Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill

Mr Speaker, kia ora. Talofa lava, mālō e lelei, bula vinaka, fakaalofa lahi atu, kia orana, sat sri akaal, salaam, and warm South Auckland greetings to you and my colleagues around the House. Labour MPs tonight are voting in accordance with our conscience on this bill, and if you’ll allow me my time in the House tonight, I’ll tell you how my conscience and my community has led me to make my decision on how I will be exercising my vote tonight.

This is a policy issue that I care about. The regulation of alcohol and the reduction of alcohol harm in communities was something that I worked on before entering Parliament, and so it was a surprise to me in May 2021 when I was sitting on the stage in the Banquet Hall with the late Hon Chester Borrows, who had worked on this issue during his parliamentary career. Fiona Patten, member of the Victorian Legislative Council; Kathy Errington of the Helen Clark Foundation; and members of the New Zealand Drug Foundation were the packed audience of people who do this for a day job—they get up in the morning to help people recover and move on in their lives from addiction.

I was right beside the member Chlöe Swarbrick, who is in charge of this bill, when she announced that she’d be submitting this member’s bill into the ballot. I love members’ bills; I think they’re an important part of New Zealand’s parliamentary process, and a few weeks before that announcement from my colleague Chlöe, I had had a version of this bill drafted that made the amendments to local alcohol policies that I also care about—it hadn’t done the second part, but that’s the way our parliamentary process works with members’ bills; you’re first in, you’re best dressed.

As member for Manurewa, this is an issue that had come up in my community a lot. I did that because as the local MP, it’s important to my community. That local alcohol policy for Auckland Council isn’t in place now, and that means alcohol sales in South Auckland are completely under-regulated. It’s the wild west; a libertarian paradise, because National’s Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 let the alcohol industry indefinitely hold up the regulation that communities like mine were promised in the courts by the alcohol lobby.

So I had a version of this bill, and partly the drafting instructions had been prepared by barrister Grant Hewison. I want to mihi tonight to him and the Communities Against Alcohol Harm group that he represents, as well as other community organisations who have campaigned alongside him, particularly the Turehou Māori wardens, who are the Māori wardens for South Auckland. They represent Māori communities who have long been left out of the process for making their voice heard at local licensing committees about where alcohol shops can go, when they should be allowed to sell alcohol, and have consistently had their standing in these forums challenged by lawyers on the other side who did not want to hear them present their evidence.

So I mihi to them. I mihi to Grant Hewison—who has been working on this for years—and also to the local boards who have been working with those groups. Māngere, Ōtāhuhu, Ōtara, Panmure, and Manurewa local boards have been supporting this work that those community organisations do for many years, because they see, as locally elected members of both Labour and National persuasions, that it does not serve the South Auckland communities they represent when the local alcohol policy—that should be in place at the Auckland Council level—is not there.

So, speaking to this bill, why is this change needed? Well, most of the time, alcohol is about celebrating and having a good time. But it’s no fun when those things that should be fun are hurting us. Things like broken bottles in our streets, glass in our parks, latenight drinking on street corners that wakes the kids up, alcohol ruining people’s health and their relationships. We need good rules to rein it in; to make it work for everyone. Even if my colleagues on the other side don’t agree with my policy positions, look, they can respect the hustle of a local MP—and let me tell you, I have been out there. I’ve been to Rowandale Reserve, where the mums of the local early childhood education centre right next door have told me that their playground is being ruined by the bottles that clog it every morning because that park is used as a drinking spot for teenagers buying singles at the alcohol store that is right next to the playground. I’ve been down to Sharland Ave, where it’s a hang-out spot for people who go to buy a six pack and then walk straight down to the reserve and use that park as a place to drink; smashed bottles mean that the local kids can’t use it. Finlayson Avenue Reserve, right by the Manurewa Marae, is regularly clogged with alcohol rubbish that flows into the Manukau Harbour, and during the Auckland floods, there was a pile as tall as I am in the stream of alcohol rubbish and other rubbish that had washed down into the harbour right next to our marae, which is charged with protecting that awa and standing up to the people of our community.

I’ve been to local licensing hearings as a local representative and had my own challenge to my own standing to be able to represent those people who have come to me and said, “We want change here”. In the Manurewa town centre, I opposed a licence for renewal in 2020-21. We negotiated an outcome of that; that was a good negotiated outcome, but the bottle store owners there were able to come to the table and actually have conversations around when their opening hours should be. Local alcohol owners in the town centre told me that they wanted rules to regulate the sale and supply, and that they were only open until 11 o’clock at night on weekdays because the guy down the road was.

