Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill

I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill be now read a second time. This is a bill that will allow communities to use some of their most prized facilities, including the many great pubs, bars, clubs, and other licensed venues, during what is the largest festival on the 4-yearly New Zealand calendar, the Rugby World Cup. I look back with fond memories to the Rugby World Cup being hosted in New Zealand, and particularly in my city, Auckland, only 4 years ago, and I believe that we are in for a fantastic festival, made better by the enablement given by this bill. It is a victory for the presumption that New Zealanders are free to do as they please unless they are harming others and given good reason for restraint on that freedom. I raise that point, which should be redundant, because too many in this debate have come from the opposite presumption that we should be constrained unless we are able to justify ourselves acting freely.

I would like to thank the Justice and Electoral Committee for the excellent work that it has done on improving this bill and, ironically enough, for having to meet at some non-standard hours to carry out that work. I would like to thank Labour’s Jacinda Ardern, who did some pretty good work on the bill, and also Peeni Henare. I would like to thank Clayton Mitchell from New Zealand First, who, as a bar owner with something like 25 years’ experience, proved invaluable in giving advice on the technicalities of the bill. I would like to thank my colleagues from the National Party, particularly Jacqui Dean. I would like to thank the Greens member Kevin Hague, but I have to say he has made that more difficult than it needed to be.

I want to take some time to visit some of the litigations, I guess, that occurred in the select committee and say why I believe the select committee arrived at the right place. It is true that when this bill was introduced I was committed to doing everything possible to look into several conditions that the Greens believed should be added to the bill before it was passed. One of those was that facilities in proximity to schools should be excluded, and we looked into that. One was that operators who have recently been penalised in their licensing should be excluded, and we will discuss that. Another was that the number of games should be restricted, and we will discuss that.

Well, what happened is that we sincerely looked into the matter of proximity to schools and, as you should when you do good regulation, we thought about this in terms of cost-benefit analysis and how much harm could be reduced by placing this restraint into this law. What we discovered, as it happens, is that most of the games fall on the weekend and a third of the tournament takes place during a 2-week school holiday. By and large, children do not go to school during the holidays and on the weekend, and it transpired that only three games take place on what you may call a school morning, where the spectre of kids going to school with people pouring out of pubs was an actual possibility.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: Every morning’s a school morning for this member.

That is three out of 48 games. Mr Mallard at the back can tell us what three divided by 48 is. It is a very small percentage—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: No, no.

I am waiting. Are you there yet?

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: It’s one over 16, yeah.

To think he used to be a teacher—0.125. In any case, the fact of the matter is that it is a very small portion of the possible games. So we decided, especially in light of the fact that those games were the USA versus Japan, for one, and New Zealand versus Namibia, for another, that the benefit of that restraint would be minimal, but we also took advice that the number of schools that are in any proximity to pubs and clubs is actually surprisingly large once you do the modelling, as was done back in 2012 for the primary Act. So we decided, having given it, I think, fairly sincere and just consideration, not to take that step.

The question of people who have previously been penalised as operators not having the bill apply to them has been put into the legislation by the select committee. If you have had your hours varied under section 280 of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act in the previous 12 months, this bill will not apply to your operation. Interestingly enough, when we put that particular part up for the vote in the select committee, the Green Party opposed it. There is just no pleasing some people. None the less, that is now in the bill.

Finally, we come to the number of games. The select committee had a very constructive discussion around limiting the number of games to, perhaps, only 16, which I think is a third of 48 games. What happened there is that we actually did not have the numbers on the select committee to make that limit, and politics, among many other things, is fundamentally the ability to count. However, what I would say is that I am actually proud that we will not have, as some proposed, a limit on the number of games and a limit to All Blacks’ games only, because what this means is that it will be a decision for consumers and a decision for operators about what is a game of interest to New Zealanders, not a decision for politicians. I am proud of our multicultural heritage and the fact that there are so many different creeds, classes, and races of people who want to make their own choices about entertainment. That is where we have landed.

There were a number of other substantial changes. Before I move to those, I would say that the trust that members have been prepared to put in New Zealanders is a pretty direct measure of how in touch they are with the true nature of New Zealanders, the overwhelming majority of whom are law-abiding, responsible, and safe people when they go out to enjoy a community event like this. Probably the most substantial change to the bill as introduced is that it will be an amendment to the principal Act, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, rather than a stand-alone bill. This is a technicality for drafting purposes and efficiency; however, it does make the bill look dramatically different from the way that it first appeared.

The committee also acknowledged in its report that where there is a question of whether Resource Management Act - type restrictions on opening hours might constrain the opening of a venue, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act prevails and the opening hours are extended in spite of any such provisions by local councils under the Resource Management Act, for example.

There will be a brightline test. As an electorate MP, I am very mindful of how people get on with their neighbours. I happen to live in and represent the most densely populated electorate in the country. So there is a brightline test for the amount of noise that can be made.

The use of amplified music outside and the use of outdoor spaces will not be permitted. The emptying of bottles, which is a real bugbear for people who live near licensed facilities, will not be allowed under the hours mentioned in this bill. More important, there is a penalty that you will lose the right for this bill to apply to you—if you happen to be operating a licensed venue—if a complaint is made to a district licensing committee by the police. It has to be a substantial complaint, but the licensee will actually lose their right to operate under this bill, and that is a very strict sanction against abuse and misuse of this legislation.

Other than that, the bill has come back largely as it was first introduced to this House. I would like to thank, again, the committee, which has worked very hard, very rapidly, and often at unusual hours to get the bill into its present state. I would like to, finally, just re-emphasise that this is a victory for the presumption that New Zealanders are free to do as they please unless they are given justifications for their freedoms being restricted. This is not supposed to be a country where you are presumed unfree unless you can justify yourself to the busybodies. With that in mind, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

I want to congratulate the member David Seymour on bringing his member’s bill to the House and then to the Justice and Electoral Committee. We had a very short time in which to consider this bill, consider submissions to the bill, and then return the bill to the House in a more robust form than we had got it in, as we have done today. I want to also join the member in charge of the bill in acknowledging the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee; not only the members of the committee but the clerks of the committee and parliamentary counsel as well, who did a significant job of editing and rewriting the bill and facilitating the meetings that the committee called and attended. I believe we have returned a bill that is worthy of the intent in which it was introduced.

I want to talk about the process a little, and to acknowledge those submitters who responded to the call to provide the committee with written submissions. It was gratifying to see that although there was an extremely tight time frame for the hearing of submissions and the consideration by the committee, those people who were interested and those people whom we wrote to, in particular, took the time to have their views expressed to the committee. We did consider the views expressed and raised, and debated a number of points that were raised, but I will say that a number of those submissions addressed the harms of alcohol in our society.

That brings me to one of the reasons why a substantial change has been made to this bill. Although it was introduced as a stand-alone bill, we are recommending to the House that it be incorporated as an amendment to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. In doing so—incorporating it as an amendment to the principal Act—it then allows section 259 of the Act to apply, and that section and other sections of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act deal with conditions and the breaching of conditions, and the ability to enact penalties.

So to those submitters—and I thank them, and the committee thanks them—who took the time to submit to us on the harms of alcohol, in particular, I say, yes, we considered your objections. Yes, we believe that by making this member’s bill an amendment to the principal Act, those harms will be addressed. Those harms are also addressed in several other ways. As the member in charge of the bill just mentioned, one of the mechanisms around this bill is that a licensee who wishes to trade outside of their licence hours must, within 7 days of the Rugby World Cup game, supply the district licensing committee and the police with a notice. That notice needs to detail the mitigation measures that that licensee will undertake whilst they are open for a Rugby World Cup game.

It is worth noting that those conditions that the licensee notifies the police and district licensing committee of cannot be more lenient than would be the case under their normal licence. Also, they must supply to the police and district licensing committee, and have posted on their premises before and during the game, those brightline conditions that David Seymour mentioned, which are: no dumping of the empty bottles, no use of outside courtyard areas, and no broadcasting of music for the duration of the game. The provisions of this bill will allow licensed premises that are wishing to trade expressly for the televising of Rugby World Cup games to open for an hour before the game. Of course, they are open for the game and they can be open for an hour after the game, but the sale of alcohol must cease half an hour after the last whistle blows. The premises must be empty by an hour after the game has finished.

I have talked about the benefit, which is that a licensee who wishes to trade outside their normal licensing hours under this regime will need to provide a notice to the police and district licensing committee with their conditions. I am anticipating that it will be in the nature of a one-pager. It has to be submitted for each game, but, in reality, if a licensee wishes to be open for 10 games, they must notify the police of that, but they can submit the same conditions and place another date on the form. The intention is not to make this a difficult process. So those are the benefits.

Let us talk about the penalties, because having attached—if it is the will of the House—this bill to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, section 259 will apply and all the penalties contained in the principal Act will apply. The police, and also licensing inspectors, will have the ability to close down a premises if transgressions in its licensing conditions happen during a Rugby World Cup game during that period. The penalty is that if a transgression is noted by the police or licensing inspectors, then that licensee will no longer be able to avail themselves and the conditions of this amendment. Nor will they be able to be eligible to trade under this legislation if they have had a penalty against them, which would be a variation of their hours within the 12 months preceding the Rugby World Cup.

