Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill

I welcome this bill, and I look forward to the issues that surround it being discussed at the select committee. Matt Robson’s bill has been drawn from the ballot at an opportune time. The drinking age is an issue that does need to be discussed by the New Zealand public, and, therefore, I think that the discussion at the select committee will be welcome. However, I also realise that no legislation will stop our drinking problem—or our binge drinking problem, either. We as parents also need to look at the responsibility we have to bring up our children correctly and to teach them the responsibilities associated with drinking. Many people enjoy a glass of wine with their meal, and that type of thing, but the problem is whether we as parents have taught our children what alcohol can do. I just touch again on the fact that people liken the legislation relating to the drinking age to that relating to the age at which one can go into the Army, and to other similar legislation. The major difference with regard to alcohol is that alcohol affects the brain, affects thinking, and can change behaviour types. Therefore, I think it is an issue that seriously needs to be discussed. I hope that many people who are concerned about this issue will bring their concerns to the select committee. It will be very interesting to see the facts and figures brought forward.

I have been more than a little frustrated about the nature of this debate—not the debate that has occurred within this House, but the debate that has occurred outside the House. What worries me is that many people think that MPs sending this bill to a select committee will mean that we can all pat ourselves on our collective backs and say what a jolly good thing it is that we fixed that problem. My concern is that the liquor interests in this country will be delighted with this bill, because it takes the real issues off the agenda. The real issues are those that I will talk about, and my colleague who has just resumed his seat mentioned the most obvious one—the drinking culture in New Zealand.

New Zealand has a degree of tolerance for drinking to excess that I think is greater than that of any other country in the world. Blaming 18 and 19-year-olds for that problem is hardly the way to address it. We did not lower the drinking age in 1999—in fact, we do not have a drinking age, and I wish that people would stop saying that. We standardised the age at which people could drink at on-licensed premises and purchase alcohol to age 18, but we also lowered the age for purchasing alcohol from off-licences. That is the most significant change we made in 1999. This bill does not restore the law to the position of 1999. In fact, it allows for no exceptions for under-20-year-olds to purchase. Under the previous law, which had existed since 1989, 18 and 19-year-olds were allowed to drink wine or beer with a meal in a restaurant, and were entitled to purchase it themselves. That situation is not being restored with this bill.

To suggest that this bill is an effective prohibition on drinking is a nonsense. There are plenty of examples in the world of places where sensible drinking practices are encouraged in an environment that does not tolerate drunkenness. In New Zealand we not only tolerate drunkenness but glorify it. Our laws used to allow drunkenness as an excuse or mitigating factor for criminal behaviour. Some of us will have attended 21st birthday parties where yard glasses came out—the standard ritual for any male’s 21st birthday party.

💬 John Tamihere: And a few women.

I know that that member does not describe us as women, but the point is that it was a male ritual, and I think the member would agree. What is the advertisement that is on everyone’s lips? Those ads are not designed to increase tolerance for drinking to excess—Yeah, right!

A problem with sale of liquor licensing that no one ever mentions is the free-market approach to the sale of liquor that came in during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The controls that had existed until then, with strict hours of trading, went out the window. That enabled youth culture to adjust its drinking times to suit. We used to go home at 11 o’clock, or midnight; that is when people are going into town, these days. That is the real problem. It is not even mentioned in this bill, which is why I would have liked to see a far more wide-reaching review. I could make a number of points about the statistics on alcohol-related harm and youth offending, but there are other reasons for changes in statistics. The results have been inconclusive, and I hope that the select committee will take a good look at them.

Finally, there is nothing about enforcement in this bill. The 18-year-old age restrictions that applied in the past were never enforced; the 20-year-old age restriction that applied in the past was never enforced. This bill contains nothing about more enforcement measures, and nothing that will change the practice that existed before. This bill was designed not as a youth alcohol harm-reduction measure, but as an under-age harm-reduction measure. I applaud the bill for that reason. I am pleased that people are starting to address that.

The problem with the bill is that the blame is being laid squarely on the shoulders of the 18 and 19-year-olds of this country. While we have a situation in which 18 and 19-year-olds can go to war to defend our country but cannot go and have a beer after a day in the trenches, I think we have the message wrong.

In the brief 5 minutes I have to debate this legislation, I want to represent the great majority of the 118,330 New Zealanders currently in the 18 and 19-year-old age group. Those people are resident in New Zealand, and Parliament earlier gave them the right to go into our pubs, clubs, and bars. The great majority of those people have accepted that law responsibly. But here we have a bill advanced by Matt Robson, who says that those 118,000 New Zealanders have acted irresponsibly. Now he wants to take away a legal right that those young New Zealanders have. The issue is on the agenda now only because there is an election coming up, and one political party, which currently has two members of Parliament, is looking for a life purpose.

We have all heard the reasons being advanced as to why 18 and 19-year-olds should have the right to go into a pub and drink. They have the ability to marry. They have the legal ability to be in our armed forces and be sent overseas on peacekeeping missions or on missions to defend New Zealand. But here we have Matt Robson, and no doubt a lot of other do-gooder parliamentarians later on this evening, voting to say that these young New Zealanders are not mature enough to go into our pubs.