You know, if we had working local alcohol policies that the Auckland Council was able to implement, they would have those rules. They wouldn’t have had to have those arduous meetings, and they wouldn’t have had me in the main street with my placards. Sharland Ave: we also negotiated an outcome. Countdown on Browns Road: we negotiated an outcome there, where the opening hours changed—they knocked off an hour of their closing time because the community made themselves heard. Ranfurly Road: in 2022, also a negotiated outcome, and resulted in a community clean-up which brought people together.

But all of this community action puts a pressure on our local organisers. And it puts pressure on to the Turehou Māori wardens who should be able to be out there with their communities doing positive things, not fighting against a system that is stacked against them—standing in cold community halls where they are up against well-paid, wellresourced alcohol lawyers, ripping them apart; putting them in their place, asking them questions which make it very clear that they are not wanted there, that their voices are not wanted in those forums. Well, I stand here today as their local MP and I say, “That’s not on”. We have to change this process. We have to design a process which empowers our communities and which makes our community representatives feel that they are heard.

Now, you know, my thinking around this bill has not come down to whether this bill or the Government bill fixes those processes better. The Government bill, which is in front of the Justice Committee right now, does make those procedural fixes, and it makes them well—and it’s also really useful to have the Government programme behind those changes so we at select committee are able to get the advice that we need to strike that balance correctly, because there are trade-offs to be made here. The submissions that have come to committee have asked us to create that balance and to make sure that we are getting it right, because we also acknowledge that the alcohol shop owners and our community deserve a voice in that process too, that they do not deserve to be burdened by a bureaucratic system. That is the balance that we are able to strike in the Justice Committee when we are hearing the Government bill right now and will continue to do so. And it makes sense to do that as a Government piece of work with the full suite of advisers.

But then there is the second part of the bill, and I commend Chlöe Swarbrick for bringing it to the House. It is something where the evidence is under dispute. I acknowledge the concerns of my colleagues around the evidence that our community organisations—our community sports organisations in particular—will be affected by the way that sponsorship from alcohol is in their clubs at the moment. I have met personally with my Manurewa sports clubs; I’ve been in touch with many of my big organisations, and for my community, I can tell the House that that is not a big problem for my sports clubs. My sports clubs are waka ama, our rugby club, our football club. They have gotten out of alcohol sponsorship because that’s not what they want for the community of South Auckland that they serve. And these are committed community leaders with a heart for their people; that’s why they get into sports in the first place and that’s why they’ve moved out of it. But I acknowledge the concerns of my colleagues around the numbers of sports, and I know that everyone in this House wants to support those community organisations going forward. But for me, given that I want action on this now, that Manurewa needs action on this now, and that our sports clubs tell me that they want action on this now, I will be voting for this bill and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. Kia ora.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak briefly on this bill, which the National Party, as a caucus, has decided not to support, and—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Why’s that?

—thank you—I will outline the issues as we see it. Now, I think everybody in this Chamber is concerned about the public health—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Some of us are just willing to do something about it.

—thank you, thank you—concerns around alcohol and the impact that it has in society. Alcohol has been with us for centuries and millennia, and, indeed, most human societies have found some way to partake in drinks along these lines. So it’s brought great merriment and also great social problems as well, and, over time, societies have tried to do various things to have a prohibition against it and fight against it.

So what’s been proposed here is two things: first, the doing away with special appeals around local alcohol plans. The issue that we have here is that we do not stand here and say that the current arrangements work perfectly well—they don’t. It’s been a long, slow, drawn-out, expensive process that hasn’t worked perfectly. Now, our response to that is to say, well, let’s have a look at the process and improve it. The current proposal by this bill is just to throw out the whole process of appeal—

Chlöe Swarbrick: No, special appeals—not judicial appeals.

—special appeals—and that, fundamentally, rests on the assertion that local councils will always make good decisions that don’t need to be tested in that light. I think the only point I’d make there is that anybody vaguely acquainted with councils throughout this country wouldn’t assume that councils always make the correct decisions.