So what this bill intends to do is to fill the gap for the public of New Zealand that has been left by onerous special licence conditions. We heard of a number of special licences that imposed onerous conditions so as to make it not worthwhile for licensees to contemplate staying open for the Rugby World Cup. I am very well aware that some district licensing committees can do things like requiring patrons to buy tickets at the door, requiring patrons to dress up as if they were children, and requiring the premises to have a guest speaker, so much so that the conditions have had a dampening effect and a very bureaucratic impact on licensees, and they are just finding the whole process too difficult and choosing not to trade. So this bill intends to fill that gap. However, we did hear of an instance along the lines of, say, Auckland’s Viaduct Basin, for example, where a number of premises are out in the open. They, and any other licensed premises in New Zealand, can avail themselves, if they find they do not fit into the parameters of these provisions, and can then also proceed with the special licence.

We do have another opportunity to speak on this bill today. It has been a very truncated process. It is a process that I can say the Justice and Electoral Committee has taken very seriously. Again, I want to thank the committee and everyone else involved in making a good contribution, each and every one of them, to what is going to be the success of this bill. I think we have landed it in a pretty good place. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Thank you for this opportunity. Let us hope that the action on the field come the Rugby World Cup is a little bit more lively than this debate at the moment. I would have expected the lead member on the bill to at least have some sort of sports analogy—“It was a game of two halves,” or some sort of comment of that nature. But what we are looking forward to is the progression of this bill to allow exactly what Mr Seymour has mentioned: for this country to share in its most favourite of pastimes—that is, sport, and, in this particular instance, rugby.

Can I also echo the comments already made thanking the Justice and Electoral Committee, of which I am proud to be a member. It was almost like rugby training where some of us were fair-weather trainers—you know, you only go out when the sun comes out and you do not want to actually train in the rain. But we were all committed to this cause. We came together at odd hours and on non-sitting days, and I commend those in the select committee and, of course, the leadership from Jacqui Dean of the select committee.

Can I also commend the member Mr Seymour for his rather open-minded approach when coming to the select committee to present his bill. He did actually come with a Magna Doodle, if you like, and he had a bit of clean slate and he was actually quite prepared to take a fair amount of criticism. He was prepared to take a fair amount of challenge during the robust process held through the select committee, and, to his credit, he was able to just simply shake that Magna Doodle and we got to draw and draft the bill that we have in front of the House today. So I say thank you to the select committee.

The main purpose, and it has been talked about very technically by the member Jacqui Dean, is to ease, if you like, the administrative burden placed upon, in particular, those local authorities in regulating, policing, and also granting and administering liquor licences and the applications for special occasions or special events. So what this does is it will lump it all together and we will call it the Rugby World Cup. We will make it an opportunity where most places in most communities will come together, whether it is at a local pub, a local rugby club, or a local sports club, to enjoy watching rugby.

It just so happens that, as we all know, the Rugby World Cup will be held over in England. Therefore, there is a time difference here, and we want to provide the opportunity for as many people as possible to get out and enjoy that. What better way to foster community spirit and community togetherness, if you like, than by bringing them all together and allowing them to enjoy the rugby at their local rugby club or at their local pub?

There were—and it has already been mentioned—a significant number of submissions. I must admit that there was some dismay amongst the select committee members that we were not going to open up to hear oral submissions. However, we allowed for written submissions and considered written submissions. There were a number. Some of those who did submit were from the New Zealand Medical Association, Women’s Refuge, district health boards, and local authorities. For most of them—and it needs to be pointed out here—their submissions were in objection to this bill for quite simple reasons, and some of those have already been mentioned.

There is, sadly, a binge-drinking culture in our country and, in particular, amongst our young people. Recent statistics have told us that it is an increasing concern amongst women. The binge-drinking culture in this country is often fostered around sport and tertiary institutions. So there were major concerns from those key stakeholders who were responsible, ultimately, for administering the applications for these types of special occasions and for these events to be hosted, but also there were those at the other end who are there picking up the pieces after a long night. So I want to acknowledge all of those who did make submissions.

The select committee considered them all and, of course, went through a robust debate on many of the points. I think what has come from it is a bill that does actually take into serious consideration many of the submissions—things around noise and things around proximity to schools and to community spaces—while also considering, one, our joy of watching rugby and, two, encouraging the hospitality sector, or reminding it, if you like, of its host responsibilities. I also hope that what this bill will do, given the times that we are extending the hours for, is encourage many of the licensed premises to come up with innovative ways to engage those people who do choose to come along to watch the rugby, such as by having breakfast or coffee, or a breakfast club. I know it sounds like a bit of an old thing—The Breakfast Club. It is even a bit before my time.

💬 Jono Naylor: You’re too young to remember that.

Mr Naylor may recall The Breakfast Club. But it does allow scope for innovative ways to include the community.

When I say “the community”, I want to talk a little bit about extending the number of games being covered from 16 to all of the games. The reason for that is when we look across our communities—and this is certainly the case right across the country in all of our towns and cities—we are so diverse. We are multicultural and multi-ethnic. Although everybody in the country, I am sure, supports black and supports the All Blacks at heart, you know, there is a little bit of Irish in some, there is a little bit of Scottish in some, and certainly, indeed in Auckland, there is a strong Pacific Island community. We want to be able to encourage them to come together to be able to watch their particular team, and to not just limit them to watching the All Blacks but allow them to celebrate with their team.

I know that the member Jacqui Dean mentioned dressing up like kids in costume, but, actually, that is part of the fun of it. You will recall that in the Rugby World Cup hosted by our great country, South Auckland was painted in Tongan red. Flag sales went through the roof. We want to encourage that kind of community spirit to get people behind their teams and not just limit them to watching the All Blacks.

The bill was actually a game of two halves. We know that it was turned down the first time, and it got through the second time. There was robust debate right through the select committee process. Some of the more technical things were around such things as technology. The question was highlighted: “Well, what’s to stop one particular place just turning a very small TV on in the corner while everybody gets drunk and nobody is actually watching the rugby?”, so there were some technical points on defining what kinds of technology that may be used to screen the game. Also, there are some very tight restrictions around those who have outdoor premises, around the noise, and I have already mentioned the proximity to community spaces and to schools.

I think this bill is a good thing. I am supporting it, and I would like to thank Mr Seymour for bringing this bill to the House. Finally, I will just finish by saying, go the mighty All Blacks. Kia ora.

I want to begin this contribution by quoting, actually, from the Law Commission’s report from 2010. One of the very first paragraphs in that report says: “Alcohol is a legalised drug with the potential to cause serious harm. We propose a new policy framework that amounts to a paradigm shift in the regulation of alcohol compared with the current system. We anticipate there will be considerable resistance to some of the proposed measures.” And, indeed, this bill effectively amounts to a rearguard action against the approach taken in the Law Commission’s report and by this House in the 2012 Act.

The Law Commission goes on to specify a list of the harms that it was concerned about, and much of this volume is concerned with those harms. It says: “The excessive consumption of alcohol by New Zealanders contributes to a range of serious harms. These can be categorised as: an array of criminal offences …”. It goes on to list the serious criminal offences associated with excessive alcohol consumption. There is “the causative contribution that alcohol consumption makes to a long list of diseases,” and it lists those, including “alcohol poisoning and accidental injury due to intoxication,”—again, more detail. Then there is “the catalogue of harms visited upon third parties as a result of others’ excessive consumption. … [such as] victims of crime, … domestic violence …”—and the select committee heard more about that—“the harmful effects on educational outcomes, workplace productivity, friendships, social life,” and so on, and public nuisance factors.

The report from the Law Commission, which was extensively discussed by this House in 2012, in stark contrast to the discussion that is going to be available around this bill, sets out some pretty strong evidence about the harm from alcohol. One of the chains of evidence that is presented and was essentially incontrovertible was that the increased availability of alcohol increased harm in proportion to that availability. In consequence, the Law Commission recommended—and Judith Collins, the Minister at the time, and this House agreed—that we should be restricting the hours that alcohol was available for. The submissions essentially mirrored the evidence that the Law Commission found and this House has heard before. There was, essentially, overwhelming evidence against the bill, and although the speakers so far in this debate have mentioned that, they have come nowhere near to conveying the extent of that evidence and argument against the bill, and I will come to that in more detail in a moment.

Most submissions said the bill was unnecessary because the special licensing regime that Parliament had set up for the specific purpose of special events like the Rugby World Cup was already in place. Many referred to the loss of democracy associated with this bill, not only in association with the truncated process that this bill would go through—for example, the extraordinarily short period that written submissions were open for, the lack of the opportunity to present oral submissions, and the fact that this bill will go through without a Committee of the whole House stage, in which there would have been the opportunity for further scrutiny of this bill today. Not only that, but also it is the fact that this approach, where Parliament rides over the top of existing local decision-making processes, effectively, rides roughshod over those processes.

Many were also concerned about the constitutionality of this bill. They made the point that this bill in fact undermines the objectives of the principal Act. There was not the time for the Justice and Electoral Committee to properly consider that. We do not have the Attorney-General’s view on that issue, and this House will not have a Committee stage to actually consider that argument in full.