What Parliament needs to realise is that this country does have a major issue with the culture of alcohol, the large drinking population, and people who cannot understand how to use that particular substance properly. That culture has developed over a large number of years. I would suggest that the most significant, damaging aspect of the New Zealand culture of the use of alcohol was achieved in the time when we had the stupid 6 o’clock closing laws, which, thank God, finished in 1967. But that difficulty in the culture and attitude associated with alcohol is not something that is specific to 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds; it is a problem that all New Zealanders need to own up to, and face. I pay tribute to organisations such as the Alcohol Advisory Council, which is now embarking on a very sensible education process that all New Zealanders have to sign up to; only then will we address the problems associated with alcohol and its overuse.

I especially want to say that the parents of young New Zealanders need to take note. Some of those people display the very worst attitudes to alcohol in front of their own children at home. That is where this problem has to start to be corrected, and that requires New Zealanders to sign up to it. But members should not come into the House tonight and pass silly legislation that takes a right off 18 and 19-year-olds because a few are irresponsible. That is irresponsible on Mr Robson’s behalf.

If this bill were to go to a select committee, and if this bill were to pass, it would not change the drinking attitude of New Zealanders. It certainly would not stop 18 and 19-year-olds from drinking alcohol. At the very best, what it would achieve is to drive those 18-year-olds away from our hotels, to locations that are unpoliced and unsupervised. The important thing is that those 18 and 19-year-olds will drive their vehicles—their cars—to those particular locations, where they will still drink, and because they are unsupervised they will drink to excess, and then they will drive their cars home again. I tell Mr Robson that nothing will be achieved by this.

I finally want to talk on the other aspect of this bill, which has received very little debate, and that is the part where Mr Robson is again placing more restrictions—on liquor advertising and the broadcasting of liquor advertising. I tell Mr Robson to stop digging at this industry, stop blaming this industry, and accept that alcohol abuse is a New Zealand problem that must be signed up to by all New Zealanders. I tell Mr Robson that it is a matter of education. It is not about bashing the industry, which on the whole recognises its responsibilities.

I would like to thank all my parliamentary colleagues who have contributed on the issues before us at the first reading of the Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction) Amendment Bill. They have, in the main, kept out personal issues and looked at the facts. Many of the varied opinions honestly expressed from sometimes very different points of view are, of course, also being articulated at dinner tables, in sports clubs, and at social gatherings up and down New Zealand. I believe that the bill is facilitating an honest and a robust public discussion on recent trends in alcohol consumption and alcohol harm, and on what steps we can reasonably take through our representative Parliament to help turn the tide against some of the heartbreak that too often accompanies youth binge drinking.

In 1999 Parliament voted, by a small margin, to lower the minimum purchasing age of alcohol to 18 from 20. At the time, our party, for philosophical reasons, reckoned that 18-year-olds should have the right to purchase alcohol at licensed liquor outlets. Although in 1999 we voted against the final reading of the bill, that was for other reasons—principally that the liberalisation of supermarket alcohol sales was too permissive.

But regardless of how we, as individuals or parties, voted in 1999, we have now had 6 years to assess the evidence of the impact of the law change. I believe that a majority here today will vote for this bill to proceed to the select committee, where we politicians can have a breather from speech-making and can focus on listening instead. At the select committee we can listen to the evidence that will be put before us and to the experience of those at the front line in public health. We can listen to parents. We can listen to principals, teachers, and sports coaches. Maybe we can listen to some of the liquor licensing control front-line workers, to the people at Alcohol Healthwatch, the Public Health Association, and the New Zealand Drug Foundation, and to family doctors who say that our 1999 decision was “a disaster”. We can, at the select committee, listen to family planning health professionals and to those working to combat the transmission of sexual disease among the young.

As we listen and take notes, we need to keep in mind some of these basic questions. Did the decision to lower the alcohol purchasing age by 2 years in 1999 in turn lower by 2 years the effective age at which minors in our country can easily access alcohol? In other words, if 17-year-olds easily accessed alcohol via older friends before 1999, did the law change make it easier for 15-year-olds to access alcohol from their 18-year-old mates? Did the law change exacerbate under-18-year-old youth binge drinking and associated problems, such as road accidents, unplanned pregnancies, and so forth? Did the law change exacerbate hospital admissions for heavily intoxicated 13 to 17-year-olds? What is the evidence from North America, where society tried to lower the alcohol purchasing age but then reverted to a higher age? Would it likely make any material difference to youth binge drinking habits if broadcast advertising rules were altered? Would it likely make any material difference to youth binge drinking habits if we were to use more of a stick in terms of high penalties for those caught supplying liquor to those under the minimum alcohol purchasing age?

A number of members have asked me to move an instruction to the select committee to allow it to consider matters beyond the scope of the bill. It may well be that the public submissions identify changes that the select committee believes to be desirable. In fact, I think that is highly likely. If and when that happens, I will seek to deal with the issues beyond the scope at that time—as I am sure that select committee members will—and I will be happy for amendments to be made in order to address the problem, which is the harm done to youth by alcohol.

I finish by thanking the Prime Minister for her support for this bill to proceed to the select committee. Of course, there are no silver bullets to improving the alcohol-drinking culture. The bill proposes just three measures: on broadcast advertising, on the supply to minors regulations, and on the minimum purchasing age. Those have necessarily been drafted to try to secure as broad a support as is possible in an eight-party Parliament. I know that there are many other improvements that members will be able to put forward.

I commend the House to allow the public of New Zealand, the parents, the caregivers, and the voluntary workers in public health to be able to have their say on how this legislation can be improved. I commend members, therefore, to support this bill to proceed to the select committee.