So that process hasn’t worked well, but we think that this is an overreaction to it and have outlined all that, and we’ve already heard in the select committee process from a Labour Government bill on this in relation to it automatically making the local alcohol plans that a local council passes take effect, including when it comes to renewal of licences. So we’ve heard from people who have had a business for 30 years in an area and have put their heart and soul into it, and under this bill and under the Government’s bill, if a local alcohol plan decided that they’re going to have a sinking lid and not have any renewals, then that business could be shut down overnight, irrespective that they might be the best—

Chlöe Swarbrick: That is not true.

Well, they can be. They will not have their licence renewed, and so they will not be able to carry on in their business.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Well, that’s not shut down overnight; that’s community willpower moving through a legal process.

Well, and so—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

What is going on with this?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member in charge of the bill is passionate about the subject. This is a members’ day, but it’s getting a little close to being a barrage, so maybe just calm it down a bit.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The second point is in relation to the—so we’re not convinced about that, and we think that’s not an appropriate way to deal with what is a real issue. There is a real issue around community voices being heard on alcohol policy. What was developed by us in 2012 hasn’t worked perfectly, and so our view is that you should review it and amend it so that it does work, rather than going the step that this member has done in terms of abolishing those appeal rights.

The second thing is around advertising, and the point I’ve made to the member and others is that it is a kind of arbitrary focus on sport, although with some equally arbitrary exclusions. For some reason, the young people of this country will be driven to drink by advertising in a rugby game, but they won’t be by advertising in the yachting, which has been excluded. So there’s no logic to that, and when it comes to going to a music event, for example, advertising’s fine, but for rugby, it’s not. There are all sorts of activities where alcohol sponsoring can continue, but she’s just chosen one, and—

Chlöe Swarbrick: It’s disingenuous.

Well, it’s not. It’s actually—that’s the bill that you’ve drawn up.

So the bill that has been proposed by this member is inadequate on those two fronts, and that’s why we won’t be supporting it. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Talofa, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill.

Just before I begin my contribution, I do want to acknowledge the former Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern as a daughter and a friend of Aotearoa but, especially, also the Pacific nations.

I’m really delighted to be able to speak on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill as one of the Government’s representatives. The reason why I’m pleased to speak is—probably over a decade—I in my previous role in the local community, we had a lot to do with mobilising the community participation in our local community of Māngere-Ōtāhuhu in South Auckland. This bill that is before us is a very important piece of legislation. I do want to thank my colleague across the House—Chlöe Swarbrick—just in terms of bringing it to the House. But I can tell you now, after being cross-examined in the district licensing process and being declined and being challenged and going through that process, hearing after hearing after hearing—it was really demoralising.

I want to acknowledge the tremendous support of our community—not just elected members of Auckland Council; I want to acknowledge our marae, our Māori wardens, our kaumātua and kuia, and especially our young people—our young people who are really concerned because in Māngere, in South Auckland, when our team came together as the Māngere-Ōtāhuhu local board, we did not realise the proliferation of these alcohol shops in our local area. What came about was: why is that so? Why is there permitted activity, as such, where a proprietor who has the economic wellbeing can set up shop in your local area and, basically, get away with it?

So I do want to acknowledge all of those people because what happened all those years ago was—I was one of the team—that we had to come together. And in terms of mobilising the community, this bill identifies two parts. But, in my view, the bill does not go far enough. The reason why I say that is because the principal Act, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012, allowed people with the economic wellbeing to set up shop wherever they wanted to. It was a piece of legislation that was difficult to interpret. It was also difficult to access resources, and for us in the role back then, it was to speak to Auckland Council, who actually tried to shut us down.

I come back to the bill. The first part is the local alcohol policy. When I was under the Auckland Council in a previous role, it was very difficult to try and interpret what the community could do to stop these off-licence shops setting up shop in a local community. But the second thing was: the community who are of heart, lots and lots of aroha, and wanting to do something proactively—how do they stop this? So, just very quickly, Part 2 talks about the sponsorship and alcohol advertising.

Just very quickly, I want to thank the colleague across the House—Chlöe Swarbrick—for the private member’s bill, but the Government made an announcement on 30 October 2022. Minister Kiri Allan—we went around the South Auckland community, we heard a lot of hui with members from South Auckland. I understand that that is before the Justice Committee and that will be reported back in June.

So, on that note, the current draft, or the bill as it is, needs to be improved under the current conditions. I commend the member, but I will not be supporting this bill. Thank you, and I oppose it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise tonight on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill at its first reading, and I rise on behalf of my ACT Party colleagues in opposition. I do want to note that this is a conscience vote but all 10 of my ACT colleagues have suggested to me they are voting in opposition, and I am here speaking on their behalf.