There were numerous great submissions that were made by opponents to this bill, but I just want to read out some of those organisations. These are just the organisations, not the individuals, of whom there were also many opposed. Against the bill were Alcohol Action; Alcohol Healthwatch; Anglican Action; Auckland Council; Auckland Regional Public Health Service; Cancer Society; Community Action on Alcohol from Young People; Hokianga Health Enterprise Trust; Community and Public Health, which is a public health provider for Canterbury, the West Coast, and South Canterbury; Northland District Health Board; Hawke’s Bay District Health Board; the Health Promotion Agency; the Inner City Association, from Wellington; the Manurewa Business Association; the Manurewa Local Board; New Zealand College of Public Health Medicine; New Zealand Institute of Liquor Licensing Inspectors; the New Zealand Medical Association; the New Zealand Police; Ngā Wairere o Te Ora Trust; Ngāti Rangi Trust; Te Whānau o Waipareira; New Zealand Federation of Business and Professional Women; Population Health in the Waikato District Health Board; Public Health Association of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church; academics; the Society of Medical Officers of Health; Victoria Neighbourhood Association; the Waimakariri District Council; the Waves Trust; Western Bay of Plenty District Council; and Women’s Refuge. Those are just some of the organisations that submitted strongly with substantive submissions against this bill.

Those supporting the bill, those organisational substantive submissions in favour of this bill, came from—let us see—oh, the Hospitality Association of New Zealand, which is essentially the liquor industry, which has confirmed in the public debate around this bill that it developed the bill in conjunction with Mr Seymour. It is hardly surprising, then, that it would support it. The other substantial submission in favour came from the Young Nationals. I say “substantial”, but that is possibly a generous interpretation. Actually, sorry, it is probably wrong of me to say “Young Nationals”, because it was, in fact, I think, the Committee of the Central North Island Young Nationals. So those were the two institutional supporters of this bill.

The bill that has emerged from the select committee is undoubtedly better, and I do want to join others in thanking the members of the committee, the clerks of the committee, the officials who supported us, and the Parliamentary Counsel Office. They all did a fantastic job. The two big improvements that people have mentioned are the fact that licensees with serious or repeated licence breaches will not be eligible, and the brightline test around noise. Those are both significant improvements, as well as the incorporation of the bill as an amendment to the principal Act.

But, contrary to what we have heard from Mr Henare, there is no action on excluding premises that are close to schools or preschools—excluded. There is no restriction on the number of games in any way, despite that being the preference of, apparently, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice. There is no exclusion of pokies—effectively, it is a major extension of pokie licences. There is no requirement to serve substantial meals; no one-way door policy, even when one ordinarily would exist for those premises; and no reasonable way of ensuring that people are there for the purpose of watching the Rugby World Cup. Many other conditions that were proposed by most of the submitters have been excluded from the bill. In particular, I want to mention that as a result of a decision from the National Party caucus, licensed premises that wish to avail themselves of the provisions of this bill to open must now give only 7 days’ notice to the police. The police told the select committee that they required 20 days’ notice in order to gear up their resourcing to be able to handle this.

What this bill amounts to now is a major extension of the licensed hours of almost all bars and licensed premises in New Zealand almost every day for a 6-week period, with virtually no control. It is a reversal of the idea that we had when we had blanket 24-hour licensing and we said instead: “Let’s go for special licences for events like the Rugby World Cup. Let’s reverse that.” It says: “Rather than have that differentiated, targeted approach that special licences provide, let’s go back to blanket provisions and let’s not even set those blanket provisions in the most cautious way that we could.” This bill is a retrograde step in every conceivable way.

It is a pleasure to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill. I want to start my contribution to the House tonight by congratulating the member in charge of this bill, David Seymour. I think that David is building a well-deserved reputation in this House as a solid and conscientious MP who is perhaps—[Interruption]—putting aside some of the issues from his party from the past—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to require the chief Opposition whip to withdraw that comment.

💬 Chris Hipkins: I withdraw.

Thank you. I did not actually hear what he said and neither did David, but anyway I am sure Mr Seymour appreciates that withdrawal. I also want to put on the record the good way in which the Justice and Electoral Committee worked on this bill during the slightly—slightly more than slightly—truncated process in which the committee dealt with this bill, and the fact that it was well chaired by my colleague Jacqui Dean. I think it is fair to say—and even some members who may be voting against the bill tonight in the second and third readings will acknowledge this—that the committee worked in a collegial and consultative and deliberative way.

I particularly want to pay tribute to the hard work that Clayton Mitchell from New Zealand First did on the bill. Clayton’s experience as someone who has been a licensee and has run a number of establishments in his home town proved very useful when working through some of the more technical and practical issues. I think he made a very useful contribution. Also, Jacinda Ardern from the Labour Party, with her experience of Auckland Central, her neck of the woods, was able to provide some practical examples of how the bill might work in practice and how licensees might take advantage, or not take advantage, of some particular aspects of the bill.

The public policy problem that really confronted us on the select committee is that we want licensed premises—bars and clubs—to be able to stay open during the Rugby World Cup to show the Rugby World Cup games. It is worth just stepping through the logic as to how we got to this point. The public policy issue is that we want the bars to be open. And why is that? It is because people enjoy watching rugby, particularly Rugby World Cup games, with other people, with like-minded friends and family, and with other rugby fans.

As I said during the bill’s first reading, there is some sort of element of collective endeavour about willing the All Blacks on, or willing the Springboks on if you are a South African. You know, you get together with people who are all All Blacks fans, or if you are a Springbok fan, you get together with other Springbok fans, and it is slightly irrational but there is a sense that if you all get together and wish as much as you can that they will win, then it will happen. Whether or not that is true—it is certainly not true—there is something noble about doing that, almost, I would say.

💬 David Seymour: There’s no proof it doesn’t work.

As Mr Seymour pointed out, there is no proof it does not work—that is true—and we want that to be able to happen. A lot of people do not have Sky TV, and a lot of people, even if they do have Sky TV, may want to go down to a bar and watch it. But the problem that confronted us is that the games in the Rugby World Cup fall—some of them; particularly the ones that people want to watch—outside standard licensing hours, so that is really why the bill has come to Parliament.

Some people say: “Well, there’s a special licence process. Licensees should go through that. They should apply for a special licence.” That is all well and good, except for the fact that we heard as a committee—and certainly this has been out there in the public debate—that the process for the application for special licenses is a reasonably cumbersome one and that there were some onerous requirements being placed on people who were thinking about applying or had already applied. There were things like you had to have a guest speaker, there had to be dress-ups—there had to be a series of things that perhaps would take it into the realm of a special event. Really, is it fair enough to say you have to have a guest speaker in order to open the bar to show an All Blacks game? I would argue, and it is certainly the view of the Government, that you should not have to.

There was a suggestion made that we could limit this piece of legislation to a clarificatory piece of legislation just to make Parliament’s intent clear—that just showing a Rugby World Cup game would be a special event for the purposes of the Act. But that is not the path that we have decided to go down. Instead, what we have got is clarificatory legislation, I think, of a different ilk and legislation that is actually an amendment to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, which I will come to in a moment.

So what this bill does is make it easier to open bars and licensed premises to show Rugby World Cup games so that it is easier for New Zealanders who wish to avail themselves of that opportunity to do that. The bill preserves the situation if a bar owner or a licensee has already applied for an existing special licence. What will become section 45G of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act allows people who have availed themselves of that opportunity to continue down that route, if you like. They are allowed to continue to use that purpose of the special licence they have already provided, or, indeed, they can choose the route that we are providing for in this legislation.

The select committee has made a number of amendments to the bill that make it more workable and make it more sensible, but the other thing I want to do in my contribution is just to pick up on one of the points that Peeni Henare made. He repeated the assertion—the wrong assertion—that we have a binge drinking culture in New Zealand, particularly amongst young people. This is widely understood to be a fact, but it is actually a myth, and I want to put on the record some actual facts around alcohol consumption in New Zealand society.

Firstly, the World Health Organization in 2014 did a global status report on the use of alcohol in societies. Actually, what that report shows is that by international standards New Zealanders actually drink a moderate amount. We are 96th in the world for alcohol consumption. We drink about 13.7 pure litres of alcohol per capita. That places us 96th in the world. It is slightly less than the United Kingdom; it is slightly more than France. So, actually, we are, internationally, average drinkers.

What about binge drinking? Well, by international standards New Zealanders are very low binge-drinkers. Our prevalence rate of binge drinking is 5.6 percent. That is half that of Australia—

💬 Poto Williams: Not according to the Health Promotion Agency.

I am quoting the World Health Organization. That is half of Australia’s, it is a quarter of Canada’s, and it is one-sixth of the United Kingdom’s binge drinking prevalence rate. So is the assertion that we are a nation of binge-drinkers correct? No.

What about the assertion that our young people in particular are binge-drinkers? Well, the best data on binge drinking amongst young people comes from the Auckland University study that was published in 2012. This is a longitudinal study that has been updated in 2001, in 2007, and in 2012. It is actually quite remarkable. Here are some facts about young people and drinking. The proportion of young people who drink has dropped 25 percent in the last 5 years—that is, from 2007 to 2012. It is one-third of the rate in 2000. What about the number of people who are regular drinkers? That dropped 9 percent between 2007 and 2012. The number of people who are regular drinkers is half what it was in 2000—this is amongst young people.

