Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill, Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill, Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill, the Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill, and the Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. These bills provide a strong legislative framework for reducing alcohol-related harm. It is the first time in more than two decades that Parliament has acted to restrict, rather than relax, our drinking laws. Most New Zealanders enjoy alcohol in a responsible manner; however, the harm resulting from excessive drinking strains our country’s health and law enforcement resources, and causes people and communities a lot of grief and stress. These bills contain a wide range of measures that will help to bring a change in our drinking culture. They provide many parts of society, from central to local government, communities, and parents, with tools to make that happen. Some people, including members of this House, feel that the bills do not go far enough. However, they strike a sensible balance and deal with the considerable harm that alcohol causes without unfairly affecting responsible drinkers.

I would like to take this opportunity to outline some of the bills’ key measures that will help reduce problem drinking in our country. Let us look at access to alcohol. Right now we can buy alcohol in supermarkets, bottle stores, clubs, bars, and corner stores, sometimes 24 hours a day. This is despite clear evidence showing a link between alcohol availability and harm, such as crime and health problems. The Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill, which I will now refer to as “the bill”, introduces national maximum trading hours of 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. for bottle stores, supermarkets, and grocery stores, and 8 a.m. to 4 a.m. for restaurants, bars, and clubs. The bill also clarifies that dairies and convenience stores are not eligible to sell alcohol. Grocery stores, which also sell a range of household products, will still be eligible to hold licences. Definitions to make it clearer about the kinds of stores that can sell alcohol will be expanded on in regulations.

Accessing alcohol is easier when there are more licences, and communities have been telling us that they are concerned about the proliferation of stores selling alcohol in their areas. At present, it is very difficult to successfully object to a licence application. Licence criteria are limited and licences are relatively easy to obtain. This can be frustrating and disheartening for communities concerned about alcohol-related harm in their areas. Under the bill, licences will be harder to get and easier to lose. The bill introduces additional licensing criteria, including whether the licence is likely to encourage heavy drinking or increase alcohol-related harm, whether granting the licence will have a negative impact on the community—for example, by increasing noise levels or vandalism—and any relevant local alcohol policy in force for the area. The new criteria come into force 6 months after Royal assent. Until then, the existing criteria will continue to apply. The timing of this change has led to concern that people may apply for licences before the 6-month mark in order to avoid the strict criteria. The new Act will make it clear that any licence applied for in that 6-month period will receive an interim licence for up to a year. An interim licence cannot be renewed. Once it expires, the licensee will have to apply for a licence under the new Act if they wish to continue selling alcohol.

As mentioned earlier, licences will be easier to lose. The bill increases focus on compliance by licensees and managers. Licensees and managers who repeatedly fail to meet their obligations under the new Act will lose their licence or certificate if they commit three specified offences within 3 years. They will also be subject to a stand-down period of 5 years. The bill also expands the range of offences for which an infringement notice can be issued, and gives licensing inspectors the power to issue infringement notices for certain offences. These changes make it clear that there is no room in the industry for licensees and managers who do not take their obligations seriously. The bill also has a strong focus on local decision-making. At present, licence applications that are opposed by police, a licensing inspector, or a medical officer of health are transferred to the Liquor Licensing Authority for a decision. This will be changed so that all applications will be decided locally by district licensing committees, or DLCs, which will replace the existing district licensing agencies. Each committee will be made up of two community members, and an elected representative or a commissioner will be the chair. This means that representatives of the community will have a direct say in every licensing decision.

Another important measure to give local communities a greater say is the option for communities to adopt a local alcohol policy. Under these policies, communities will be able to restrict or extend maximum trading hours. They will also be able to limit the location of licensed premises near certain facilities, such as schools, and specify whether further licences should be issued in a defined area. There have been calls to make local alcohol policies mandatory; however, there are important reasons why policies should be optional. Firstly, there is significant cost associated with the development of a local alcohol policy. Some territorial authorities—particularly the smaller ones—may not want to fund the development of a policy. Secondly, some communities may consider that a local alcohol policy is unnecessary for their area, and that the national maximum trading hours, a new criteria in the bill, adequately address their needs. It is very important that we allow communities to decide what it is best for them, especially given the aim of increasing community input and control over licensing.

One of the key concerns of communities has been the impact of alcohol on young people. The new Act will have a special focus on this vulnerable group. We know that heavy drinking is not the exclusive domain of the young, but young drinkers—particularly those under 15—suffer significantly more alcohol-related harm than older drinkers. The Government had proposed a split age of 18 years for bars, restaurants, and clubs, and 20 years for bottle stores, supermarkets, and grocery stores. In August of this year, this House voted to retain the current purchase age of 18 years. As many of you will know, I was personally disappointed by this choice.

However, the purchase age is not the only tool available to reduce the harm for young people. The new Act will give parents more control over their children’s drinking, and make adults’ responsibilities clear. Evidence shows that most under-18-year-olds get alcohol from their parents and other adults, such as older siblings or friends. Often this alcohol is supplied in large quantities, and without adequate supervision or controls. The bill changes this so that anyone who supplies alcohol to minors must have the express consent of the minor’s parent or guardian. All alcohol, whether it is supplied by a parent or someone else, must be supplied responsibly. These changes provide police with a tool to intervene in unsupervised or poorly supervised events, such as after-ball functions or student parties.

During the select committee process, a wide range of submitters expressed concern about the exposure of children and young people to alcohol advertising. The bill prohibits advertising or promoting alcohol in a way that has special appeal to minors. It also expands other promotion offences to limit the harm of advertising. In supermarkets and grocery stores, alcohol and any alcohol advertising and promotion will be restricted to a single non-prominent area that cannot be near the checkout or the entrance. This will mean that our young people are not constantly exposed to alcohol when accompanying their parents on trips to the supermarket. The Government has also agreed to establish an expert forum to consider whether further restrictions on alcohol advertising and sponsorship are required. The forum will report back to the Ministers of Justice and of Health within a year of the bill being passed.

The Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill also makes changes to alcohol control bylaws, which we know as liquor bans. These bans cannot currently cover places like supermarket car parks and school grounds, which are areas where people, including young people, gather to drink. The Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill addresses this by expanding the definition of public place to include school grounds, private car parks, and other private spaces to which the public has legitimate access. This gives councils the power to make alcohol control bylaws covering these areas. The Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill also makes changes that will contribute to the effectiveness of the new framework. This amendment bill expands the definition of a public place to include vehicles in those areas. It also allows police to seize alcohol from a young person found drinking alcohol in a public place without a parent or guardian, as well as allowing them to issue an infringement notice.

As many of you will be aware, these bills come into force in stages and will not be fully implemented until 12 months after the legislation is passed. This is to allow for the development of regulations to implement these bills. It will also give local authorities, licensing bodies, and licensees time to prepare for the changes. The Ministry of Justice is working closely with a range of agencies to ensure stakeholders are well-informed and supported during this implementation stage. I acknowledge that getting these bills through to this stage has been a very long process. I would like to thank all members of the House for their contributions to date.