I wanted to only raise three main objections to this bill tonight, but firstly, for context, I think what Chlöe Swarbrick has done here has had really good intentions of wanting to reduce harm related to alcohol, but just having a good intention does not always mean that it will be a good policy, or it will be a good outcome. I want to raise three points, and the first is natural justice, the second is the reality of sports clubs up and down New Zealand, and the third is a little hint of hypocrisy.

I’ll start with the first. I think it’s important that we shouldn’t remove natural justice in law just because you don’t like a certain product, or you don’t like a certain type of company. In clause 15 of this bill, it removes part of the appeal process by removing section 170(c) which requires the licensing authority to consider and determine appeals against elements of draft local alcohol policies. There are many Kiwi families and Kiwi small-business owners who work really hard to create a company and create a business, and they could end up in a situation where a lot of hard work that’s gone into their business is for naught because the local council decides to change plans, and there’s nothing that they can say about that.

I think it’s really important that where businesses are affected they do have a right to appeal, and a right to actually have their say. I think it’s important no matter what that company is—whether it’s alcohol or otherwise—it’s important that we have natural justice in our laws. There are consequences of this bill on our small businesses and members of our community, and they have a right to their voice.

The second is about the reality of Kiwi sports clubs. This bill wants to ban a lot of sports advertising, especially where it comes to alcohol advertising at sports, and it says in Part 2 that it would prevent any sponsorship of sport in New Zealand by alcohol brands, going from affecting players to teams to venues to broadcasting to merchandise. A lot of sports clubs in New Zealand rely on fundraising, but they also rely on money from organisations giving them sponsorship, and one part of this that we wholeheartedly oppose is the idea that, within six months, small community organisations and sports clubs will have to find new ways to raise funds when they might be in the middle of a sports season and find that they don’t have any revenue for next year to keep their club open and operating because this law says that within six months of coming into force those clubs wouldn’t be able to take alcohol advertising.

That’s going to have a real-life impact on our small clubs that operate in our communities, and that will have a detrimental effect on people who genuinely want to give back to their community, and people who genuinely want to have good sport in their community, for their entire family.

Number three is a really important point here in new section 396H, inserted by clause 17, which says there’s an exemption for participation in certain events, notably what seems to be boats participating in international races when New Zealand is a port of call for that race. It has been raised by many of my ACT Party colleagues that it seems that Chlöe Swarbrick wants to ban alcohol advertising in all areas of sport except that one little part that’s right in the heart of Auckland Central—the America’s Cup. We oppose this bill.

I’m not sure that the previous member, Brooke van Velden, has actually read the bill—but I’ll get to that in a moment. I appreciate the opportunity to take a call on this bill tonight: Chlöe Swarbrick’s Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill.

Members in this House will, I’m sure, know by now that I tend to vote conservative on issues like this. I voted conservative on the euthanasia. I voted conservative on abortion, primarily because my mother was offered to abort me in in 1975—she obviously didn’t go through it! But it’s very personal. Alcohol is also an area that it’s very personal for a lot of people. So it’s absolutely right that this should be a conscience vote. I’d like to acknowledge that process around conscience votes. I think it’s a really important part of our democracy.

There are a couple of aspects to this bill. The first part is around abolishing appeals on local alcohol policies in order to provide proper local control over alcohol regulation. I’m the member of Parliament for Hamilton East. Hamilton City Council met with Chlöe Swarbrick, and they unanimously voted to support her bill. That’s quite a rare thing, to be honest, in terms of Hamilton City Council, because they know that they need an aspect of control to be able to listen to and protect their communities.

Now, the previous member from the ACT Party spoke about natural justice. The reality is that there is still a right to a judicial review if the process is flawed. In the same way that anyone has the right for a judicial review on anything council does—any by-laws. So that argument is not very well-thought-out, unfortunately. I’ll get on to the second part soon.

In terms of my personal view—in terms of Part 1, I wholeheartedly support the member on that. As I said, I’ve certainly heard it from my community—the amount of harm that has been caused by alcohol outlets in the community, particularly in lower socio-economic areas; you know, the amount of outlets is really not supporting those communities well. Councils are spending millions of dollars fighting supermarkets on this. Auckland Council has spent well into the millions trying to fight supermarkets, simply because the council don’t want the outlets, but big business does. At times, big business, I think, needs to have a look at itself—and in this area, I think it is an area that they particularly need to do that. It’s fairly obvious, the harm that alcohol causes in our community. I feel like I don’t even need to really give examples, because we all know that.

