Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question—sorry, you’re moving the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023)—

I’m seeking leave to present a legislative statement.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: —be now read a third time?

I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

The Rugby World Cup is one of the most significant sporting events in our calendar, and the Government is backing our communities and hospitality businesses to get behind the tournament in France later this year and, of course, behind our mighty All Blacks. There are just 52 days until the boys in black kick off their campaign against tournament hosts France.

This bill makes it easier for New Zealanders to come together and safely enjoy the tournament together while supporting our team. It also gives responsible Kiwi businesses the certainty and flexibility they need to host fans across the country for the tournament’s televised matches. Business will now be able to remain open outside of normal trading hours when televising live Rugby World Cup matches in France which happen outside of the normal trading hours. It will mean businesses won’t have to go through the usual special licence process. These temporary changes do not mean any business can just slice through the licensing defences. The bill sets clear eligibility criteria and extended trading hours are only available to current on-licence and club licence holders whose licences have not been varied or suspended in the last year.

By passing this bill now, business will have time to plan before the tournament kicks off on 9 September. These changes will make it easier for family, for friends, for communities to come together and enjoy the tournament. Importantly, though, the bill includes provisions to ensure that these amendments align well with the object of the Act. The bill requires licence holders to give timely notice to police and territorial authorities if they wish to open for matches. Licence holders will also be required to let police know if they change their plans and no longer wish to open. This will ensure that police can deploy their front-line staff more effectively. Furthermore, requirements for better record-keeping will help measure the impact of the changes and inform future work in this area.

We all know it’s been a pretty tough few years for hospitality businesses, and the Government is making sensible, practical changes to the law to ensure that they maximise the benefits of this highly anticipated tournament with fans whilst making it easier for communities to come together. The bill strikes an appropriate balance between providing licence holders with the certainty and flexibility they need and supporting communities to cheer on the team, celebrate a fantastic tournament, and support local hospitality businesses whilst also minimising any potential harm.

I’d like to acknowledge those members of the Justice Committee for their work on the bill, the chair, Vanushi Walters, and all of those that contributed to that process. I’d like to acknowledge those that provided their submissions to the select committee. And I guess, if I could say, the committee and this House have shown some quick, good hands to ensure that the bill is ready for kick-off come 9 September, and following the re-election of a Chris Hipkins - led Labour Government, I look forward to watching the All Blacks run it straight in the grand final on 29 October and watching old Sam Cane and Fossie leading the All Blacks to a record fourth men’s World Cup victory title. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I want to speak in favour of this bill, which seeks to do a very simple thing, which is to say that when the Rugby World Cup’s on in France and games are being played in the middle of the night or early in the morning, people can have the opportunity or the choice to go to a local pub or restaurant or club and get together with a whole bunch of people and watch a big screen and have a bacon butty, or whatever it is, and a beer and a glass of wine and watch the show. It shouldn’t be difficult to understand, and I don’t think it sort of traverses the great depths of drug policy or any requirements of that—it’s just a simple thing that New Zealanders want to do and expect to be able to do. The laws that we have around liquor licensing, however, make that difficult to achieve and cumbersome. And so this legislation is being passed, like previous pieces of legislation in previous Rugby World Cups, to ensure that this can happen in a relatively straightforward way. On that basis, we support it, because we acknowledge that people like to do this sort of thing and communities are drawn together when people—

Chlöe Swarbrick: What about the 635,000 people who used cannabis last year?

—can enjoy a whole lot of things. I’m getting heckled by a member of the Greens who is opposed to this legislation, and I’ll let her explain why she is such.

Look, we can have a long debate about liquor licensing law, and there’s another piece of legislation in the House—that we’ll be debating possibly later today or tomorrow—where we don’t think the Government has got the right balance and has made things very difficult and very hazardous for people who are running small businesses and who could find their small businesses shut down, effectively, overnight, through what we think is a very arbitrary process.