In early 2009 I attended the ministerial meeting on the drivers of crime and I was so impressed with the quality of discussion that occurred there that I went back to the Labour caucus and asked if we could offer to work collaboratively with the Government on these issues that were the drivers of crime. Obviously, there are distinct differences across the House in terms of how we might address crime, but the drivers of crime were just so blindingly obvious, as one of the National Party Ministers is wont to say. We said that the area that needed commitment from Governments of all colours across electoral cycles was the question of agreed policies around 0 to 12-year-olds. We stopped it at 12, because we felt that some of the policies that National was bringing forward, like the boot camps and things like that, were not evidence-based. At least on the 0 to 12-year-olds we could get agreement. National was not prepared to go down that path, but what it did agree to do was to undertake some “initial cooperation on the alcohol issue”. Unfortunately, if what has occurred is cooperation, then I would really hate to see what the alternative was.

As the former Minister who introduced an alcohol reform bill before the 2008 general election, and announced the Law Commission review, I have been hugely disappointed in the lack of progress from this Government. I have been even more disappointed in the misrepresentation of the current debate around the Alcohol Reform Bill. The first thing that I just want to address is the conscience vote. Parliament had a conscience vote dating back to the days when we had a triennial referendum on prohibition continuance or State-purchasing control—and, yes, even I am old enough to recall voting in one of those. But when the referendum ended, so should have the conscience vote. It was at that point that we should have realised that it was no longer going to be a justice issue, but really ought to have been a health issue in terms of regulating the sale and purchase of what is a drug, as we do with pharmaceuticals legislation, as we do with the Misuse of Drugs Act. So we actually could have had that chance then, but we did not.

The Law Commission said that the conscience vote can “reduce the quality and effectiveness of the alcohol laws that Parliament enacts.”, and that “The resulting statute can lack coherence and structural logic.” What the Law Commission did not anticipate when it wrote those words was that it could also lack teeth. It could also lack teeth. And the reason is that when the Law Commission wrote its report on the conscience vote, it was absolutely crystal clear that it had the role of drafting the legislation that would come before this House. It was the National Government that took away its opportunity to actually draft the law. So it did not anticipate National preventing it from completing the task that it had been given.

National, of course, gave up the conscience vote except for age. I have to say that was a very clever move on its part, because all of the public focus then went on the remaining conscience vote on the age and all of us got rung up by various parts of the media to ask us how we were voting on this one issue. That was the tactic. That was the strategy: have all the public attention on the age so we cannot see what the real issues are. And that is how it got agreement. The rest of the bill did nothing controversial—nothing controversial. In fact, it delivered to many of those who were arguing for nothing controversial to come to the law, or no substantial change to be made. This is National’s bill. It is not a shadow of the law the Law Commission would have written and that is why I have been saying throughout this debate that it is a travesty.

The Law Commission spells out exactly what is required, and I say to all of the people who stood up in this House and said they want evidence to go and read the Law Commission report. That is the evidence. It has all the evidence we need. And the evidence says increase the price of alcohol, increase the purchase age for alcohol, decrease accessibility, decrease marketing and advertising, increase drink-driving measures, and then, on top of that, increase treatment options for heavy drinkers. So who has dominated this debate out there in the public arena and who has actually dominated the debate in this House? I would say that there are two interests. On one side there are the private interests and on the other side there is the public good. I just want to describe who has been mounting the argument for the private interests, because it is not just the alcohol industry that we have heard about, it is not just the breweries and the makers of distilled spirits, and it is not just the wine industry and the hospitality industry, although many of them have different views on different matters, because there is not a level playing field out there in terms of who can do what.

The real winners, the real private interests that have dominated this debate are the Food and Grocery Council, which has actually continued its ability to sell dirt-cheap alcohol through our supermarkets, thereby driving down the cost of takeaway alcohol that is drunk away from supervised premises, where there is no host responsibility beyond the door. So as soon as somebody walks out the door with the bottle of whatever, the host responsibility goes out the door with them. Who are the other private interests that we have dominating this debate? It is the advertisers and the marketers, but, most important, it is those who receive the advertising dollars—the media. I am afraid they are the true influencers of public opinion and they have sought to influence public opinion on advertising and marketing, pushing that private interest over the public good, and I am going to come to the public good in a minute.

When I introduced the original bill that National threw out, I remember that there was a headline in the New Zealand Herald. What it said was that I was putting a guy out of business who had run his dairy for 24 years—that my bill was going to put him out of business and he had been running this dairy for 24 years. But then read the story, because the headline tells the story and not everyone reads the whole story. But when you read the story, he has not had a licence to sell alcohol for 24 years; he actually had the licence to sell alcohol—beer and wine—for only 3½ years. And guess how much that alcohol made up of his turnover in that dairy—30 percent of his turnover in 3½ years was selling alcohol from a dairy masquerading as a grocery store. That is the problem. We are not debating the real issues, because we are not seeing the real issues actually being put in front of the public in terms of the public good.

Who represents the public good? Who has been speaking on behalf of the public good? It is the police and the people who operate our courts, our hospitals, the emergency departments, ACC, health groups, NGOs and not-for-profits working on areas in terms of public health right the way through to domestic violence, and communities struggling to deal with hard issues, finding alcohol promotion being really a major part of their concerns that they are having to confront as a community. But they are fearful of speaking out. And why are they fearful of speaking out? It is actually not because they do not want to be challenged on their views; it is because they are fearful that they will lose their charitable status. They are fearful that they will lose Government funding if they speak out against Government policy. The truth is that the NGO sector, the not-for-profit sector, the health sector, and our police are not participating in what is being described as political advocacy. They are, in fact, representing the public good, and it is their interests that we have sought to prevail in this House. That is why we retained the conscience vote for this debate. We wanted to debate the real issues: restrictions on advertising, discounting, and promoting of alcohol; restrictions on trading hours; minimum pricing; making local alcohol policies mandatory and strengthening the community’s say; banning the sale of ready-to-drinks with more than 5 percent alcohol and more than 1.5 standard drinks; health risk warning labels and nutritional information panel requirements; health levies; and lower blood-alcohol levels for drink-driving—all of which would contribute to saving lives.

Today Alcohol Action NZ has put out a media release with the headline: “National’s Alcohol Reform Bill totally fails the public”. It says: “The campaign for effective alcohol law reform will go on. National has only delayed the inevitable. Just as happened with tobacco reform, parliamentary champions will emerge who are prepared to put the public first. Meanwhile, history will judge those MPs who wilfully planned and led the wasted opportunity to do something to help the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders being harmed ...”.

After I spoke in the Committee stage of the Alcohol Reform Bill last Thursday I had to leave the Chamber, so I was not present when my commitment to highlighting the issue of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder and to supporting measures that would reduce its incidence were questioned disingenuously by an Opposition member. I am confident that the fine folk of Alcohol Healthwatch, who lead the charge in this area, and the remarkable Shirley Winikerei, who is a tireless campaigner on the issue in my electorate of Hamilton West, will confirm that I have been a vigorous champion of the foetal alcohol spectrum disorder cause for all the time I have been a member of Parliament. Although MPs’ increasing awareness of foetal alcohol spectrum disorder has not translated into Parliament meeting all of Alcohol Healthwatch’s aims, I think the organisation may feel confident that its voice is a respected and increasingly heard voice in our Parliament, and that has to be a good thing for our future mothers and their babies.