Now, the argument: people will say, “Well, look, it’s personal responsibility. It’s personal choice. People just need to learn to manage their alcohol.” The reality is that a lot of people can’t manage their alcohol—and that’s just the reality of it. They do need the support. They do need the option actually taken away from them.

I acknowledge that the members opposite are voting as a bloc. I am disappointed with that—I am disappointed. Look, every member needs to make up their own mind in this House, and it is disappointing, to me, when a party does decide to vote as a bloc on a conscience issue. I personally don’t agree with that, but obviously each party can do what they want to do.

So the first part of the bill, I absolutely support the member; the second part, I’m not as strong as the member is on this. I’m a patron of a football club: Melville United Football Club. There you go, I’ve just put Melville on Hansard! It’s a fantastic football club; came fifth in the national league last year. Look, clubs do need finances. That’s the reality of it. Clubs are very dependent on grant funding. However, I do acknowledge that grant funding and alcohol does seem to be waning. When you look at our club, we regularly apply for funding with the likes of pokies, we apply for funding from the TAB; we don’t apply for funding from alcohol, or very small amounts of funding. So, I mean, look, I could be wrong, and I stand to be corrected by this in the House, but I do sense that alcohol funding is very much dying away.

However, I don’t really support the member on Part 2, but I will support this bill because I think it needs to go to the select committee where they can work through it. So I commend the member and commend the bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Sometimes we have debates in the House where, because a party or individual doesn’t support the solution to a problem, it’s claimed that the member or party is in denial that a problem exists. I hope we don’t get to that in this debate, because I acknowledge the member for bringing this bill to the House, and I agree with her to the degree that the local alcohol policy (LAP) part of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 isn’t working as intended.

Now, Arena Williams kind of sheeted that home at the feet of the previous Government, and I think that’s probably half right, but I think we put some sections into that Act where it was—for example, appeals by people who might have had a greater interest than the general population. I think it was intended that that be the communities—not far-off, distant communities, but the communities into which the policies were being developed. It’s been interpreted quite the opposite, and the alcohol industry has used that, I think, in a way that is not becoming.

Speaking to the Government’s bill that seeks to change the local alcohol policy, which, again, for considered reasons we didn’t support, I criticised my own home city of Dunedin for this kind of approach of throwing up their hands and saying, “We can’t do anything.”—well, they can’t do more than they have. Actually, they can, I believe, and they can be more strident. We’re aware that there are a significant number of councils around the country who haven’t even implemented a LAP, 11 years after the bill was passed. So I’m not denying there’s a problem, and I think we need to improve the Act, but to remove the rights of appeal, in the way that Ms Swarbrick’s bill will do, I don’t think is the right approach.

Now, in respect of sponsorships, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and some members of the House will have had presentations made to them by researchers, including at the University of Otago, who have put cameras on kids and observed the number of times their field of vision comes into contact with alcohol sponsorship or branding. The results are quite startling. I can’t remember, but there were tens or hundreds of thousands of images presented to kids that, consciously or subconsciously, they get them—well, I won’t name the brands, but the beer sponsor on the poster for the Hurricanes or the Highlanders. It’s ubiquitous and it’s everywhere.

The question, then, is: is one causing the other? Firstly, is there harm? Yes. Is it going up or down? I’ll come to that in a minute. Thirdly, is that exposure the cause or a cause? So, firstly, yes, there is harm, and it disproportionately affects our young, and certain socio-economic and ethnic elements of our community.

Is that harm going up or down? Well, we’re drinking, on average, 25 percent less than we were on the 1970s and 1980s, according to the best data I could find.

And thirdly, it kind of renders the last question slightly redundant, because there’s a correlation-causation paradox, which is, I don’t know, for example, I could plot the rise of one-parent families positively correlated with the rise in the use of fridge magnets. One is not causing the other, and that’s on a positive correlation. What we’re having in the sponsorship is that there may be an increased exposure to sponsorship images at the same time as our overall alcohol consumption is going down over the same period of time. So is one causing the other? I’m not convinced. Is it appropriate to try and find alternatives to alcohol and gaming sponsorship? I think so. Should the State mandate that it is a door that then becomes closed to community sports clubs? I don’t think so.

Chlöe Swarbrick: Broadcast sports, Michael.

