Hide to complain that the bill does not address the question when he knows that Supplementary Order Paper 198 is on the Table to do that very thing. I leave it to members of the House, and to people listening to this debate, to form their own views as to the integrity of those comments.

Basically, United Future is pleased with most aspects of this bill. We had a major concern in the early stages of the drafting of the legislation when the Liquor Licensing Authority had the ability to review the hours that each of the clubs might operate in when it reissued licences. We could see that it would be a real burden for clubs, but I am glad to see that that provision has been removed.

I was fascinated by Rodney Hide’s speech about how bad monopolies are, yet communities themselves are not monopolies. A community can choose how it will operate under this legislation. Therefore, if a community wants to have a community trust, it is free to do so. I found that very interesting, because sometimes viewpoints can be very narrow. If only those who owned businesses had rights to do everything, all the time, and anywhere, I do not think that would be a good society.

Coming back to this bill, I personally do not have a problem with the selling of wine from wineries on Easter Sunday, yet I do not support open Sunday trading, because I think that there are days in a year that need to be special—days that one needs to be able to put aside and take rest. I remember speaking on different legislation, where I likened a year without any special days to a city without a park. Only the other day I wandered up the top of the hill to the rose gardens, and I saw people in the midst of a very busy city, Wellington, just taking time to sit in a park where there was no commercial activity, and they were indeed smelling the roses. I think we would be unwise to allow business to become such a focus in our calendar year that people had to go through the whole 365 days without any days that were different.

We are also putting an amendment in the name of the Hon Peter Dunne to clause 14 of the bill that tidies up section 37(2) of the Sale of Liquor Act with what we believe is just another common-sense approach. I would encourage members who have perhaps not read that amendment to get one from the Table before we go into the Committee stage. Once again, I think it makes sense, and I like legislation that makes sense. I think it is unfair on wineries if they are not able to sell their wine on a day when they are open and having people come through, while other similar facilities are already operating on that day.

I pick up on Brian Connell’s point with regard to underage drinkers. I personally support the drinking age being raised again, but when we have a law, I think we have a responsibility to make it simple for those who are policing it, so that they can operate effectively. I hear where Mr Connell is coming from—about the police sending in minors to check whether the licensee is selling to minors, rather than taking the responsibility of just checking whether they have identification. For example, if one is pulled up in a motor vehicle and the police think one is underage, one does have to show ID to prove that one has a licence. I think it makes sense that the ones who purchase liquor should also have to show their ID.

But I do not want to hinder the police in their work. I think there are enough challenges in trying to police the laws we have. I think we have too many laws in this country, and in many cases the police have a great challenge in trying to enforce them. So if this bill makes it easier for them, I support it. For example, we in the motor industry have to show all the paperwork for everything required for a warrant of fitness on a car, whereas I would prefer them just to come in with a car that had a defect, and if we did not pick up the defect as a warrant of fitness inspector, then deal with us on that case. So there are two sides to that argument.

Basically, United Future thinks that this bill is just tidy-up legislation. It is sensible legislation, and again I would encourage members to pick up the Hon Peter Dunne’s amendment from the Table. It is a typical United Future amendment; it is just common sense and makes legislation work better, and that is what we are here for. We are the friends of the nation, and I thank you for being able to speak during this second reading.

The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Commerce Committee by a majority be agreed to.

Amendments agreed to.

I should have asked this before, but I seek leave that the National Party cast a split vote.

Leave is sought for that. Is there any objection? There is not.