What about the people who are young binge-drinkers? What about the number of people who say that they binge drank in the last month? Between 2007 and 2012 the number of young people in New Zealand who say that they binge drank in the last month has dropped by 18 percent. Again, the rate has halved since 1990. People often say that liberalisation of our liquor laws was a disaster—that the 1989 reforms were a disaster and led to a binge drinking culture. That is not true. They say that it led to young people getting drunk more and more. Again, the facts actually belie that.

The number of young people drinking is declining, the number of young people binge drinking is declining, the number of young people who drink regularly is declining, and, actually, the alcohol-related harm that comes from young people drinking is going down as well. These are the facts. They come from the World Health Organization and the best data that we have from Auckland University.

Alcohol liberalisation in New Zealand has worked, and I just close my speech and my contribution to this debate with those remarks because too often in this society young people are defamed by people who seek to ascribe characteristics and behaviour to them that are simply not borne out by the facts and simply not borne out by the reality. Young people are drinking less, they are binge drinking less, and harm from young people drinking is going down. With that I commend this bill to the House.

I have to say being beaten up by Wikipedia is quite an experience. Just in the spirit of this bill, “Coach Bishop”, although the pre-game speech was quite entertaining, all that has just gone in one ear and out the other. But I do actually have to say that I support some of what you were saying because I do believe that we are living in a period of harm minimisation, particularly when you compare where we have come from as a society—I have said it before—with where we are heading. It is all about the vectors on which we are travelling, and if you are heading towards a high propensity for drinking, then, of course, you are heading towards a binge drinking culture, and quite the opposite. But I digress.

We are going to get into Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill now, and I have to say that I have actually really enjoyed the select committee process. It is a new one for me, being on the Justice and Electoral Committee, and I would particularly like to say I very much enjoyed the chairing of that, Jacqui Dean. Thank you for your very open and very amicable way of chairing those meetings. Congratulations.

David Seymour, of course, is the person who has put this bill down with his very intoxicated personality—sorry, I mean intoxicating personality. That was a bit of a Freudian slip there. I do apologise. I can certainly see why he is putting this bill forward, and we certainly know where you will be, Mr Seymour, on game day. I just hope we can get you here working as well.

But when we actually got to sit around the table in caucus and debate this in all seriousness, I have to say, we had to run with the analogy—it felt like that at 5 minutes until full time, David Seymour put up the high ball, chased it, caught it mid-air, was tackled by the Greens mid-air, and got a penalty. That gave him the reprieve that he needed, because he came back the second day, he put the high ball up, and he is now running for the line. So there are a lot of people out there just waiting for the outcome of today’s voting. He has not been tackled yet, but he might be, and I have to say—oh, I am losing my voice. Sorry, people back home. Hmm! That is better. I have to say to those people back home that already the media has come out and said that this bill has gone through. It just goes to show that the media does not always get it right. It may well do, but it is certainly ahead of the game in today’s standings.

I want to take a little bit of a tack and just discuss the scrum that took place in our caucus discussing this bill, because we took it very, very seriously. New Zealand First is in a very strong position where we are not wanting to be out there singing from the rooftops that we are trying to liberalise the drinking laws. We want to also make mention of the good work that the police have been doing around the country, but we get back to the ambiguity of the current Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. This just goes to show how clunky and antiquated the current legislation is, and we do actually support the Green Party on part of what it has been saying, in so far as we would like to see a review put together to actually get a clearer outline on what constitutes a special licence, because that is what this is about.

Some councils, some areas, and some police around the country—and I can say openly that in Christchurch, from my anecdotal evidence, the police, the council, and the health department have been very, very supportive to make sure that the majority of those special licences have actually been granted. In other parts of the country, what constitutes a special licence has been interpreted in another way, where some insertions that I would consider to be ridiculous have been added into the conditions for opening up for the Rugby World Cup. For example—and we have already heard it in the House; Jacqui Dean has already spoken of it—one condition was having a ticketed event, so that every game has to be ticketed to make sure that you have your staff and your customers dressing up and your rooms in theme, etc., etc. Yes, dead right—the theme of the game is to make sure that you go to the pub because it is all about the atmosphere. If you cannot afford the tickets on your credit card so you can go and watch it live, sure, you want to be with your mates in the pub where the action really is.

Conversely, New Zealand First also equally and oppositely supports the fact that all New Zealanders should have the opportunity to watch all of these games live on their TV in the comfort of their lounge, with their family, with a cup of tea and a piece of toast or, if they choose, with a beer. Unfortunately, this legislation does not quite cover that one off, and we have got some work to do to try to ensure that New Zealanders can choose to stay in the comfort of their home with their family members, or with a few friends who decide to get up at that time of the morning, and watch the game, or, conversely, can go down to the pub, put on their scarves, and start making some noise and getting behind the teams that they love. And the teams that they love, of course, include the All Blacks, but there are many other teams that the people who live in New Zealand support: Tonga, Samoa, France, England—you want to get behind all of the different teams from around the world.

So I do also commend the select committee for looking at that objectively and saying: “Let the market determine whether it is going to be beneficial for licensed premises to open.” That is a common-sense approach, because nobody, unless you have got a huge Namibian group of people in your community to come down to your pub, is going to open up for a Namibia game, necessarily, unless, of course, they are playing the All Blacks. But it is up to each individual licensed premises to work that out—what it is going to open for and what it will not. In Mount Maunganui in Tauranga we have a very strong Brazilian and South American community—well, there you have it—as well as the English and the Irish communities. You can see how that is going to manifest.

But I have to say that this piece of legislation, which is to adjust and put an amendment into the current legislation, leaves a dirty stain on the legislation that we have got. It is going to leave a blight. It is going to add the Rugby World Cup 2015 as an amendment into this legislation. I feel a little bit uncomfortable moving forward from here and, in future, opening up this section and saying: “Why are we referring to 2015?”. Of course, when it gets to 2017 and 2018, it is just going to look ridiculous, which is, again, why I am asking the Minister of Justice, Amy Adams, to look into this. I have to say that Amy Adams has been fantastic too. She has been very, very accommodating and very open and very supportive of ideas and getting everybody involved. So I would ask her to look into this and actually resolve this problem so we can get on because, guess what? Next year we have got the Olympic Games, and the year after that we have got the Football World Cup again.

I would just like to give you some evidence, and this is not anecdotal because it is absolutely from me. I have been involved in putting together special licence applications for some quite large events. In fact, one of the events I put together was for 17,000 people. It is a very onerous task on the licensee to actually put a special licence application together. That application was around about 35 pages of what we would and what we would not do to ensure harm from the consumption of alcohol was minimised. Working with your local authorities and the police is absolutely vital to ensure you get that open dialogue to ensure that things are actually going to be adhered to.

On a smaller scale, when you are talking about a special licence—and we have been working with licensees in Rotorua and the frustrations that they have been having with getting their special licences through—there is an expectation that they can put in just nine pages of paperwork and then they are going to get a special licence. It is up to the licensee to prove what they are going to do to minimise harm and mitigate noise and any other potential problems that may arise from that licensed premises during that special licence event. Nine pages is not enough. Look, I have put a small application together, and it might be as many as 15 pages to make sure that you have ticked the boxes to get things right. So I would have to say that the onus is on the licensees.

I have actually helped to put together a schedule that is forming—goodness me, I will just find the part that it actually is. It is to be added to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, and it is section 45E, inserted by clause 3, which is to do with the conditions. There are three conditions that we believe will actually help mitigate problems associated with and arising from those licensed premises, and they are around noise.

What we are suggesting is that closing off your outside courtyards or your smoking areas of a licensed premises within the confines of the time of day that it is going to be operating is not unfair or unreasonable. I think that is actually a good condition, which I would think that people, communities, and licensees would actually think is fair and reasonable. The second thing is that if anybody has lived in a city or a near a licensed premises they will know that the absolutely shocking noise that some outlets make when they tip their rubbish out—bottles and cans going into other bottles and cans—can absolutely startle people. I have lived in Wellington a couple of times and, goodness me, I have been woken up at odd times of the morning. So we have actually put this into the legislation to ensure that people get a good night’s sleep in their area. I think that is another point that needs to be very heavily considered. The third is, of course, quite simply to make sure that amplified music outside your premises is switched off.

Those are the three conditions. Over and above that, a noise mitigation plan needs to be submitted by the licensee. Other steps that they can take include getting customers away from their premises and getting them to their premises quickly, quietly, and with no fuss, and that can be done with signage, a coordinated taxi removal plan, or making sure that your staff and security are actually outside at the front to make sure that people’s voices are kept down nice and low. These are the sorts of things that licensees can actually come out and take part in, making sure that they do not become a nuisance within their community, because that is not what this is designed for. This is a dog’s breakfast. This is a tiny little wee band-aid on a bigger problem that we would like to see resolved. Thank you.

The member’s time has expired. Can I just ask the Māori Party, Labour, and National—because we have already had, I think, clear positions that there will be party votes rather than conscience votes from the Greens, New Zealand First, and ACT—to indicate that, because, clearly, the Chair at the time will have to make a decision about whether we have a personal vote. So can parties indicate their approach to it.