Well, you can say that, but that’s not where it’s going to stop. I think the point is still the same. If consumption is going down at the same time as exposure to images is going up, are we solving the right problem? I’m not convinced we are, and, for that reason, I can’t support the bill.

It’s a real privilege to be able to contribute to this thoughtful debate, and I hope that my contribution is useful. First, along with acknowledging the sponsor of this bill, Chlöe Swarbrick, I’d like to also acknowledge my colleague Lemauga Lydia Sosene for all the work she’s done over many years in this very vexed space, I would say. The reason that I am supporting this bill is because I feel that, fundamentally, it redresses an imbalance over processes relating to access to justice, and there’s three elements to that.

First, really, when I look at the bill around local voice and localisation, I do think it’s really important that local communities set their own rules and that they do have voice and that they are not subdued into silence through a lack of means to be able to challenge appeals that are lodged against them through the local alcohol policies. National, when they introduced the legislation, said it would be a level playing field, that hasn’t been the case. So that’s my first point.

Secondly, around alcohol advertising, as the Hon Michael Woodhouse has said, there’s evidence to show numerous exposures to alcohol advertising, and, I would say, the normalisation to many of our children—and I attended the same presentation that Chlöe gave to members, and I really thank her for providing a strong evidence base for the argument that she had. There are members of my own party, for whom I have great respect, who have said that the problem is around the void in sponsorship, but, actually, we had the same debate around tobacco sponsorship many years ago, and, also, there is evidence to suggest that perhaps some industries or sectors like the IT sector would be very quick to fill that void. So I cannot accept that argument.

Thirdly, just around timing, the Government has got the Hon Kiri Allan’s alcohol harm reduction work as well, but I am also really mindful that this debate has gone on for a number of years, many years, and there is always a reason why the urgency of the problem, that has been presented to us by communities both in South Auckland but also in Dunedin—and this bill is supported by the Dunedin City Council. The urgency is something that really speaks to me, and so if I felt that we were able to perhaps get the urgency that we need through a Government bill, I would not necessarily support this one, but I can see that the member who’s presented this bill is acting with urgency, has done her due diligence, has presented really cogent arguments. I also know that the South Auckland communities have been calling for this for years and years and live with the impacts of children walking to school and being confronted with up to five or six alcohol outlets on their way, even, to school, let alone on their way home. That gives me a sense that, really, the time for us to be dealing with this is right now; it cannot wait. So that weighs on me as well.

The other aspect is the Dunedin City Council. I am the member of Parliament for Taieri. I take very seriously the views of people in my electorate, and the fact that the council themselves have come out to publicly support the member’s bill gives me great confidence to know that they have done their own due diligence and research and that they too wish to carry the voices of the people that they represent.

So, in summary, I just want to really acknowledge the member Chlöe Swarbrick for the really detailed research and work that you did, the extensive lobbying. It’s not easy lobbying and corralling members. This is a very fraught area, and, in different circumstances, I might vote a different way, but for all the reasons that I’ve outlined, I wish to give this bill my support, and I really want to thank members across the House for the really considered, thoughtful, and respectful debate that we’re having on this matter tonight. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill in its first reading here tonight. The National Party is taking a joint view in this conscience issue and will be opposing this bill. As we’ve heard from speakers on this side of the House, we oppose certain aspects of this bill, one of them being the special appeals process and the fact that it’s not going to be appealable; any of the decisions that are made won’t be appealable by the applicant. We just find that that is an imposition on natural justice, and they’re the sorts of things that a real democracy enables. I did hear some of the earlier speeches talking about how big players can afford to go and make these appeals. The right to justice is not balanced against people’s ability to pay; it is about the outcomes that we seek.

But, of course, we do all acknowledge the serious harm that can happen to some people in our communities as a consequence of exposure and, of course, the drinking of alcohol. But that is, for some people, a problem; it is not for the whole of the population that this is a problem. And the problem we have got with this piece of legislation is that it dumbs down the population and treats everyone at the lowest common denominator. I think we need to remember that, actually, we have adults in this country that can make up their own minds and that are not easily influenced because an alcohol sponsor advertises in broadcasting sports. We think that grown-ups should be able to make up their own mind.