The Labour member who attacked me last Thursday said I should put my money where my mouth was by supporting her amendment, although she must have known that it was outside the scope of the bill and could not be adopted, for reasons that were explained to the Committee by the Associate Minister of Justice. For the record, not only am I aware that there is measurable public support for introducing health warning labels but also I was one of the first MPs in New Zealand to make a written submission to the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council review panel in support of alcohol being mandated to carry health warnings. However, because of our agreement with Australia, any changes to alcohol labelling must be developed through the Australia New Zealand Joint Foods Standards Treaty. That is why labelling was deemed to be outside the scope of the bill and the inconsistent amendment was rejected.

I understand that the joint ministerial review of food labelling law and policy has resulted in both Governments recently agreeing to give the alcohol industry 2 years to introduce pregnancy warning labels on alcoholic beverage containers, and that we have the option to regulate if it fails to do so. Although I would like it to be sooner, I am reassured to know that it is happening, and I remain fully supportive of the warning labels.

The expected enactment of this legislation today is a significant step forward for New Zealand. I was pleased to hear a police officer during a Television One news item at the weekend say how much he is looking forward to the passage of the legislation, because of the local alcohol plans, the chance to stop all-night licensing hours, and so on. I met recently with the mayor and councillors in my city of Hamilton to encourage them to get their local alcohol policy in place, and I commend them for their very positive moves in that regard.

I am the first to acknowledge that this legislation will not solve all of our alcohol-related problems, and I believe that we must remain ready to respond in the future if further legislative change is required. But the fact remains that legislation alone cannot change a culture, and it is dangerous attitudes and a reckless approach to personal safety that are at the heart of New Zealand’s alcohol abuse problems. Each and every one of us must do our bit to influence better decision-making by our friends and family, to teach our youth how to handle alcohol sensibly, to oppose irresponsible promotions and distribution of alcohol, to support our health workers and law enforcement officers, who bear such a heavy burden whenever alcohol is abused, and so on.

As this long process draws to its welcome conclusion, I want to again praise the Law Commission for the huge job it did researching the issues, consulting New Zealanders, and, ultimately, proposing to this House reforms that are overwhelmingly reflected in the legislation that is soon to be enacted. Not all of its proposals made it, however. Members will know that during the Committee stage I promoted an amendment seeking to increase the age for all categories of liquor purchases, as was mentioned a few moments ago by the Minister of Justice and as was recommended by the commission. It was narrowly defeated, and I believe that most New Zealanders were hugely disappointed at that outcome. But I thank those members who chose to support it. We have dropped the ball in that respect.

I congratulate the Hon Judith Collins on the many fine amendments she promoted in her Supplementary Order Paper to this legislation, such as the tighter controls on liquor displays, and measures to prevent irresponsible liquor advertising and promotions. I am especially pleased by the Minister’s empowering of parents and guardians to control the supply of alcohol to minors. That is a bold and crucial step. It will help to avert the types of tragedies we have all been aware of during this debate in recent years. I offer my deep sympathy to the families who have suffered those terrible losses.

There has been a lot of discussion of what is not in the legislation, and I do respect the views of all who have taken a close interest in this issue. But today is the time to welcome all that is in the legislation, and I remain confident that the measures in this legislation will make a positive difference. Now is the time for us to put them into action and for all of us to commit to making them work. That is my firm intention.

I seek leave to table the submission that I made on 10 May 2010 to the Australia and New Zealand Food Regulation Ministerial Council review panel in support of alcohol being mandated to carry health warnings.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there anyone opposed to that course of action? There is none. Leave is granted.

Document, by leave, laid on the Table of the House.

That contribution from Tim Macindoe I think really sums up the Government’s position on alcohol reform and trying to deal with alcohol harm: patronising, full of platitudes, and absolutely devoid of action. I do want to congratulate—

💬 Darien Fenton: And substance.

And substance as well. I do want to congratulate Mr Macindoe on the position he has taken and on the advocacy that he has carried out over the years. Unfortunately, he has failed to influence his own party and he has failed to influence this Government to actually pass legislation that will make a real difference.

This has been a long journey. It was started by Labour back in 2008, when Lianne Dalziel first promoted legislation in this area and the Law Commission was asked to undertake its review. The Law Commission presented its comprehensive, evidence-based report, and anticipated that it would be drafting legislation that this Parliament could consider. However, this National Government got its hands on it, and Simon Power dramatically watered down what the Law Commission suggested Parliament should be doing and brought to Parliament a weak and insipid bill, the Alcohol Reform Bill.

But we on the Opposition benches supported it because we had hope that when it went to the Justice and Electoral Committee we might have the opportunity to strengthen it. And, indeed, members on the select committee did hear thousands of submissions all making good suggestions about how we could strengthen this legislation to make it align more closely with the Law Commission’s report and more closely with what New Zealanders wanted us to do, so that it would actually achieve something. Many members on the committee made good suggestions and some positive amendments were made to the legislation, but, unfortunately, not enough.

Then along came Judith Collins. She took a watered-down bill and diluted it even further. In the face of pressure from a number of different industries Judith Collins folded like a piece of paper. What we ended up with was something that was so watered down that this is essentially the homeopathic approach to alcohol harm. There was no substance, nothing left in this bill by the time it was watered down first by Simon Power and then by Judith Collins.

Judith Collins faced pressure from the liquor industry, and, under pressure from the liquor industry, she removed the sensible provisions that were originally put in the bill by her predecessor to regulate alcopops. So we lost the regulation around the number of standard drinks that any one can or bottle of alcopop could contain. We lost the regulation around the maximum amount of alcohol volume that there could be in each alcopop. So we will continue to see the crime scene in a can that the police refer to so often: the Cody’s, the Woodstock, and all the other horrible, cheap alcopops designed to do one thing, and that is to get people as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. Judith Collins is responsible for that and the National Government is responsible for that.

Under pressure from the supermarkets Judith Collins folded once again and cancelled out the changes her own colleagues on the select committee made to strengthen the provisions about where you could put alcohol in a supermarket. Her own colleagues wanted to make the bill stronger, and Judith Collins trumped them.

She has delayed the introduction of the local alcohol policies, which were one of the few positive aspects of this legislation. It is something that communities are crying out for—the ability to determine the number of liquor outlets and how liquor is regulated in their own communities. It is something that people want now. They do not want to have to wait 12 months, and there is no reason for them to have to wait 12 months. This is not forcing local government to do anything; it is empowering local communities to have local control over local decisions. That opportunity is being delayed, and justice delayed is justice denied.

But it was not just the watering down. This bill was pretty weak to start with. The Government failed to act properly to curb advertising. It was given a number of different options that it could have taken up at the Committee stage. There were simple things, like shifting the television watershed out by a mere half-hour, like eliminating advertising near schools, like taking a proper look at the role that alcohol sponsorship plays in our communities, all the way through to the suggestion of a total ban on television and radio advertising and a total ban on sponsorship. There was a wide spectrum of options on the table, any one of which the Government could have chosen to take up, and it chose to do nothing—nothing—on liquor advertising.