Just by way of clarification, it is my understanding that National will be casting a party vote on this matter. Firstly, I was heartened by the speech by Mr Henare over there, who decided that he wanted to bring a little levity into the debate. The only thing that I thought he missed, though, was to thank the ladies in the kitchen for putting on the spread. Then we would have had the complete rugby speech. I know that it is a little sexist, but the last time that I heard that speech was back in the 1980s, when, rightly or wrongly, that was an acceptable thing to say—though, of course, now we would be thanking the people in the kitchen for putting on the spread.

I want to focus, if I may, not so much on the nuts and bolts of this bill but on the why—as to why it is that we are doing this today. Why is it that we are passing this legislation? Of course, it is because of New Zealanders’ passion for sport—in particular, the game of rugby football. If anybody was ever to doubt how passionate people in New Zealand are about this sport and about the All Blacks as a team, they would need only to wander around town the morning after an All Blacks loss to understand just how important this is to the people of New Zealand. Not that it happens very often, but it has, on occasions, happened that the All Blacks have lost. I even remember on one occasion going into a church service on a Sunday morning, when you would expect people to be lively and full of enthusiasm, as they normally would be on a Sunday morning, and the mood was still somewhat dampened from the night before—on those rare occasions of an All Blacks loss. We also see just how excited people get when there is a great result and people are wandering around town. Shopkeepers will tell you that they sell more on a Monday after an All Blacks win, and all that kind of thing.

In fact, it even gets so serious when New Zealanders are watching the rugby that I can distinctly remember during the 2011 Rugby World Cup final being at some friends’ house, and half-time came around. Although our tradition was to sit down and have dessert at lunchtime—sorry, dessert at lunchtime is always good—have dessert in the middle of the game, no one was in the mood to eat at half-time during the last Rugby World Cup. Such was the, I guess, raw tension in the room that people felt anxiety about what might occur.

So New Zealanders are absolutely keen; they are absolutely passionate about seeing their All Blacks team perform. As it has come to pass over time in New Zealand’s history, the idea of just gathering around a TV set in anybody’s home to watch the game is something that not everybody can avail themselves of because, of course, with the advent of pay TV—not everybody has pay TV, and so not everybody has the opportunity to sit down in front of their 16-inch screen, as we did back when I was younger—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: A long time ago.

It was a long time ago that we were sitting around a 16-inch screen, but I can tell you that it did happen. Not everybody has the access and the ability to be able to do that, and so it is something that we need to move forward on.

I heard in the first reading somebody from the Labour Party—I cannot remember exactly who it was—suggesting that it was the Government’s responsibility to ensure that all of the rugby games would go on free-to-air TV, and that that was the way we would fix this. I guess the difficulty with that is that although it is a nice idea, ultimately it is the taxpayer who is going to have to pay for it. Although New Zealanders are, on the whole, very passionate about rugby, I guess it would not necessarily be fair on those people who do not want to watch it to have to pay for it. I do not think that we would get that sort of legislation through in the time frame that we are able to get this legislation through now.

Of course, the alternative for people who want to watch these games—if they have got friends with Sky, that is great; they can go there perhaps and watch them—if they do not have Sky is to go to a public place to watch them. That, for some people, is a preferred way of doing it. And for some people, it will be the only way that they are able to watch Rugby World Cup games live during this current Rugby World Cup.

There are occasions, too, when people are out of town. I know that when New Zealand played Argentina in the first game for the first time in the Investec Rugby Championship, we were in Queenstown. What did we do? We went down to the local pub. We took the kids down there for breakfast or lunch, or whatever it was at that time of day, and we all sat around and watched the game. It was a great opportunity, and it was easy to do. I know of some people too for whom that is the only way that they can watch games at the moment. They are not big drinkers, but they will go, they will sit down, and they will have a lemonade or a hot chocolate or whatever it is in a licensed premises and watch the game. The difficulty is that there are not many other places that are not licensed where you can watch rugby games in a public setting.

That is what I guess moves us to the point of needing to adjust these liquor laws. I think that if there were a whole lot of freely available fanzones or otherwise where people could go and watch the games for free and not have to go to a licensed premises, that would be somewhere where people would go. But that is not something that is easy to put together at 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the morning, in the same way that it was when the games were hosted here. And so making those places available to people is, I think, the most pragmatic solution to ensure that New Zealanders can go and watch those games.

There are these moments that people want to enjoy. A lot of people can tell you where they were at the Rugby World Cup 2014, and, actually, I can recall, going back to 1983—it was not a rugby game—

💬 Meka Whaitiri: It was 2011.

The Rugby World Cup 2011, thank you. People might remember that one as well. I can recall watching a cricket game, of all things, while on holiday with my parents in 1983. We were at Mount Cook. My dad took me into the pub at Mount Cook. I was only 17. I do not know whether it was legal at the time, but anyway, we went and watched New Zealand chase down 297 runs—Richard Hadlee, Jeremy Coney, in full flight. It was a fantastic game, and one that will stick in my brain for ever. Interestingly enough, everybody in the bar stopped to watch the game, except for the two German tourists who were sitting in the corner wondering what was going on. Actually, it got to the point that the barman was serving drinks only between overs because he wanted to watch the game. Those are the sorts of memories that people can have when we have legislation like this that allows them to go to these places to watch games.

It was a really critical thing that we needed to do in weighing up all of this excitement about the rugby—all of this excitement about people being able to go and watch games—trying to weigh that up, as other speakers have said, and trying to reconcile that with the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act and the principles behind that in terms of harm minimisation. It is something that the committee took very seriously and gave really serious consideration to. It is not something that was taken lightly at all, and it was something that, as I say, we put a lot of energy into.

I guess that on balance we have got to look at this and we have got to say that we cannot work off the presumption that just because somebody is going to a licensed premises at 4 o’clock in the morning to watch a game of rugby, they are necessarily going to be engaged in excessive alcohol intake—that they are necessarily going to have bad behaviour. We cannot just assume that everybody is going to be drinking at all because, clearly, some people will want to go simply to watch the game.

Bearing in mind that the provisions of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act do work around harm minimisation, we have looked where we can to stick to the spirit of that Act—or, as my colleague on the other side of the House David Parker would refer to, it is the vibe of the Act that we want to incorporate. We want to make sure that we are not encouraging people to act beyond what is responsible or otherwise.

So we have put in place some things to mitigate, if you like, against particularly the disturbance of neighbours in the area, so there is going to be, as Mr Mitchell said, no ability for bar owners to discard their empty bottles in the middle of the night. We have got to keep the noise down by not having amplified music or use of the outdoor courtyard areas, because we want to make sure that these series of events are, in fact, friendly to communities.

I am looking forward to discussing this further when we get to the third reading of the bill later on this evening, but I am pretty sure that this is going to be a good bill for New Zealand. It is going to ensure that we can actually enjoy our national game, and I certainly hope that it is going to result in a very good outcome as well. Thank you.

I want to indicate that, as a party, Labour would like a personal vote, please. My contribution to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill is going to be in two halves, actually, but before I do that I would just like to congratulate David Seymour. Putting a bill before this House is a really important and big opportunity and, obviously, you have put this bill forward because you think that there is a need. So I commend you for that.

The game of two halves that I am going to play in my speech, firstly, has to be an acknowledgment that within my electorate of Manurewa, I had two groups submit on the bill. The first was the Manurewa Business Association, so to Wendy Dunn and the businesses in Manurewa, I acknowledge that you do not support this piece of legislation. I acknowledge that from your perspective this bill is not necessary, that it denies natural justice because it was put through so quickly, and that for you, alcohol-related harm—which is a big issue in our community—will not be minimised through this bill. In fact, you think it is going to add to or exacerbate the harm in our community.

I would also like to acknowledge Angela Dalton and the Manurewa Local Board, who also do not support this piece of legislation. For them, there is no evidence that it will fulfil the objectives of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, and for them it is poor lawmaking. They also highlighted, and I would like to highlight, the process to enable the over 8,000 New Zealand businesses that actually had Sky subscriptions—that is what we are talking about. We are talking about the over 8,000 businesses in New Zealand that have Sky subscriptions, which would then be in a position to be able to invite the public into their premises to watch rugby. That, from our local board perspective, was going to have too big an impact on the police, who of course do great service in our communities to minimise the harm associated with alcohol, but also the board was quite clear that from an Auckland Council perspective—and we have already heard from my colleague Kevin Hague that Auckland Council was one of the submitters that oppose this piece of legislation.

The other submission that I want to highlight is from the Public Health Association of New Zealand, which said: “Actually, let them open but don’t let them sell alcohol.” In fact, if you are a club you could have opened and not sold alcohol. So actually there were alternatives in being able to provide rugby off this Sky business platform so that the public could see the matches.

I would also like to acknowledge that in December last year a group that was put together by the then Minister of Justice Judith Collins in 2012, which was chaired by Graham Lowe—and we all know “Lowie”, who is one of our sporting legends in the league area—recommended to the Government that alcohol sponsorship of sports clubs needed to cease and that we should be looking at banning advertising of alcohol during licensed matches.