But there is a fixation in this bill about focusing solely on broadcasting at sports games. And I don’t know why that particular aspect has been singled out, because there are other aspects. Like, for instance, we’ve just had one of the biggest festivals on the West Coast; it’s the Wildfoods Festival. It’s renowned for its big sponsorship, but it’s also renowned because it’s one of the most enjoyable festivals that you can attend, and I might be a little bit biased in that, but there is a huge amount of sponsorship that goes on and one of them is from an alcohol company. It’s no particular one, because they actually bid for that right. So we have to wonder why there are things like festivals that are singled out or not included in this. And the other one, of course, is the concerts, where concerts are sponsored perhaps by advertising for alcohol and they will display the advertising at those events.

The exposure to the public of those is also equally as intrusive, if you like to think of it. But then we have the other aspect, of course, which is the internet, especially online gaming or, you know, other search engines that you might like to go to, which also can have alcohol advertising. So you have to wonder—well, I certainly had to wonder—if the broadcasting and advertising at sports events is just going to be the thin edge of the wedge and we are going to see the slow creep towards the banning of advertising and sponsorship making its way into a lot more aspects of our lives.

I heard my colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse talking about how alcohol has been around for millennia, and it has. We’ve had alcohol dug up in the pyramids, with the tombs down there. I mean, people have been exposed to it for a very long time. But I have to think that there are some “mummies” that think that they have to dictate to the rest of society, and that’s just not the case. But I think the biggest irony of this bill is the sponsor, Chlöe Swarbrick, who wants to ban alcohol advertising in broadcast sports—this is the very same person that thinks it’s OK for marijuana to be legalised. So a drug inducer, a mind-altering drug is OK but alcohol sports advertising is certainly not OK. I think that the double standard at play here is such an irony. And I think that if we’re going to all be treated like nuns and priests, the sponsor should probably start in her own backyard. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

I really wanted to take a call on this matter, and I value the opportunity I have, as a party that has honoured the conscience vote rules here, because we will have different opinions on this, and it’s very important we’re respectful of those opinions. They come from really deep places in our own experience.

My experience was with a family member who was very addicted to alcohol and it made a huge difference and it harmed people around me. I have thought deeply about this issue—probably as a consequence. I know the reality of addiction, and I also know the reality of the normalisation of something that can harm you in this way and how insidious it is.

So I want to go first to the second part of this bill, which is about the sponsorship for children’s sports. This kind of issue is really about the normalisation of something that we don’t want our children to think is normal. We want them to take this really seriously, because it’s that kind of normalisation that leads them into a vulnerable situation where they become addicted to something. It isn’t just about adults making adult decisions; it’s children becoming adults and hurting other people around them, including other children. It’s that serious, and I’ve seen it, I’ve had that experience in my own life, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. So that’s a really important part of this bill for me.

One of the parts of the debate here has been: well, is it something where there will be a vacuum and something else will come in and fill the gap, etc., or will it, in fact, leave a vacuum in children’s sport? I had a discussion with a friend recently who said to me, actually, what they used to do for their softball club was they used to walk down the main street and get sponsors from the hardware store or from the supermarket. That I’d be happy with; that kind of response to sponsorship will fill this gap if necessary. I don’t want to see sport being used as a conduit to our children and also to those who are watching those children. I don’t want it to be normalised. So that’s Part 2 of the Act.

I want to talk about Part 1 of the Act, which is the local control, and I want to talk about the central issue that we’ve talked about tonight, which is: is this a natural justice issue? I think we need to think really seriously about this, not just here but everywhere. I am a big, big fan of natural justice, but I’m not a fool. I know when that term is being used to actually squash what is actually going on, which is power imbalance, because if you put a bells-and-whistles “natural justice” around everything all the time, what you end up with is a way of big corporates actually doing quite a lot of damage in our society because they can afford the lawyers. They can tie up the system, and it’s not a myth. There are six-week cases on alcohol hours, etc.; little communities do get overwhelmed, poor communities get overwhelmed by this stuff. This is really serious.

So it is horses for courses here. We are intelligent human beings. We can work out the difference. We can design systems where local communities can have their say. And, yes, sometimes that means curbing the amount of natural justice. But what’s natural justice about? It’s about justice. And there’s ways and means of doing that. And sometimes justice needs to be found in a different way. And this is actually a response to that.

So though I love the work that the Labour Government has done in response to this issue, too, it isn’t here yet. So I’m going to vote for Chlöe Swarbrick’s bill, and I’m going to vote for both parts very happily.