The Government failed to act on price. Again, it was given a number of options: minimum pricing, excise tax, and a health levy applied at the point of sale, all of which would have helped deal with price. We know that the evidence says that price is one of the premium ways that we can curb the harm caused by alcohol. But because this Government is beholden to the Food and Grocery Council, it chose to do nothing on price.

This Government failed to act on reducing the blood-alcohol level. Again, there are over 300 studies internationally that show that lowering the blood-alcohol level will have a significant impact on the harm caused by alcohol, particularly on our roads, obviously, but it is also about setting the environment in which alcohol is consumed. The Government is beholden to the Hospitality Association, and, frankly, to the Automobile Association, whose position on this issue has been disappointing. The evidence was there, the opportunity was there, but, again, National failed to act.

We had a spirited debate about the purchase age, and Tim Macindoe brought this up. I want to know why that was singled out for the conscience vote. Why was all the attention put on the age? Why was all the media attention put on the age, when the evidence says that it is one way of dealing with harm but it is a small way? It was described by one member as trying to empty a bucket of water with a teaspoon. It will happen, but it will happen over a very, very long period of time, and there are other, more effective measures that this Government has failed to pick up. But that is where all the attention went, and, as Lianne Dalziel said, it was a superb strategy from the Government to divert attention away from its failure to act on any number of ways it could have acted to truly deal with alcohol-related harm.

This is not the end of this debate. There is no doubt that we will have to revisit this issue again in the future, and it will have to be done with a Government that has got the vision, the purpose, and, frankly, the guts to tackle this issue properly. When we do—in fact, in all dealings to do with alcohol-related matters in the future—this issue should cease to be primarily a justice issue and should be a health issue. The Ministry of Health should be the lead agency. The Minister of Health should be the lead Minister.

I want to just briefly reflect on the paucity of alcohol addiction treatment that there is available in this country at the moment. That is another area where this Government is failing. It takes far too long to access addiction treatment once somebody is referred or self-identifies as needing it. That delay often results in people not accessing the treatment they require. That is something that ought to be one of this Government’s health priorities, but, of course, it is not.

There is nothing wrong with what is in this bill, and that is why it will get broad support from around the House. But what has left New Zealand so disappointed with this Government is the things that have been left out, its failure to act, and its failure to tackle the big issues, the difficult issues. That is why New Zealanders are resoundingly disappointed with this legislation. It is weak. It is insipid. It will not achieve the outcomes that are desirable, and we will have to revisit this issue again because of this Government’s failure.

I want to begin by quoting the Law Commission, from the foreword of its report Alcohol in our Lives: Curbing the Harm. It says: “The principle under which we have approached this review is that New Zealanders live in a free and democratic society. They are subject only to such limitation in their freedom as can be justified in such a society. They have liberty to behave as they choose as long as their actions respect the rights of others and are not contrary to the law. Public policy decisions that are made to restrict activity have to be justified by strong arguments that it is in the public interest that individuals and corporations do not exercise their freedom in particular ways. We believe the recommendations in this report meet that test.”

At the heart of the debate we have been holding in this House over months and, indeed, years is a disagreement about where the limits to individual liberty should lie. In general, this House has moved to limit personal liberty where it has threatened harm or cost to society itself; where it threatens harm to others, particularly without their consent; and where harm is threatened to the individuals themselves. For example, we insist on seatbelts in cars not so much because of the cost of health care that society would incur but because of the risk of injury to the wearer. We limit personal liberty in all of those circumstances.

The Law Commission’s report goes on to document considerable harm caused by alcohol consumption to those who drink it, the people they interact with, and the wider society, including those who have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. One in three New Zealand drinkers, for example, report being harmed by their own drinking in the past year alone. At least a third of all recorded offences that the police deal with are committed by someone who has been consuming alcohol. Over a thousand deaths a year are related to alcohol, along with untold illness and injury. And most of this harm is sustained by those communities that are already marginalised by poverty, racism, and other factors. Alcohol magnifies and compounds that harm.

I am not a wowser. I do not believe in prohibition. I enjoy a few drinks, and I would say that I derive some benefit from them. But those benefits that are derived by those of us who do enjoy a few drinks must be weighed against the very considerable harms that are done to our society by alcohol. There is plenty of evidence to support most of the Law Commission’s recommendations. There has been one particularly powerful report, Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity: Research and Public Policy, by Babor and others on behalf of the World Health Organization in 2003, where experts ranked possible interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm, based on reliable evidence. I will not run through all of the actions that they rank, but the most effective actions that Governments can take are a suite of actions that are grouped as regulation of physical ability—so where alcohol can be purchased, when it can be purchased, and so on—increasing alcohol taxes, and lowering blood-alcohol limits for driving.

There is also very strong evidence around advertising and sponsorship, yet our Government has essentially chosen to take very little or no action in precisely these areas that would have most effect on reducing alcohol-related harm. It has also chosen to take little or no action in the areas that the Law Commission has recommended and prioritised. Instead, the Government has focused on preserving maximal individual liberty, totally without evidence of effectiveness. So focused has it been on this one area that in most cases it has not been willing to even try to influence the individual choices that New Zealand citizens make. Alcohol, under this set of bills, will in most cases continue to be available more or less anywhere, any time. Consumers will still be bathed in alcohol marketing wherever they go. Alcohol will continue to be available cheaper than milk. We will continue to allow much more drinking before driving than most countries. There will not even be any information on alcohol labels—so much for the market theory—and penalties for selling alcohol to those who are under age will remain pathetically weak. The approach taken by the Government is more like a game show based on exposing competitors to extreme temptation than a serious attempt at healthy public policy. I wonder who the survivors will be.

Some of the elements of the Government’s response have no evidence at all to support them. In the Babor review there was no evidence that voluntary codes of practice for bars had any effect at all, yet that is precisely the approach that the Government now favours around ready-to-drinks. Others of the Government’s responses show a stubborn refusal to learn from the experience of other countries, in a form of New Zealand exceptionalism. Here, for example, are the countries that already have blood-alcohol limits of 0.5 milligrams per millilitre or less: Australia, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey. But, no, we will stand with the Americans. Where they go, we go.

Interestingly, the approach that the Government has adopted is more or less exactly what the Hospitality Association lobbied for and other parts of the alcohol industry thought they might be able to get away with. That match of Government policy to industry demands is becoming disturbingly familiar. We see it in the Government’s interactions with the food industry, with the Aussie banks, with the roading lobby, with the big carbon polluters, and so on. So, ironically, under the guise of individual liberty, the Government has actually ceded control of our economy, society, and environment more and more to major commercial interests, at the expense of human ones and at the expense of the collective good.

The Green Party stands instead for an economy set up to deliver on our collective social and environmental goals. We stand for a society in which we all look after each other. We stand for a society that is prepared to limit individual liberty and constrain corporate interests in order to protect itself and each one of us from harm and cost. The relationship that New Zealand society has with alcohol is a sick one. The harm associated with that dysfunction is massive, and the mandate exists from the New Zealand public for substantial change. The Law Commission has given what history suggests will turn out to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to limit that harm. We remain frustrated and disappointed that the Government has chosen not to take up that opportunity. We will vote for this legislation because it is a step in the right direction, but it is a baby step when a giant stride was needed.