So there’s not a consistent approach to dealing with these matters across the House in a bipartisan way. But, in this instance, this is a relatively straightforward thing and we support it. We’re not going to, I suppose, extend it into a great sort of political battle, because it isn’t. The only battle that people are interested in, in relation to this, is the battle on the playing field, and we, of course, hope that the All Blacks will do well. But we’re looking forward to a great contest and a great competition, and it’s always a special time, every three years, where our hopes and dreams as a nation are built up, and sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we don’t. But we certainly hope that we’ll see an All Blacks victory alongside a National Government victory in October. And that’ll be a good time for all. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make a brief contribution. I just wanted to respond to the issue of consistency which a few members have raised in terms of this bill versus the bill that we will be talking about, in terms of community engagement. I do think we’re taking a consistent response—we’re having a consistent response. One is about setting policy and guidance for permanent situations. The other is about when we make exceptions to that policy, and there are exceptions made to many different policies for a number of different reasons. Research tends to guide and should guide our permanent policy, but there can be public interest reasons, business reasons, and others which might justify an exception from time to time.

I did reference in my second reading speech that there were a number of submitters who spoke to issues outside the scope of the bill that I do think are important. One was reviewing the special licensing regime, which all members agreed should happen. The second was implementing a permanent legislative solution for similar events, and the committee as a whole recommended that that be the case. But I do think interesting arguments have been made about the utility of having a discussion up in front of us every couple of years. And I, as many people in the House will know, am a proponent for clauses which allow a piece of legislation or a clause within legislation to sunset or end to ensure that Parliament’s mind is turned to a particular area. So should we move to a more standardised regime? I do think that members ought to consider changing circumstances. What we saw with submitters this time around were submitters who raised issues of compliance with the law that did lead to us tweaking some of the provisions in the bill. So that rehashing of those issues is really valuable. And with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. We’ve sort of been around the traps a bit on this bill today, haven’t we? I suppose I seem to get to speak on quite a number of alcohol bills in the House. I’m not sure whether that’s because of my experience or just because it happens. But I was thinking, as we were talking about this bill, that for me to go and watch one of these games at whatever hour of the morning and to have a few beers and then get home again would be quite a mission, because I’ve got to leave home and drive past the police transport station at Sanson to get to the local pub. Getting back would be pretty, I think, dangerous for me. So my point is that there’s a large number of people in New Zealand who are never going to be affected by this piece of legislation. It’s got absolutely no relevance at all to someone who lives in rural New Zealand, a distance from the place that I live.

And, of course, I go back to 6 o’clock closing, and if we think we’re going to alter the habits of people or their drinking by changing alcohol laws, we’re totally misguided, because all that happened at 6 o’clock closing was you took a couple of packs of cards with you and you went off down the road to the nearest house or the nearest local place after you left the pub. And that’s what’s going to happen if we start fiddling around with alcohol laws, trying to tighten them up and make things more difficult. So if you go back to that point, of course, the changes we might make to tighten these things up are not going to work. The only way I think we’re going to manage the alcohol laws better—and Michael Woodhouse, to some extent, in his second reading speech, touched on this—is by putting the onus completely on the operators to perform in a manner that, I guess, enables them to comply with the law, enables their patrons to comply with the law, and enables their patrons to have a bit of fun.

I also go back to the days of Sam Strahan and Ian Kirkpatrick and those sort of people playing rugby. They would have never dreamed of a bar opening up for them to play rugby in front of at half past four in the morning or whatever time they might have played in England in those days, and it would have been in the Northern Hemisphere. So the times have changed dramatically.

I also think that the real reason for enabling these establishments to open at these unusual hours is because their primary mode of business is not going to be selling alcohol; it’s going to be selling food and—as Michael Woodhouse referred to—a coffee and things like that. So I think the reasons for this bill being put in place are very good but will never apply to many of us.

I want to comment on a couple of other things that were said in the course of the second reading too. Emily Henderson interestingly raised as an issue that she didn’t know whether it was a round ball or a pointed ball, I think she said. Well, of course, rugby started with a round ball and finished up with a pointed ball. So she was right on both cases in that case. And the other thing I was sort of interested in as well was Damien Smith talking about riding a bike down the Champs Elysées. Well, the last time I was there, there was no way to ride a bike round there. You might get to that roundabout and you’d be cleaned out for sure. So nobody’s going to ride a bike down there to watch the rugby—or anything else. Well I’m not anyway.

So I think that the Justice Committee did a very good job in a short time with this bill. There wasn’t much to do to it, but I do think it’s appropriate that we put this bill through the House. And, again, I make the plea for us to have a revisit—and, again, as Paul Goldsmith referred to, there’s another bill, which will probably be in the House tonight, which attempts to make further alterations to alcohol laws in New Zealand, which might or might not be useful, but they certainly will be, I think, very concerning for the industry.