I just wanted to talk about the difference between this and the bill that we just had from Ian McKelvie, because in my first speech on this, I said that I’m actually not a particularly judgmental person. I don’t mind making things easier for people in social situations, etc.; that is not the core of what is going on here. The core is the harm that’s going on. And our duty as lawmakers is to look at a situation intelligently and not chase the rabbit of “natural justice” or find the excuse that we are just not being pure enough. This is practical, this has to happen, and I am going to support this bill. I commend it to the House.

Point of order, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to table the many letters that I have written to Christopher Luxon, Nicola Willis, and the Hon Paul Goldsmith about the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Are there any objections? There are objections.

Speaking to bill, what an interesting range of debates that we’ve heard this evening. I want to thank my colleagues for engaging on this, largely, pretty fulsomely and with a very strong evidential and personal experience basis.

I guess, to bring this back to what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about a drug. We’re talking about a drug that is the most widely consumed drug in our society—80 percent of adults consume it; 20 percent of them to quite harmful ends. Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen. It is involved in 26 percent of suicides, and half of suicides for young people. What we’re talking about is a substance that, like all substances, the Green Party believes should be addressed not with a criminal prohibition approach but with an evidence-based, harm-reduction approach.

So just to outline the spectrum of regulation that’s available to us as policy makers when we’re talking about substances—substances which members across this House have acknowledged have existed for time immemorial, whether they are alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis. At one end of that spectrum, you have criminal prohibition, which, of course, is exemplified in this country by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975—that absolute dog of a law which continues to result in very unjust ends. At the other end of the spectrum, you have a complete legal free market. At both ends of that spectrum, you have the extremes of harm, because you have a situation where you have entities—whether they are criminal organisations or commercial organisations—that are incentivised to exploit vulnerable communities in order to make a quick buck, to shift or to sell as much of that product as is possible.

So how do you pull it back from those extremes? Well, you do it through sensible regulation. I’m so glad that the member Maureen Pugh raised the spectre of cannabis, because this is what consistency with legally regulating cannabis would look like. I would invite members of the National Party to look at the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, which, of course, went to a vote in 2022, which had very specific limitations, and, in fact, prohibition, of sponsorship and advertising of cannabis, because we recognise inherently that there is always going to be a problem when you have any substance that has the potential to cause harm—for that substance to be super-powered by commercial interests to be glamorised and normalised, and, therefore, sold to the biggest extent that is possible. So this is consistency with that evidence-based approach on cannabis.

I just need to respond to a number of the points that were raised by members—particularly members of the Opposition—because I am so gutted. I am so gutted because they are, frankly, in such bad faith. I have tried to engage, and it’s the reason that I sought to table and release those many, many letters that I sent over a year and a half, trying to engage with successive National Party leaders and successive National Party spokespeople on the issues of police and justice and health, and I was stonewalled again and again and again. I finally got to sit down with the Hon Paul Goldsmith, after badgering the National Party leadership, and responded and answered with evidence to all of the points which he reiterated tonight. So that’s why I’m so frustrated that this stuff is in such bad faith, because it is just consistently being parroted not from a position of actually trying to, as the Hon Paul Goldsmith spoke to, deal with or care about this issue, but from a place of just absolute dogma and partisanship. If you care about this stuff, then take it to select committee and have the opportunity to fulsomely unpack it.

So we’ve had the point raised about concerns with regard to special appeals, as many speakers have outlined. We’re talking about special appeals; we’re not talking about removal of judicial appeals. We’re talking about something that is baked in as a power imbalance for commercial entities in this country. It doesn’t exist for vaping. It doesn’t exist for tobacco. It doesn’t exist for gambling or any other form of social harm. It exists especially because you guys baked it in in 2012. Here’s the chance to fix it.

Then we had the issue of natural justice raised—which, again, we’re talking about special additional rights that exist in the space of alcohol.

We had the issue of hypocrisy raised by Brooke van Velden. Again, frankly I’m gutted that was raised, because I said exactly to her, just before she got up and spoke, that “I hope you don’t raise the same point as has been put out in your press releases.”, because in 2014, the ministerial forum commissioned by the former National Government recommended exactly this form of drafting.

This is a can that has been kicked down the road again and again and again. The evidence is clear. I hope that we get 49 votes from members of the Labour Party, because, guys, we can do it—let’s do this.

The subject of this vote is being treated as a conscience issue. In this case, I know there are members who want a personal vote, and I’m prepared to accept one. This is the process we’re going to follow: I’m going to put the question, I’m going to announce the result, and, at that stage, any member can ask for a personal vote. The question is that the motion be agreed to.