I am delighted to take a short call on this. The Alcohol Reform Bill is now divided into three bills: the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill; the Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill, which amends the Local Government Act in relation to alcohol control by-laws and liquor bans; and the Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill, which expands the definition of a “public place” to include vehicles in those areas, and which also allows police to seize alcohol from a young person in a public place who is not there with a parent or guardian, as well as allowing the police to issue infringement notices.

Our alcohol reform package is designed to put in place a new regulatory system for the safe supply and sale of alcohol. It aims to help minimise the harm caused by excessive and inappropriate consumption of alcohol. In previous speeches I have talked about the importance of empowering local communities to create their own local alcohol policies—a huge plus, as we have heard many speakers observe—and how these bills give parents more tools to manage their children’s access to alcohol.

Other salient features are that it allows the Minister of Justice, in consultation with the Minister of Health, to ban alcohol products that are especially appealing to young people or particularly dangerous to health. It strengthens the existing offence of excessive consumption of alcohol by making it apply to any businesses selling or promoting alcohol and prohibiting a wider range of promotions, such as the most iniquitous one, which is advertising free alcohol. It makes it an offence to promote alcohol in a way that has a special appeal to those under the purchase age. These changes will apply to any promotion, including TV advertising and billboards.

The package sets up an experts forum to examine the merits of further restrictions on alcohol advertising and sponsorship—a very pertinent point, given the Law Commission’s report. I particularly loathe the so-called ready-to-drinks or alcopops. These are alcoholic wolves masquerading as sweet, syrupy sheep. We have a regulation-making power in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill allowing us to restrict ready-to-drinks at any time in the future. This sends a very strong signal to the industry that it must take action to reduce the harm. I commend the legislation to the House.

It is rather sad that New Zealand First cannot support all three bills from the Alcohol Reform Bill that we now have before us. We will be able to support the Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill and the Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill, but we will not be able to support the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill, which forms the main part of the alcohol reforms. The expectations of the public that these reforms would make a difference were very high. Those expectations have not been met by this legislation. One expectation was that the public’s majority view of the needed reforms would be delivered, and that expectation is not being met either. The result is that this Government’s attempt at the reforms needed around alcohol is a failure.

What we can expect is that some of the worst behaviour around alcohol abuse will carry on unabated this Christmas and New Year period. What we can expect is that the drinking culture amongst the young will get worse and not better. What we can expect is that the rate of harm to young drinkers in particular will accelerate and not improve, because this Government has made it clear to them that all is well and that they should carry on just as they are. That is not what the public of New Zealand wants. What we can also expect is that the big commercial interests in alcohol will be feeling very well satisfied with the legislation as it now is because they are well and truly off the hook. The truth about this legislation is that it is an opportunity lost. It is an opportunity lost to send a message about the awful drinking culture, especially amongst the young, in this country. It is an opportunity lost to introduce some real controls around the most dangerous forms of alcohol products. It is even an opportunity lost to warn people on labels on alcohol about the real dangers of it, especially with regard to pregnant women.

There are some good things in the three bills though, but not nearly enough to save the legislation from being a failed and weak attempt at reform. One of the areas where some progress is made is in the better empowerment of local authorities to make by-laws and to establish local alcohol policies. The provisions for local alcohol policies are welcome. Local alcohol policies have a capacity to make a large contribution to alcohol control in New Zealand because they will reflect local issues and local attitudes. However, these should be mandatory in the legislation and not just discretionary, and this shows again the weakness of the Government’s proposed legislation. There are some better controls around supermarkets, dairies, and grocery stores, and those are also welcome to clarify the law, but they too have been weakened when more restriction was indicated.

But there are really two great blunders in this attempt at alcohol reform. The first, of course, is the failure to return the age for purchasing alcohol to 20 years. Only New Zealand First voted as a party on that, and we voted to return it to 20 years. It was clearly what the vast majority of New Zealanders wanted. Increasing the purchase age would have made alcohol harder for young people to get. It would have meant less consumption by that age group. It would have given them a good signal that they need to change, but that opportunity has been lost.

The second failure is the failure to deal with the problem drinks, the ready-to-drinks. These sweet, easy-to-drink ready-to-drinks and similar drinks are well known to be very harmful because large quantities can be consumed, especially, of course, by young people. Sugar levels are very high. They make the drinks very attractive. These drinks have at least 5 percent alcohol and, in many cases, a lot more. They can be treated by young people as though they were soft drinks, and they lead too easily to intoxication. They are pushed and priced to sell by alcohol producers and sellers. They are condemned by the experts and the Law Commission as one of the drinks most potentially harmful to our young people. And what has this Government done? It said “Well, maybe we’ll do something about it in the future.”, and that is not good enough. Drinks of this kind with more than 5 percent alcohol should be covered by this legislation and should be prohibited. That would have been the most effective thing we could have done as part of these reforms. This Government has totally abdicated its responsibility to act effectively in this way. Instead, it has sold out to big alcohol industry players that have twisted the Government’s arm. In so doing, the Government has also sold our young people down the river—a river of bad alcohol and bad habits.

The Government says that it has got assurances that the alcohol industry wants the chance to introduce its own measures to limit the production and the sale of these drinks, but that does not explain at all why the Government should not be prohibiting and regulating these drinks right now. In fact, providing a level playing field and requiring all industry operators to do the same would assist and not hinder industry cooperation. The industry in any event cannot be trusted to do the right thing without regulation. Otherwise, it would have done it well before now. It is very uncertain what in the end the industry will do without the guidance of regulations. It is, as we all know, actually the Government’s job to propose legislation and regulation. It is not a matter for the alcohol industry to do so, and there is no need for the Government to wait and see whether the alcohol industry will act appropriately. It should just pass the necessary measures right now to restrict or prohibit ready-to-drinks, the biggest single alcohol problem in this country for young people.

So for those reasons New Zealand First cannot support such weak and watered-down legislation, except for the few areas of advantage, and I refer especially to local alcohol policies, which can make a good contribution. New Zealand First has no choice but to vote against the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill. New Zealand deserves a lot better than this, but this Government is not capable of it.

I am pleased to speak on the third reading of the bills from the Alcohol Reform Bill. This legislation is in response to the Law Commission’s 2010 report. As the Minister of Justice noted in her speech, it is the first time in two decades that a Parliament has acted to restrict access to alcohol.

I also was personally disappointed that the purchase age has remained at the status quo, but I agree with other speakers that we have in this legislation the tool to begin to change the alcohol culture and there will be no single magic bullet.

I am particularly pleased with three aspects of the legislation, and those include giving parents more tools to manage their children’s access to alcohol. In particular, it is an offence for anyone other than a parent or guardian to provide alcohol to an under-18-year-old without a parent or guardian’s consent expressed. Also, it has to be given in a responsible manner. I agree with other speakers that empowering local communities is going to have a crucial part to play in changing alcohol culture. I am also very pleased that supermarkets and grocery stores will display and advertise alcohol only in a single, non-prominent area. I commend this legislation to the House.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the work that has gone into the Alcohol Law Reform Bill, which we are debating today: the work that was done by the Law Commission in its excellent report on the state of alcohol law reform in New Zealand; the work that was done by the officials from the Ministry of Justice, some of whom I see are present in the gallery today, who gave excellent advice to the Justice and Electoral Committee as we conducted our deliberations, heard submissions, and received advice in the 49th Parliament; and also the work of Lianne Dalziel. When she was Associate Minister of Justice she introduced a good and comprehensive set of alcohol law reforms that were, unfortunately, withdrawn by the former Minister, the Hon Simon Power. They were, essentially, confined to the legislative dustbin. That is a real shame, because 2 or 3 years ago Parliament could have passed comprehensive alcohol law reform, if that had not been the history of this matter.