It is really relevant for us to talk about these recommendations because it was also a recommendation of the Law Commission, which undertook a 2-year process of reviewing the impact of alcohol in our lives. So this piece of legislation is actually a convergence, from my perspective. It is a convergence of alcohol and how alcohol seems to have this relationship to New Zealanders in our culture, and also rugby and how rugby has a relationship with, and impacts on, our culture.

I found a 2011 Master’s thesis titled Exploring Players’ Perceptions About Alcohol: The Impact of Alcohol on the Rugby Team Culture. It was written by Phillip Scott Kahu-Kauika. Basically, what it does is it traces why alcohol is so prevalent within the rugby community. I have got to say that when I played rugby—and I played rugby both for Waitematā, for Suburbs, for College Rifles—at the end of the game you would go into the shed and there would be a crate or a box of beer, and you would consume that box of beer while you were having a shower and then you would go into the club rooms and you would consume a few more beers. If you were the player of the day, and sometimes I was, you got a bottle of wine. So there is this intimate relationship between alcohol, rugby, and team building, which is one of the things that this Master’s student highlights—that somehow it has all become morphed into one big thing. I see this piece of legislation as highlighting that, but I think there is a great opportunity for us as a country to take stock, to acknowledge that actually for us and the public to see the Rugby World Cup we have to amend the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. Is that not interesting?

So I think there is a big opportunity for us to think about what the consequences are of this piece of legislation going through today. I actually will vote in favour of this bill, and I will do so after consulting with members of my Manurewa rugby club, who wanted to get a special licence. They had a very interesting conversation with the council, and they were told that a special licence was actually most likely going to be vetoed by the council. So, in fact, it was going to be very difficult for some rugby clubs and some people who have these Sky business licences to be able to show the rugby. So in fact I do think David Seymour is fixing a problem in some areas.

But what I want to also do with my contribution on this bill is actually highlight bigger issues about the relationship between rugby and alcohol, sport and alcohol, the harm in our community, what groups like Graham Lowe’s have done, the recommendations that they have given to the Government, and actually challenge us past the Rugby World Cup, which is running from 19 September to 1 November. We are using the resources of this Parliament for a very specific piece of legislation, but I think there is an opportunity for us to really consider a whole relationship between alcohol, sport, and what we do in the future, particularly in communities of like mind where there are obvious issues about how people are consuming alcohol, and what the police position is.

One of the things that is unanswered for me in this process is that within 7 days of a game you have to notify the district licensing committee and also the police. So you notify the police, and then what do the police do with this information? Are they getting more resources? Are they going to be able to monitor the sites that are going to show the rugby to the public? Are we going to say to the police that it will be great if they had a presence at these particular venues? That is the missing thing in this legislation, for me.

But I guess we have an opportunity through this process to say to the Minister of Police that we would expect that the police would have an ongoing role. It would not just be about notifying them that the Manurewa rugby club was going to watch—and it is only intending to cover the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, and the finals, even though the scope of this bill allows it to be open for all the games. For the club, it is actually about rugby. So for me it is actually about rugby, and that is why I am voting in support of this legislation.

But if I voted wearing my other hat, which is that actually this is about the harm that alcohol is causing in our communities, and if for me the overriding factor in this legislation was alcohol, then I would vote against it. But I guess because I am biased—I am one of those New Zealanders who is passionate. I have represented our country in rugby and I am very proud of that, and I am proud of the All Blacks, and I am proud of what they contribute and represent to us and on the international stage. I do think that rugby is special, and that is why this piece of legislation is special and why we are debating it under a very expedited process. We would not make allowances for just anything. But what I do hope is that there will be ongoing conversations about how we can actually look at what the relationship between sport, rugby, and alcohol is and how we can use this opportunity to make some positive changes in the future. Kia ora.

The next call is a split call—Jan Logie, 5 minutes.

I rise to take a call on the second reading of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill. This is a bill that currently has already delayed discussion on organ donations and is most likely to delay tonight the introduction of another bill to provide paid parental leave in this country.

The Green Party is opposing this bill. My colleague Kevin Hague, who outlined the core reasons for our opposition earlier this afternoon in his speech, negotiated with the member whose name this bill is in, David Seymour, and the Government to allow this bill to go to the Justice and Electoral Committee. We heard arguments that there was something wrong with the existing regime, and we wanted to ensure that if this bill did go ahead, and there were indications that the numbers were there for it to go ahead, we had the opportunity to try to limit the harm that we saw in the initial proposal. That is part of using our power in this parliamentary process, and we do not resile from that.

However, what has come out of the select committee does not address our concerns. I personally am proud to stand up in this House and represent the New Zealanders who contributed to the discussion around the sale and supply of alcohol legislation—the majority of this country who forcefully advocated for restrictions on the hours for the sale of alcohol and the provision for local democratic control over that process. I am very disappointed to see in this House that piece of legislation being overridden, through a process of urgency, to undermine the work of the majority of the country and the majority of the members of this Parliament in 2012.

I am proud to stand here and represent those people in this country who have been harmed by the association that we have between alcohol and rugby. There is harm caused in this country by that close association between alcohol and rugby. We heard from the member Chris Bishop, who in his speech spent most of his time basically saying that there is no problem with alcohol in this country. I agree with him on one point: it mischaracterises the problem for young people. But when there are 600 to 1,000 deaths a year from alcohol misuse, and the police is reporting that alcohol is associated with 50 percent of all serious, violent crime, 20 percent of sexual offending, and 33 percent of family violence incidents in this country, and we know that the police are called out every 6 minutes as a result of domestic violence call outs, we know we have a problem.

For Parliament and that member to bring a bill to the House that will be interpreted by many as saying that you cannot enjoy a game of rugby without a drink is irresponsible. You could have brought a bill to this House that said all licensed premises can open, to ensure that people can watch those games, but there will be no sale of alcohol. That could have happened and that would have said, yes, we treat rugby as a religion in this country—that is true—but not every church service has communion. There is no need to drink to enjoy a game of rugby. The fact that that is the perception, that you need to do that, is why we have so much harm caused by drinking in this country and why so many women and children are harmed, particularly when we lose—and let us hope we do not.

I would like to bring members’ attention to the submissions that were made during the very, very truncated select committee process, from Women’s Refuge, from Debbie Hager and Neil Miller, and from Waitakere Anti Violence Essential Services, which all pointed out those links and asked this House not to pass this legislation. They see the results of our association between rugby and alcohol on a very real level in their communities. I am proud to stand with them in opposition.

I call Marama Fox—5 minutes.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. For fear that Mr Seymour is going to deliver a clothes line tackle to the whole of the country by having a blanket piece of legislation that allows this limitless supply of alcohol everywhere, I think we need to stand up and accurately express what our issues are. Just for clarification as well, a previous speaker asked that we clarify that we are going to vote as a party.

Let us have a look at the facts. The misuse of alcohol has a devastating effect on our whanau. We know, and it is proven through limitless cases and research, that the consumption of alcohol to excess has a direct impact on the level of domestic violence in this country. For that reason we considered this bill very seriously. We were happy to support it at its first reading, so that these things could be debated. Unfortunately, we had a process by which no submissions were able to be questioned. There were no oral submissions. We did not have the chance to talk about or discuss these things. We have got local body authorities, the police, and community groups that have been preparing for this for a long time. They have considered all of the issues, such as whether or not a premises is close to a suburban area, and whether or not there is going to be an impact on noise in the surrounding neighbourhood. Under the special licence agreement you can already have the opportunity to open, and all of those conditions will be on there.

But now we have got this blanket approach across the nation to watch rugby and to extend the sale of alcohol. I do not have a problem with rugby. I love rugby. I appreciate the previous speaker Louisa Wall talking about the passion for rugby in this country. In fact, in our house there is one rule. There are a number of rules, actually, that I try to implement, but there is one rule that never gets broken, and that is rugby before all else. In fact, there are people in our family who will watch Georgia and Lithuania playing live at 3 o’clock in the morning, just because. We get that. We get that this is important to the nation, and we wanted to have the opportunity for community groups to come together and not be subjected to some of the Draconian measures that were being put in place by some of the local bodies, saying you could watch only eight games. Well, eight games? Which ones shall we watch? Which countries shall we not watch? I appreciate the reason as to why this bill is coming, and we wanted to have a good, strong debate about it.

The Justice and Electoral Committee—and I have to commend the chair, Jacqui Dean, and the other members of the committee—met at all sorts of hours, in a rushed way, I have to admit, to try to get this bill through in the best state possible. However, we are concerned by some of the issues that have been raised. We are going to support the bill at its second reading, in the hope that Mr Seymour will be able to make some changes. Actually, there is no Committee stage to make changes. By some miracle, whereby Mr Seymour might rethink some of these things, we think that possibly there are some things that we would have liked to see changed. Current rushed law—the problem is that this bill has been conceived in a hurry, with little thought given to some of those consequences.

The legislation is going to test whether patrons are there to watch rugby or whether you will have, as was mentioned before, the TV in the corner and not a lot of rugby being watched. There has been concern that you possibly could be on the premises for 48 hours, without stopping, and in some instances—one or a couple—for 68 hours, which seems ridiculous. We are concerned that there is no requirement to serve meals. It does not prevent cut-price promotion. There is no restriction on sensitive locations. There is currently no limit on the number of games, and notice required has been cut to 7 days. All of those things are concerning to us. If Mr Seymour would like to respond to some of those, depending on his responses we will reserve our decision as to whether to support the bill through to the third reading.

