Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. This very simple bill creates an exemption for RSAs from trading hour restrictions under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 and local alcohol policies, where these may also apply. It does not seek to confer any additional rights to sell or supply alcohol beyond those that an RSA’s licence would usually provide for. It simply removes the costs of up to $500 for special licences at the 181 clubs that serve around 105,000 RSA members nationwide, along with their families and wider communities.

This is a measure that is very deliberately focused solely on the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association and includes those RSA clubs that may be embedded in other clubs, as is the case in this region with the Petone Club. I may hold liberal views on alcohol licensing but I am very much more comfortable with a half-day on Anzac Day, prior to lunchtime, being reserved as a day for national commemoration, in sober and solemn observance, than I am with restrictions on alcohol on other days. I am unapologetic that this bill does not apply more widely, for instance to sports clubs, which still retain their current ability to apply for a special licence if they have a legitimate reason for doing so. It is also intended to apply only on 25 April, Anzac Day itself, and not the Mondayised holiday.

It is ridiculous that RSAs have to pay for expensive special licences to serve a harmless tipple with gunfire breakfasts. The tradition of the gunfire breakfast following the dawn ceremony has been an integral part of Anzac Day since at least the 1920s and the addition of a shot of liquor, often rum, to the coffee at that breakfast recalls the repast taken by the soldiers before battle. This is an important tradition and it should be preserved, not persecuted.

We all know that the RSAs are highly trusted, often small, and voluntary organisations that serve a very valuable role in our communities. They commemorate the military service and sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders over the past century. We owe so much to our veterans: our very lives and lifestyle and status as a free and democratic country in which it is the people who have the real power. So I am delighted that we have been able to progress this legislation today.

I want to put on record my thanks to other parties for their cooperation on this sensible and timely bill. In particular, can I thank Kris Faafoi, Trevor Mallard, and Chris Hipkins; James Shaw and David Clendon; Clayton Mitchell and Barbara Stewart; Peter Dunne, Marama Fox, and David Seymour for their agreement and advocacy within their own parties so that this bill could be passed, through a slightly abbreviated process, to help RSA clubs save costs this year rather than waiting for another 12 months.

I also pay tribute to the architect of the 2012 legislation, the Hon Judith Collins; the current Minister of Justice, the Hon Amy Adams, who has been an excellent sounding board and very generous in tasking her officials; the Leader of the House, the Hon Gerry Brownlee; and the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, the Hon Craig Foss for their support. The chief whip—never forget the chief whip—Tim Macindoe has been very supportive, along with Nick Bryant, Anna Mitchell, James Christmas, Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Wood, Tim Workman, Logan Morton, Joshua Whitford, Beth McEwan, and my colleagues Brett Hudson, Simon O’Connor, and Scott Simpson, who have been particularly supportive of this bill.

I would also like to note that this bill has been strongly supported by the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services’ Association. When it was drawn last year the RSA had expressed a hope that it would pass in advance of Anzac Day this year. The year 2016 is the centennial of the RSA, so this bill makes a very welcome 100th birthday present for one of our most valued institutions.

I would like to acknowledge Bruce Johnston, the president of the Karori RSA, where I am proud to be a member, along with Nancy McDonald and Rick Steven, who ensure that I remember to submit my membership renewal each year. I would like to thank David Moger, the chief executive, and also Grant Marris, the business development manager at the RSA, as well as their entire team at their national office who have assisted.

Finally, I want to concede that there were some drafting errors with the original bill. It did not take into account that RSAs operate predominantly under club licences, so I intend to table a Supplementary Order Paper, which I have had some assistance with in preparing from the Parliamentary Counsel Office and the Ministry of Justice, at the Committee stage to correct deficiencies in this bill. Apart from those small tweaks, I think it is an otherwise necessary and practical measure and I commend it to the House.

Can I congratulate the member Paul Foster-Bell on having his bill drawn from the ballot and can I thank all of the members on the Business Committee for agreeing to expedite this through as quickly as we can so that the bill can be passed into law before this year’s Anzac Day.

Can I acknowledge the growing significance of Anzac Day in New Zealand—and I do believe that it is growing in significance for New Zealanders—and the enormous role that RSAs play up and down the country. Many of those RSAs are now quite small organisations and they struggle to get together the money—up to $500—to get a special licence in order to do what they have always done on Anzac Day. This was never intended by the Parliament when these laws were changed in the first place.

This bill simply corrects an anomaly. It removes a huge burden off the shoulders of RSAs, which never should have been imposed with it in the first place, and allows them to continue to do what has become an important part of New Zealand tradition in commemorating Anzac Day in the way that we currently do.

I want to also acknowledge the importance of getting the wording around this right, so that all of those RSAs that are now part of another organisation, or cohabitate with another organisation, are also covered by this bill. I think of the RSA in Upper Hutt, which is now part of the Upper Hutt “cossie club”, or sits within the Upper Hutt “cossie club”. I think of the Naenae RSA, which is part of the Park Avenue Bowling Club. Those organisations should also be covered by this. As a result of Supplementary Order Paper 168, which Paul Foster-Bell will move in the Committee stage, they will be covered by this, as well as those stand-alone RSAs such as the Taitā RSA, where I am proud to be a member, because I think that all RSAs should be able to commemorate Anzac Day in the way that they always have.

We have agreed to a truncated process for this bill so that it can be passed through the House as quickly as possible. In that spirit I will end my contribution there and simply commend the bill to the House.

I think it is probably true that all parties in the House will be supporting this bill today—certainly, that is what I hope to be the case. But I do want to, in this first reading contribution, express some concerns about process.