Instead, we saw new legislation tabled. It was to have been passed in the previous Parliament, but it was not. That Parliament ran out of time, as it did with so many of the other measures that were being advanced by the former Minister of Justice, and so it is not until now, the end of the first year of the next triennium, that this Parliament has finally gotten round to addressing the issue of alcohol law reform. That is a shame, because there will have been further, unnecessary alcohol-related deaths and illnesses suffered in New Zealand as a result of that delay, and that must weigh on our consciences.

There were, I think, some useful observations made in the Minister’s speech, and in some of the speeches made by Government members, about the good innovations that are contained in this bill, and they are undeniable. It is quite clear that if this bill passes through Parliament, we will have, in general, a better regime for regulating the sale and purchase of alcohol in New Zealand compared with that which exists now. There are some good, logical technical changes, which I commend to the House, and which certainly lead me to be inclined to support the legislation. But, as other speakers have noted, that, unfortunately, is not the yardstick by which this measure is going to be judged. It is not going to be judged by those sensible technical improvements. It is going to be judged by all the lost opportunities, which we as a Parliament have passed up, to really try to make a dent in the problematic parts of New Zealand’s binge drinking culture, which is a problem that is acknowledged right across the House.

I want to remind the House of some of those lost opportunities by way of speaking to some of the Supplementary Order Papers that were voted down in the Committee of the whole House. There was a very, very good suggestion from my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway, who spoke earlier in this debate, which would have put some restrictions on the advertising of alcohol. It would have ensured that the exposure of young people to alcohol advertising was reduced by ending billboard and poster advertising within 300 metres of schools, creating a 9 p.m. watershed for alcohol advertising on television, and restricting alcohol advertising in cinemas to those films with an R18 rating. There would have also been under his amendment a committee of officials set up to plan and implement the introduction of greater restrictions on all forms of alcohol promotion, in accordance with the Law Commission’s report. It is a great tragedy that that Supplementary Order Paper 91 did not pass into law, because it would have meant a better bill.

Similarly, David Clark suggested an amendment that would have increased the restrictions on the advertising of alcohol on television, in order to prevent the relentless presentation of the product in the attractive light in which it is currently portrayed, which, as we all know from the evidence, tends to increase consumption. Again, all the evidence before the select committee was that tackling advertising in a sensible way would really help to get the message across that alcohol is not a normal product and that it does have hazards if it is not consumed appropriately and responsibly, and yet we failed as a Parliament to progress that amendment.

There was another amendment, which I supported, from my colleague Louisa Wall, which would have ensured that off-licence premises could not be located within a 1-kilometre radius of an early childhood centre or a primary, intermediate, or secondary school. I acknowledge that that amendment had some issues around workability, but—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Sure did—sure did.

I cannot forget, Mr Williamson, the evidence that I heard at the select committee from schools in low-decile areas that are having to deal with the fact that their kids—

💬 Mike Sabin: Local alcohol plans take care of that.

Their kids walk past liquor stores every day on the way to school. This is a “normal” product. The advertising is out on the street, on sandwich boards. Those kids in those areas are exposed to these advertising messages right from the beginning, and the evidence is that the normalisation of alcohol in that way is going to be detrimental to many of those children.

There were some other very good amendments. The restriction on the trading hours of off-licences proposal, which Andrew Little put up on his Supplementary Order Paper 110, is one that I think it is a shame we missed the opportunity to progress. One that I think really did deserve better treatment from the House than it got was Lianne Dalziel’s suggestion that we empower the Minister with the ability to set a minimum price regime for alcoholic products. Contrary to all the propaganda and all the misinformation that were put out about that proposal, all it would have done was insert a clause in the legislation giving the Minister a power. She could have taken advice from the officials. It could have been a sliding scale type of arrangement that would have affected only alcoholic products that were truly identified as problematic. Again, the evidence we heard in the select committee was that that is cheap wine in supermarkets. That is what people use to pre-load before they go out on the town and buy from on-licences. It is an area where we have to get more serious and where very little will be done by this legislation to make a change.

One of the members on the Government benches interjected earlier that local alcohol policies would go a long way to solve one of the problems that I was speaking about earlier—and they will, where they exist—but one of the things that I think best typifies the lost opportunities in this legislation is our failure to have made local alcohol policies a comprehensive requirement of local government regions, because, again, at the select committee what we were told is that the areas of greatest deprivation are often the areas where it is hardest to get civic involvement in local government so that people will push for stronger regulation of the availability of advertising in their communities. In other words, the places where you most need a local alcohol policy will probably be the last places to get them, if they get them at all, because we have made it a matter for the discretion of the local authority, rather than saying to the local authority: “Look, you need to have one of these for the well-being of your community, and here are the sorts of things you might want to put in it.” The other problem is that we have very much restricted the matters that local government bodies can deal with in local alcohol policies. They are not able to take a health promotion approach. They are simply restricted to the old regulatory philosophy about the availability of alcohol, and, again, that is a lost opportunity in this legislation.

There were a number of other very good Supplementary Order Papers. I think the failure of those Supplementary Order Papers to progress simply because they were moved by the Opposition and because the Government members were whipped on every issue in this bill—other than the age issue—is one of the reasons why, in the media and in the public, there is this very justifiable sense of a lost opportunity with this legislation.

I want to conclude by praising the work that has been done throughout this debate by Alcohol Action New Zealand. Professor Doug Sellman, the Director of the National Addiction Centre, Professor Geoffrey Robinson, the chief medical officer in Wellington, and Professor Jennie Connor, the head of the department of preventive and social medicine at Otago University, have issued a statement today. I want to read the last paragraph of that statement, in conclusion: “history will judge those MPs who wilfully planned and led the wasted opportunity to do something to help the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders being harmed by weak alcohol laws. Their failure is seen in the bill due to be passed in Parliament today—of particular note: Key, Dunne, Borrows, Joyce, Collins and Power.”

Tēnā koe. Kia ora tātau katoa e te Whare. Ā, ka mihi rā ki a tātau i a tātau e wānanga nei i tēnei o ngā pire e pā ana ki te waipiro.

[Thank you. Greetings to us all, the House. I acknowledge us as we address this of the bills here relating to alcohol.]

I am pleased to take a short call on behalf of the Māori Party to raise a couple of issues in this final reading of the alcohol reform legislation. I listened to the member Charles Chauvel and his mention of Doug Sellman. I, too, want to acknowledge the background work that he did with the Māori Party in providing us with some solid information and statistics, which were helpful, certainly, to the Supplementary Order Papers that I presented to the House as well.