This is a good, practical bill that is going to allow New Zealand families to enjoy the spectacle of the Rugby World Cup being played on the opposite side of the world. I commend the work that David Seymour has done in introducing it to the House, and also Jacqui Dean, the chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee, which has done a good job of knocking this bill into practical shape.

I want to make a contribution both as a local MP and also as a member who strongly supports the pragmatism behind this bill. I do want to take issue with my colleague, the list member from Palmerston North. Jono Naylor made some comments about the Manawatū rugby team. I want to remind him that they are going to be cleaned out by the Tasman Makos tomorrow night, and although we on this side of the House agree on some things, on provincial rugby parochialism runs deep. That actually goes to the core of the fact that rugby is one of the sports that binds—[Interruption] I will tell you that the Tasman Makos are in fantastic shape and that they are a great team. I will just warn colleagues from all around the House to watch out, particularly those from Taranaki, for the fins-up team from the top of the South.

But the underlying point is that rugby runs deep in New Zealand, it is good for our country, it gets people playing sport, and it involves us celebrating our nation and what we excel at internationally. What sorts of killjoys are there in parties like the Greens, who would oppose New Zealanders simply being able to get up early in the morning to congregate at some of the sports bars across New Zealand and to be able to enjoy the spectacle of the Rugby World Cup? Actually, it speaks volumes about what a risk the Green Party is to practical legislation in this Parliament.

The part that the Green Party, on so many issues, just gets wrong is that it takes a completely disproportionate view of risk. The comments from Kevin Hague, that we cannot pass this bill because there will be hordes of drunks coming out of sports bars at 8 o’clock in the morning and that they will be a threat to our schoolchildren—come on, get a life! Our schoolchildren do not live such sheltered lives that they do not see people getting pleasure, getting excitement, and also getting depressed as a consequence of rugby sporting events.

At the last Rugby World Cup that occurred on the opposite side of the globe, I went to one of my local sports bars, and the place was packed. Why were people there? Well, actually, they enjoyed the game more and there was a sense of nationhood and camaraderie that does not exist when you sit at home in front of your telly by yourself. Why should communities not be able to get together to enjoy their country participating in an international sports event in that sort of community way?

I can remember so well the game against France, and leaving the venue, the local sports bar, at the end of that game. Everybody was in the doldrums because we had been kicked out of the event. Did I see bad behaviour on the streets? Did I see a whole lot of drunks out there actually causing harm? No, I saw a whole lot of ordinary New Zealanders just enjoying their own national sport, and why would we not want them to be able to do just that?

In respect of how much bureaucracy we should impose—here are the real, practical issues for some of the sports bars in Richmond, Stoke, and Nelson that have wanted to host these games. Each of them has lodged applications with the licensing authority, but because it is not dealing with it as a comprehensive issue, it has come to different views. Then you get into the unfairness issue as to why the Richmond sports bar should be allowed to open only for certain hours, as compared with the one in Stoke or the one in Nelson.

The sensible thing with a bill such as this is that we can ensure that we take a consistent approach across the country and allow everybody to enjoy the games, rather than having the nonsense of having hundreds of individual applications going through licensing boards, driving up the sort of bureaucracy and red tape that drives average New Zealanders mad.

The thing that I just cannot understand from the Green Party is this: why is it, when it comes to alcohol, it wants to take an extreme adverse risk approach, and say that it is not prepared to accept any risk at all. But when it comes to cannabis, the Greens want to legalise it and liberalise it, at the opposite end of the spectrum. There is just—[Interruption] I am sorry?

💬 Denise Roche: I’m saying: you don’t take risks either, do you?

No, I am just simply saying to the member that the Green Party, on the one hand, says that it opposes this bill because of the risk of the odd person misusing alcohol, when, on the other hand, the evidence is so compelling about the level of harm that is caused from cannabis. Over and over again we hear an argument to liberalise cannabis laws from Green Party members, and I say: what a grossly inconsistent approach the Green Party brings to this bill. That is why I have great difficulty with the position of such extreme cautiousness around the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill.

I am pleased that the select committee has made the choice to enable all of the Rugby World Cup games to be enjoyed in this fashion. It is absolutely sensible, I say to Mr Seymour, for you to allow the bar or the licensed premises to make the choice as to what games they want to host. I do not know whether there are maybe large South African populations on the North Shore, but the bars may choose to open there. In my area I happen to have a large number of people from the UK, and the bars may choose to show those games. Why should it be that Parliament has to overrule what choice there might be? Let the individual proprietors make an assessment in their community about the level of interest, and, on the basis of that, to then decide whether they are going to host those games.

The very last point that I think we need to be real about is that for most upper-income New Zealanders who want to enjoy the Rugby World Cup, many of them will have Sky TV and will be able to enjoy the games. But, actually, for lots of people with modest incomes, Sky TV is a significant expense, and as a consequence it is only through this bill that those people are going to be able to enjoy those games live. That is why it also makes sense for the large number of New Zealanders who do not have Sky TV, who love rugby, and who want to be able to get together in their community.

The select committee has done a good job of providing logical protections to ensure that those licensed premises have to manage their facilities in a responsible way, and that they have to take sensible precautions around noise control and around ensuring that if they are dodgy premises that have a bad record around licensing, they do not get to use the provisions of this bill to gain a licence.

I simply, again, commend the member David Seymour for sponsoring this bill and for the work that he has done with other political parties. I am still amazed that a party like the Greens would make itself look so out of touch with ordinary New Zealanders that it would oppose a sensible bill such as this, which is simply about New Zealanders being able to enjoy their national sport.

The next call is a split call—David Shearer, 5 minutes.

First of all, I will say that the Labour Party wants this to be a personal vote—a conscience vote. Alcohol issues have always been a conscience vote, and we do not see the reason for making this bill any different. I think that we have got to get real about this. There has been a lot of talk about alcohol and the problems with it, and, yes, there are some problems with alcohol, but mixing it with our national game and saying that it is a problem just because they go together is actually pretty disrespectful to a lot of rugby fans out there who like to have a beer in front of their TV or with some mates. In my electorate, which includes Eden Park, we have had some real issues with 50,000 people going along to the ground and coming out again. I have to say that over the past year or 2 the behaviour has, on the whole, been good, it has been respectful, and we have not had all of the problems with rugby and alcohol that seem to be being forecast by members in this House.

This is our national game. Our team won the Rugby World Cup in 2011. We want to see them do well in the world cup that is coming up, and we want to be able to see them do well. There are a lot of people, as Dr Smith said—and I agree with him—who are not able to afford Sky, or they do not have Sky, and they want to be able to go somewhere to watch the games. I could add to what Dr Smith said. I mean, they want to get out of their cold, dark, damp houses and go somewhere warm and dry, like a rugby club, to be able to watch the games with other people. This is our national game. We want to be able to celebrate and watch our All Blacks play. It happens only once every 4 years; it is not as if it is happening every single day. I would have thought that given the importance of the game, we should be able to see it on this occasion.

It is happening on the other side of the world, so it is not happening in the middle of the afternoon, which may have created fewer problems, of course. It is likely to happen at 4 o’clock in the morning. I remember as a young kid getting up in the middle of the night to watch a rugby test with my dad because it was free to view on our television. That is not possible any more, and I think that there is a discussion to be had about why it is not free to view for these very important games. It certainly is in Australia, it is in the UK, and it is in a number of other places, where nationally important games are able to be watched free on national TV, but it is not the case here. It is not, and so I agree with what David Seymour has done in bringing this bill forward. I commend the Justice and Electoral Committee, which has been looking at it. I think it has been able to modify the bill to take out some of the possible problems around noise, etc.

At the end of the day, at 4 o’clock in the morning, people are going to wander down to their local sports club, they are going to be with a bunch of mates, and they are going to be with their friends. Are they going to be getting on the booze big time? I do not think so. Most people who sit there will be watching the game intently. They are probably going to have a cup of coffee, they possibly will have breakfast as well, they may take their kids—I certainly will if I go down there—they will be watching the game, and then they will wander off home. I really think that we are getting well beyond what rugby fans do today when we start talking about the excesses of alcohol and the doom and the gloom that is coming down the track as a result of this piece of legislation.

As for the number of matches, there was, obviously, a proposal at the beginning to restrict the number of games to 12 or 16. At the end of the day, I think what is going to happen is that bars will make their own decisions about whether there is actually a market for people who are going to be watching Georgia play Canada at the bar, and if there is not going to be a fan base for that, they will not open. It seems to me that what we have in front of us is a sensible piece of legislation. It is only for a fixed period of time, it is to watch our national game, and to link the woes of alcohol too closely with rugby is a bit of an insult to a lot of rugby fans out there, the great majority of whom are sensible, responsible people who just want to watch their national game. Thank you.