I well remember the debates in this House on the 2012 Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill. In particular, I want to recall the testy mood of some of those debates and what happens when a complex piece of legislation is going through the House with a Government that is not very interested in actually talking with some of the experts in the community and across party lines with some of the Opposition parties. As a result of that the Government, in various forms, has had to come back to this House on a number of occasions with fix-it-up legislation. And that is a situation that could have been avoided.

So the question that springs to mind—and should spring to the mind for the public—is: although this is indeed a weakness of the legislation that Paul Foster-Bell’s bill is dealing with, why was this not dealt with in 2012 or in any of the intervening 4 years? So that is the first concern about process. It is a downside of rushed legislation, or legislation that occurs with inadequate consultation across the House.

I guess the second point that I want to raise is: when this shortcoming of the bill—or the Act as it was by that stage—came to light, why did the Government not step in to remedy that shortcoming? Why was it made a question for a member’s bill instead? This is a classic situation, surely, for the Government to introduce its own bill, because the Government gets to control the process of a bill through the House. It is the Government that is in a position to determine the place of legislation on the Order Paper and how quickly it can move it through all of its stages in the House.

So it would have been appropriate for a Government bill to remedy this problem. But instead what we see is the way that the Government has used members’ days and the members’ ballot. It has tended to use that members’ ballot in a way that enables Government members to put in bills that ought to be Government bills and are, largely, non-controversial pieces of legislation that are intended simply to reduce the odds of an Opposition member’s bill being drawn from that ballot. Although I totally understand that that is within the rules of the House, it is not the spirit in which members’ days should proceed. Myself, I have two important bills: one that is about protecting endangered native species, and another that is about overhauling New Zealand’s antiquated and obsolete adoption law. The chances that those bills have of being drawn are diluted by the Government’s choice of using members’ day to advance, effectively, bills that it ought to be advancing itself.

The third point is the truncated process that both speakers so far have referred to and that on this occasion we are forced to agree to—because if we do not agree to that truncated process, this bill cannot take effect before Anzac Day this year. Both of the most recent examples of fix-up legislation to the Act have featured both of these characteristics: a member’s bill when it should be a Government bill; and a truncated, or amended, process when, actually, better planning could have seen a bill proceed in the proper way.

I am rising on behalf of New Zealand First in support of Paul Foster-Bell’s bill—Supplementary Order Paper 168 is coming up, in the next reading—the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill. God, I am sure we could shorten that a little bit, but that will come up in the Committee stage as well. Goodness me! That was about 1 minute just to get through the title.

It does come as no surprise to us that we are back here having this discussion, which we said would happen in just August of last year. It is like “déjà voodoo” or a glitch in the matrix. There is a bit of a glitch because we are coming back to something that we said would need to be readdressed in this House. This is about the sale and supply of alcohol. The architect, as it was so eloquently pointed out by Paul Foster-Bell, was, of course, Miss Judith Collins, the honourable Minister there. It does have some serious flaws in it that we need to readdress, and we would be certainly suggesting strongly that this Government bring the entire bill back so that we can have a look at some of these unintended consequences that have been pointed out.

This bill, the sale and supply of alcohol bill, is starting to resemble more of a Monty Python skit or, potentially, a little wee skit from The Muppet Show where Kermit the Frog would sing about “Lydia oh Lydia, the tattooed lady”, because there is so much legislation being put now into this legislation. There are a number of blotch marks that for years to come we will have to go back through and refer to with regard to the sale and supply of alcohol. We are talking about the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill, and of course now we are talking about the Anzac Day bill.

We do support the common-sense approach to let the Anzac supporters, to let our RSA members, to let those people who do support and hold and cherish the values of those returned service people have the simple act of having a drink and a celebration. It is a celebration of the life that they have given up. It is a celebration of the lives that they fought for, for us to all enjoy, and absolutely this is one of those moments in time when you could not have anybody other than somebody who is on a different planet think that this is not a special occasion.

However, the current legislation does allow some interpretation to go a little bit askew. For some reason, we have had in the past some amendments put into these agreements, these licensing agreements for special licences, that do not allow, for example, pool tables to be used at a special event, or that the event must be ticketed for, or the fact that you cannot have live music being played through because the purpose of the event is for a celebration of the Anzac commemoration, or Anzac Day as it was.

So this bill does address that. It goes even further, to say that if there is in your local alcohol policy a one-way door policy, it will be negated in this policy. That does make sense. It does also allow drinking to establish itself at 4 o’clock in the morning. The overarching liquor licence says that the standard hours of operation, unless there is otherwise a good reason, are 8 a.m. until 3 a.m. Many of those councils have opted out of that and they have actually shortened those hours even further, but again, rather than having an interpretation of a council or the police or the health department saying what is right, this is exactly what New Zealand First is saying. It should come back to the House for a proper review, to make sure that the rules that apply in one area, under one council, actually apply across New Zealand, to give us some sort of continuity and some consistency. It takes away that ambiguity.

We do acknowledge that there are 181 registered RSAs around New Zealand and that breaks down to some 104,000-odd members. Anzac Day is a day of celebration, as I have already outlined. My family and I will be attending those Anzac celebrations, as we do, and we certainly would like to see this bill speedily read through the House today so that come the 25th of this month, Anzac Day can be celebrated, and all Anzac Days forward from here, without the sort of hassle and bureaucratic nonsense that has to be gone through in applying for a special licence, which is what has been happening up until now. Thank you.

Here is how one gives a short speech. I support the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill. I congratulate the member in charge of it, Paul Foster-Bell. I comport with my colleagues who raised questions about why it is necessary to be in the House amending the legislation for the second time within a year so that normal community activities can be accommodated where a special licence has been inadequate to do so. Finally, I believe that these truncated processes, although I have supported them in the past, are something that we in this House should be very cautious in our use of. Thank you.

Bill read a first time.

Second Reading