Up until this point in time we have supported—pretty much—the general passage of this legislation. It has been wide-ranging legislation covering off a fairly substantive change to some legislation to do with alcohol, and that has been pleasing, because it has opened the door up to the big discussion. We supported it along the way because we believed that we gained some concessions to the Māori Party and also, as I say, to allow that debate to happen. But we really do believe that we must focus on the long-term outlook, the intergenerational shift, which will ensure that we reduce alcohol-related harm right across the whānau.

We advocated for significant investment in the sector, targeted at alcohol treatment services. We were pleased that the Government moved in this way with a $10 million announcement. We also supported the proposal for a cross-agency advertising and sponsorship review, as recommended by the Law Commission. We are particularly supportive of the Law Commission’s advice that alcohol advertising and sponsorship could be addressed by limiting product information to sort of a plain format, pretty much like what the Hon Tariana Turia has done in terms of addressing issues of tobacco and health-related issues with that.

We are, however, disappointed that we have not gone far enough. In that regard we say that we have not gone far enough because we have attempted, through the Māori Party, to look at what we have termed “social hazards”: one to do with alcohol, of course, and the others to do with tobacco and gambling. The Hon Tariana Turia has certainly looked at the whole issue of tobacco, and plain packaging is coming our way, I hope, in the near future. The gambling legislation in my name is a member’s bill, and we are hoping to have some major changes in respect of the legislation on that. And, of course, here we are talking about the alcohol reforms.

The question was asked: why is the Māori Party taking a pretty strong stand on what we have termed social hazards? It is pretty much because it recognises that they are having a huge effect on Māori society throughout the country. It is not as if it has just happened; it has been over time. For those who did not know, Māori society is one of the few societies where the history prior to the arrival of the settler group was that we were basically free of alcohol. Indeed, the term that is used for alcohol now is waipiro, which is, basically, “stinking water”. Although people do get off on a bit of alcohol now and again, the effects have been pretty traumatic and manifest themselves in all sorts of ways, which have been debated in the Chamber as we have gone through this legislation.

We are disappointed that the local alcohol plans remain voluntary. The liberalisation of alcohol sales, opening up supermarket sales, extending opening hours, reducing the minimum purchase age to 18, and increased numbers and increased densities of outlets have all pretty much compounded the problem.

So we tended to put our energies into tabling various amendments, which included the following: make the proximity to a school a criterion for determining liquor licences, and adding Māori representation to local committees—the local committees to be expanded out by one person, to accommodate mana whenua representation. We wanted to limit the visibility of advertising in grocery stores and grocery shops, so that the products are not visible in the store but they are able to be sold. We talked about eliminating advertising and sponsorship of alcohol, except inside, on licensed premises, bars, etc. We talked about a sinking-lid policy on off-licence retailers and liquor stores within territorial authorities. Basically, the replacement of existing stores is the only exception, and only if there is not another liquor store within 5 kilometres of that store. We talked about changing trading hours to 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for off-site premises and 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. for on-site premises with a one-way door restriction period between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., and a minimum price per unit of alcohol sold, which will be set by the Ministry of Health. This follows a similar model that they proposed in Scotland.

So those are some of the amendments that we put up. Unfortunately, most of them got slammed down and did not go too far, despite the fact that there was relatively positive support across the House for some of those general ideas, and we had slight variations on those themes. The legislation could have gone a little further, and we are voting against it at this third reading because we think we could have done much better. We need to start thinking about the bigger picture of alcohol harm. It is not just about what we drink, it is about how we drink, it is about who we drink with, and we need to take the communities with us.

In closing, one of the recommendations from He Tētē Kura: Māori Addiction Treatment 1980-2008 tells us that there are three specific aspects to how we can work together to reduce and prevent alcohol-related harm. They are to build, strengthen, and maintain links with whānau, hapū, iwi, and the community and the sector around the country; secondly, explicitly foster a collective whānau approach in the Māori addiction treatment sector and workforce; and, finally, work more as a unified and collective sector to achieve whānau ora for Māori with addiction-related issues and problems.

If we were able to move in that direction to deal with some of the issues that we clearly have to address in terms of alcohol, the Māori Party would have been far more positive about giving support to this legislation. Sure, there are some good things in it that address some of the issues that have long been out there, but we think we could have done better, bearing in mind it is probably going to be a while before we come back to address the issue of alcohol in the future. It would have been an awesome opportunity if Parliament was able to look at some of those amendments that I and other members of the House were able to put up, but it was not to be, this time. We hope that the debate on record now serves as a good platform for future debate, should a further attempt come up in the near future around reforming our alcohol laws. At this point in time we will not be supporting this legislation at its third reading. Thank you.

The next call is a split call.

I have no joy in speaking on this legislation. I think of a young woman who, at the beginning of this year, after a party in the early hours of the morning slipped and fell on to the motorway in Māngere and got rammed by a truck. Now I think of how many people will die—alcohol related—during the holiday period. There is no joy in this, given that many people drink and alcohol has become a normal, natural part of our enjoyment of social engagements. It is of no joy for me to vote against the legislation, given the liquor industry provides jobs for our workforce. Jobs are what our communities desperately seek, especially at this time with close to 300,000 New Zealanders who are jobless and a 13-year high unemployment rate of 7.3 percent.

I do want to acknowledge, though, my colleague Lianne Dalziel, who has persistently argued and advocated on the issues advanced by the community on this matter. I also want to acknowledge my Labour colleagues and other parties who have developed Supplementary Order Papers to promote significant change and to improve this legislation.

I think all of us have attempted to highlight to this Government the state of the national crisis on our hands. Despite what the liquor industry and this Government say, the community knows the true state of this national alcohol crisis. Twenty-five percent of New Zealand drinkers are heavy drinkers, a third of all police apprehensions involve alcohol, half of serious violent crimes relate to alcohol, 60 different medical conditions are caused by heavy drinking, up to 75 percent of adult presentations at emergency departments on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are alcohol related, there are over 300 alcohol-related offences every day and over 500 serious and fatal injury traffic crashes every year, at least 600 children are born each year with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, there are over 1,000 alcohol deaths every year, and more than 17,000 years of life per year are lost through alcohol.

More than two-thirds of alcohol in New Zealand is being consumed at harmful or hazardous levels by about 700,000 heavy drinkers—the total population of Wellington and Christchurch combined. There are more than 70,000 alcohol-related physical and sexual assaults each year in our homes, and a third of police apprehensions involve alcohol.

Like tobacco, alcohol is a killer. Twenty people are dying every week from alcohol-related problems—half from injuries and other acute deaths related to intoxication, and the other half from various chronic diseases. This includes our three most common cancers: breast cancer, prostate cancer, and bowel cancer. Second-hand alcohol causes brain damage in up to 3,000 unborn babies every year. This, together with alcohol-related violence, poverty, and neglect suffered by children, constitutes a serious breach of the human rights of New Zealand’s most vulnerable citizens.

The alcohol industry will argue that it wants responsible drinkers, but the industry and the supermarkets and dairies actively target our young people. Every advertisement seen by a young person aged 15 to 24 years increases by 1 percent the number of drinks they consume. The alcohol industry wants customers for life, similar to the tobacco industry. The community responded with marches, petitions, newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and documentaries all pointing to the harm caused by alcohol—[Bell rung]—that was fast—in our communities. We have a national alcohol crisis.