I call Meka Whaitiri—5 minutes.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā tātou katoa. I am glad to take a call on this bill, and, like previous speakers from the Labour side, we hope that we can cast our vote in a personal manner. I come from a rugby-loving family. My dad represented the armed forces when he served in Korea, my three brothers all represented Hawke’s Bay in age groups, and my two sons are also following those traditions. I also did kick the ball around in my younger days when living here in Wellington.

When I look down at the title of this bill and see “Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill”, nothing in that title makes me want to love rugby more than I currently love rugby. Nothing in that title makes me want to be more patriotic to wish and—as the member Mr Bishop said—to get the All Blacks over the line. When I look at that title there is one seven-letter word that is in there that causes my major concern, and that is the word “alcohol”. That is why I cannot back this bill, and I will tell you why.

On Monday this week I was honoured to attend the Waitangi Tribunal hearing into the military veteran’s kaupapa inquiry, Wai 2500, where veterans rose and spoke not only about their motivation of why they went to war but about the impacts it had on them when they came back. We were fortunate to have two 28th Māori Battalion veterans at that hearing and two Korea veterans at that hearing, as well as other previous military servers. At that hearing we also heard from families who spoke about the trauma that was inflicted on families for many of those veterans when they returned back, and alcohol played a key part in many of those families in those early days, upon their fathers’ and their uncles’ returns. It was with great sadness that we heard the story of veterans who were once very proud men resorting to drinking to get over the horrors of the war. It was not just the physical impact or the psychological impact of alcohol, but it was the absolute devastation of Māori men’s leadership. That came through those hearings that I attended.

It is with humility that I stand here as a proud member of a Māori seat, because 76 years on we are still suffering the lack of a lot of Māori men leaders. When I look at this bill—and, yes, it is distinct from the support and love of rugby, and I love it like anybody else does in this country; and I too am passionate for the All Blacks—and when I sat in the hearing with veterans who served this country proudly and their families who spoke of the horror that the war and the impact of alcohol had on those families, I cannot, in good conscience, support this bill. So this is one of the reasons why I cannot support it, for the memory of many of those soldiers who served and gave to this country.

The other one, briefly, is Raureka. Raureka is a community in Hastings. They are currently running a petition for not wanting another alcohol outlet in their community. I know that this bill is allowing families to enjoy the Rugby World Cup. When I look at the bill, I commend the Justice and Electoral Committee for the work it has done in trying to minimise harm, but I have outlined the reasons why, in good conscience, I cannot support this bill—because of the impact that alcohol has had on many of our Māori families throughout Ikaroa-Rāwhiti, not just as a result of the wars but today in this time. I stand here, like I said, for those families who spoke and to say that I cannot support this bill. Kia ora tātou.

The next call is a split call. Alastair Scott—5 minutes.

This is a fantastic bill. I am very pleased to be standing in support of this bill, because it gives the whole country an opportunity to celebrate our national game together. Too much talk has been about the alcohol anger and anti-alcohol speak, but it is not about the alcohol; it is about getting together. It is about getting together to celebrate, giving people the opportunity to gather in communities with their whānau, with their families, and with their kids, and enjoying the camaraderie and the celebration of the sport.

I am also pleased to read that there are no restrictions on the games. All games are in. I mean, there could have been a view—alcohol is usually the excuse—that for some reason we had to restrict the games to just the All Blacks, or, perhaps, it was going to be just the northern hemisphere games against the All Blacks, or, perhaps, it was just countries that we have free-trade agreements with, or, perhaps, it was just American continent games. But there is no restriction, and that is a great thing, because that demonstrates, again, that the game is an inclusive game, and it demonstrates that New Zealand is an inclusive society. We are here together.

I note and acknowledge Louisa Wall’s comments around her experience with the licensing vis-à-vis the rugby club. I accept that this bill allows this House to be a licensing board on behalf of all New Zealand, so there will be consistency across the country when it comes to special licences. So this is us legislating a special licence for all New Zealanders. The people who are opposed, particularly the Greens, are just not on this planet. They have become the wet blanket on this bill, which is about celebrating our national sport. Really? Are we really going to get a whole lot of people stumbling out of bars at 8 o’clock in the morning or 9 o’clock in the morning after a rugby game? That is just a nonsense, whether it is in Courtenay Place or in Perry Street in Masterton. It is just not a reality. Unfortunately, the fearmongering, the scaremongering—I can tell you that it is absolutely exaggerated and is a sad indictment on what should be a celebration of this country’s sport.

Back in the day—and I looked out to see when Colin Meads actually did play. He finished his games for the All Blacks in 1971. It was a little while ago, but I do remember getting woken up by my father to watch the game—in black and white, so I must have been about 6 or 7 years old. Now, in this Rugby World Cup festival, we can get up and go down to the pub. Why should we not be able to go down to the pub and meet and commune with our relatives and people in our communities? It is not about the alcohol. We can have an orange juice. There is no obligation to drink. There is no compulsion to drink. There is lemonade. There is orange juice. There is even water.

The other point it that not all bars will be open for all games—clearly not—and that is the great thing. This legislation gives the operator, the licensee, the option and the choice to make, and it will be commercial decision-making on how many dollars will come in the door because of the event. That is the way it should be. So most pubs will be open for the All Blacks, but Namibia versus Georgia—probably not a great following in Perry Street in Masterton.

I would just like to wind up by thanking David Seymour for bringing this bill to the House. It is a very good bill. It is going to gather communities across New Zealand together in celebration of our national sport, and I commend this bill to the House.

I call Brett Hudson—5 minutes.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of this bill. It is a very, very good bill. I commend Mr Seymour for bringing this to the House. I commend the Justice and Electoral Committee for the work it did.

Not only is rugby our national sport but the Rugby World Cup is the world’s third-largest sporting event. This bill, when it gets through a third reading, which I sincerely hope it will do today, will ensure that all New Zealanders who want to watch it will have the opportunity to do so, especially those who cannot afford or do not have Sky television. As Mr Seymour pointed out in his contribution to this second reading debate, the overwhelming majority of people who will attend, who go to bars or enjoy drinks with their sporting events, are responsible. They are responsible in their drinking. They are responsible in their general behaviour. They are law-abiding people.

On this side of the House, and with those voices we have heard in support of this, we simply do not believe that by opening licensed establishments for a few more hours over the course of the Rugby World Cup, generally law-abiding, well behaved, responsible New Zealanders are suddenly going to morph into reprobates who are drunk and pouring out into the streets, causing mayhem. It is simply not going to happen. It did not happen when the Rugby World Cup was held in this country in 2011. It did not happen when the Football World Cup was on and certain bars around the country opened in the early hours of the morning so that people not from New Zealand but whose original country teams were playing could enjoy those games.

💬 David Seymour: You mean immigrants.

They were immigrants. And what we saw were images of people enjoying their country, locked in battle in a round-ball game against traditional adversaries, and loving it; just hugely passionate—the sort of thing that we would like to capture, I think, in our support of our team. This bill is going to permit that to happen. But one thing we did not see during that Football World Cup was people pouring out into the streets, unable to control themselves, causing mayhem. We did not see it then. We will not see it when this bill is successfully passed today.

What I would like to say, having sat on the select committee for a couple of hours during the course of these deliberations and considerations, is that it is quite possible, as the votes unfold, that New Zealanders are going to reflect on the Green Party and its approach to these matters, and see a party that has a fundamental world view that people need protecting from themselves. They do not. The overwhelming majority of people are more than capable of making their own sound decisions and acting appropriately. They are not going to morph into Mr Hyde simply because they are permitted to go and enjoy games in the early hours of the morning during the course of this World Cup.

I would actually like to add a bit to what my colleague Christopher Bishop said earlier in this reading, when he pointed out that the statistics are showing us that, particularly amongst young drinkers, the frequency of drinking—the nature of binge drinking and the harm from drinking in that demographic—is decreasing. That is very true. We should not argue with the facts. We are entitled to our own opinions; we are not entitled to our own facts. But here is another fact: in Wellington, along Courtenay Place, there used to be a triage centre, because of the behaviour of certain people in the wee small hours and harm, violence, and injury that was being caused. That station no longer exists, and I can tell the members of this House that it is not because of funding. The reason that centre is no longer in Courtenay Place is that it is no longer needed.

Yes, this country has had issues with drinking in the past, and for a small minority there may still exist some issues. But the evidence amongst our youth, and in fact across society, shows us that we are improving. This bill and what it is going to permit, which is people enjoying the Rugby World Cup in those normally unsociable hours—because it is on the other side of the world—is not suddenly going to create new problems. But what it is going to do is enable New Zealanders to rally around their team, to enjoy it, to wish it every success, and to enjoy the occasion and the camaraderie of other New Zealanders cheering their team on, shouting at the television screen, hoping it will make a difference. I commend the bill to the House.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Justice and Electoral Committee by majority be agreed to.

A personal vote has been called for. Members, I will refer you to Standing Orders 143(1)(b). In 143(1)(b), “a party’s votes may be cast for the Ayes or for the Noes … and a party may cast some of its votes in one of these categories and some in another [category known as] (a split-party vote):”. So I am prepared to accept a split-party vote, and on that basis I will ask the Clerk to proceed with a split-party vote.

The question now is that the motion be agreed to. A personal vote has been called for. As I said earlier, I am prepared to accept a split vote, and I will ask the Clerk to undertake a split vote.