Let me just say that the liquor industry argued personal responsibility, but it will not tell New Zealanders that alcohol is highly intoxicating, alcohol is a neurotoxin that can cause brain damage, alcohol can directly cause aggression, and a lot of the alcohol industry’s profit comes from heavy drinking.

Let me just conclude. Our children, who are the most vulnerable, are targeted by this industry, and under this legislation they will continue to be the targets. When I weigh up the benefits promoted by the liquor industry and the improvements that the Government says it has made in this legislation against the harm and the cost of alcohol-related harm in our communities, the harm and the cost of harm far outweigh any benefit to society. I will be voting against this legislation.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to take a call to vote in support of these three bills, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill, the Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill, and the Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill. The Green Party will be voting in support, but we are deeply disappointed. The three bills we have in front of the House are a missed opportunity. These three bills fail to tackle the big issues facing our country, and they are significant issues. What we are talking about is New Zealand’s cultural drinking problem.

As we know, the first part of dealing with the problem—[Interruption] It is a—oh, we have had a good interjection from the public lobby. [Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Just one moment. Can security just find out where that is coming from, please? I am going to stop the clock, Mr Hughes. [Interruption] Oh, is it in the Chamber here? Well, I will ask the member, if he wants to use it, to go out into the lobbies. I will invite—[Interruption] Order! I did stop the clock, so—Gareth Hughes.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. That might be the best contribution by the member Brendon Horan we will see today! As I was saying, the country has got a cultural drinking problem. It is important that we acknowledge it. You know, all of us see it in our towns, in our cities, as we go out on the weekends and sometimes accompany the police. We see it on the news, we see it in the media, we see it at public events. In my town a third of the crime occurs down the “golden mile”—down Courtenay Place—which some of our members are more noted for patronising than others, but this is where the bulk of our crime in my city of Wellington happens, and it happens, of course, because of the alcohol problems we see, particularly on Saturday and Friday nights.

We know it is causing real harm. We have heard some heartbreaking stories over the course of this debate. We have heard some heartbreaking stories in the Justice and Electoral Committee. We know that alcohol in New Zealand is responsible each year for 1,000 deaths—1,000 people’s deaths can be attributed to, and no doubt were avoidable because of, the role of alcohol.

Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch, you picked me up in my Committee stage speech on mentioning the intoxication of members that I had seen. That got quite wide play in the media, and I think it is symptomatic of the fact that we still cannot have an open and honest discussion around alcohol—the fact it is happening. I think sometimes we like to keep our heads in the sand and pretend it is happening somewhere else, but it is happening to our country. It is happening to our towns, our schools, our communities, and, unfortunately, sometimes to the poorest and most vulnerable Kiwis.

As I said, the Green Party will be voting in support, but we lament that the measures in this legislation are not going to be the most effective that they could be. There are three big missed opportunities. The first is we see the Law Commission report there—a substantial tome. It is a real once-in-a-generation opportunity to take the momentum from this well-considered, well-researched, substantive report. It is a missed opportunity, because there was genuine cross-party support across this Chamber. We have heard some good things from the Labour Party, some good amendments from the Māori Party. My colleague Kevin Hague, the Green Party spokesperson on alcohol, put up a number of good amendments. There was a real opportunity to get cross-party support for greater alcohol action. It did not have to fall across the partisan lines that it has, where, sadly, the balance has fallen on less regulation, less action, than what I think people would have wanted. Third was the missed opportunity of genuine public support. The polls are saying that Kiwis do want to see greater action. Really, the once-in-a-generation opportunity to take the work of the Law Commission, the cross-party support, and the public desire for action has been blown.

Unfortunately, all the attention was on the smokescreen of the purchase age issue. I am glad we did keep it at 18. I think it was all about avoiding the real issues. It would not have been fair, it would not have been effective at reducing real harm, and, in fact, it was damaging, because it took the focus away from those real issues. It is good to see Parliament use a three-way vote, so that the desire of the majority of members—the largest number of members—could be achieved in the final vote. But what we have failed to address is those real issues: the issues of accessibility, advertising, and intoxicated driving, amongst many others.

We know that in the period between 1990 and 2010 there have been 8,000 new alcohol outlets in New Zealand. There are 1,000 alcohol outlets now that sell alcohol 24/7, and it is good that we see that 65 percent of people in the Health Sponsorship Council say that there are too many liquor outlets. We have a real need for action on the accessibility of alcohol. Likewise with advertising, because we have a barrage of it on TV. I understand that annually around $70 million is spent. We know the studies show that numerous people, particularly young people, remember the ads. We have got to remember why the alcohol industry is spending so much money on alcohol advertising, and the simple answer is that it is spending it because it works.

Lastly, intoxicated driving—a real opportunity to move into international norms and lower the blood-alcohol level. We are glad to be voting for alcohol measures but we could go—

I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member.

The member Gareth Hughes, who just resumed his seat, said something about members having had their heads in the sand. I am not sure too many people in this place would disagree with that. Can I just firstly, in this last call, commend the Minister of Justice for the work and also the Justice and Electoral Committee. It is a substantive—

💬 Brendan Horan: What about your son coming on a Wednesday and making out it’s a Thursday, and putting my mother’s grave on TV?

—piece of work. At least it is the member speaking and not his cellphone on this occasion. It is a substantive body of work, because this is a substantive problem in this country. It is, by volume, one of the biggest problems, if not the biggest drug problem. By consequence, probably not so. If we had 85 percent of the population smoking P, we would probably see some slightly different consequences, but none the less this is a country that has challenges around substance abuse, and alcohol is at the top of that list. Problems like this will never be solved by this place. They will never be solved by the police; they will be solved by the community. The appropriate tools are what are required for the community, and the appropriate culture is something that only the community can foster, with the assistance of messages from this place.

There has been some discussion in the House about the purchase age. For me, it was 20. Why? Because I believe that so many parents in this country believe that lowering the age was the cause of the problem. In all likelihood it is probably not, but in their minds it was, and the overwhelming dissatisfaction from members of the public about the fact that the age was not raised to 20 says very clearly that they think that that is an important aspect of this issue. Whether or not it is, the point is that that 85 percent of the population—we need those people on our side, because this issue will take the community to solve, and those people need to know that they have our backing.

The ironic part of that is that two members who took calls, Lianne Dalziel and Iain Lees-Galloway, took a fairly prominent position on the fact that we had gone soft and we were getting this all wrong. They both voted for 18 because they do not see that those parents need empowering and that we needed to support them, and, even more ironically, what you find is that both those members have some very strong views on the decriminalisation of cannabis under the guise of medicinal marijuana. If you turn to some of the blogs, you see some really interesting commentary. One of them, from Iain Lees-Galloway, said: “Worth having a good read of this to take it all in.”, when referring to the Law Commission’s report on the Misuse of Drugs Act. “Lianne Dalziel and I are as keen to hear your thoughts as the Law Commission is.” They are very keen to hear the thoughts on the decriminalisation, or liberalising the use, of cannabis, a drug that does so much harm in this place—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

—and stand on that side of the House and criticise this Government for the role that we have taken with regard to getting the right balance and right measures. My challenge is to the people in this House and to this community and to New Zealand is to make sure that we pick up a challenge and help change that culture. This legislation will take us there. Thank you.