So it is a challenging issue for this Parliament. I think we’ve done well with this bill, and I think that to support those hospitality businesses in what’s been an extraordinarily difficult few years for them, if this bill helps them, then I think it’s done a good job. So that’s all I have to say. Thank you.

I rise in support of this bill, in this third reading. I would just like to acknowledge that I have been somewhat schooled by my rugby-loving colleagues, and it has been pointed out to me that I am taking this event—the Rugby World Cup—far too lightly. I would like to say I was raised by—

💬 Hon Louise Upston: Go, Nash!

And Mr Eagle, also, has been educational. I would like to, therefore, restore a little family honour and say that I was raised by a staunch rugby-playing father, and weekend afternoons—I can’t remember if they were Saturday or Sunday, because it’s rugby—were spent in front of the television watching games. We were deeply engaged, even in the Springbok Tour protests—and we were the protestors—my dad still came home and watched the games. So it is a massively important thing that we enable Kiwis to watch our national game, which is not just the FIFA world cup.

I therefore commend this bill to the House. It is a bill we worked on carefully, despite my facetiousness in this moment. It is a bill where submitters came and made sensible suggestions, and we took them up. It is a bill where we considered the potential alcohol harm, and the strong advice to us after repeated questioning was that, no, there is no proof that this small bit of permission is going to make any difference or create any further harm. And I stand here as a teetotal, non-sporting person, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s encouraging in the third reading to understand that the police will be keeping records of scale and demand, which will be good for the future event management of these plans.

One of the questions I do have, however, is that under new section 45F in clause 4, the compliance in the last Rugby World Cup of people displaying the correct notifications was abysmal, and we would suggest, from the ACT Party, that potentially the police force trusts enough the hospitality owners to actually potentially take photographs and send them to the police officer in the station so that they can concentrate on crime and other activities. One of my concerns is that during these events, the opportunity to go and burgle someone’s house is high, so we’d rather have them out on the beat.

In terms of the legislative scrutiny and proposed amendments, I think it all stacks up now. I think it’s non-problematic. One of the things that I do believe, which was slightly discouraging, was the Labour Party’s view in terms of sliding in the whole concept of wider alcoholic reform at this moment in time around this piece of legislation. That’s another agenda, that’s another conversation, and that’s another philosophy, I guess, in terms of how you compare it to other legislation like for smoke-free New Zealand, and it smacked of an agenda that—with the Green Party—potentially, these special licences and the use of sport sponsorship and other related activities may be coming to a close.

So, in terms of wider alcoholic reforms, I think they should have been parked. I think we should have just concentrated on this bill. We shouldn’t have passed it under urgency, but we do get to the point where we’re glad that we can bring it through the House today and let the industry get on with its work.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I agree with at least one thing that the member Damien Smith just said, which is that this should not be being passed under urgency. That, of course, has been one of the primary points that the Greens have been making throughout the readings today.

We’ve obviously canvassed this a lot over the past kind of hour and a bit. There’s three key reasons that the Greens are standing in opposition to this today—and I note that we’re not the only party doing so; Te Paati Māori is as well, of course, which we hold the proxies for. The first point is to note that the special licences process, as outlined in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012, works. There’s not next to any evidence that anyone has surfaced throughout this debate that shows that it hasn’t. I totally take on board the point around streamlining that process, but that is, again, a different argument.

The second is that if we are going to continue having this ad hoc approach under urgency, then there is a real need to look at this in context and say perhaps this heralds the need for a permanent change worthy and due of proper scrutiny of the House—hopefully not occurring under urgency—if we are to continue to deploy at least three times this kind of amendment under urgency in relation to these massive sporting events, which are not unpredictable by their very nature.

And of course the third thing is that, unlike members of the Opposition in particular, who have consistently said—as the Hon Paul Goldsmith did just before—that this is just a simple thing that New Zealanders like to do and that we don’t need to have an in-depth debate about drug harm, I disagree. Because what I feel continues to happen is that we chip away at pieces of law for one-off events like this and we sweep under the rug the broader, macro context of what it is that we’re dealing with when we’re dealing with these substances and the opportunity that we have to put in place evidence-based drug harm reduction. I do need to raise it, because, again, it was the point that was hammered home by the Hon Paul Goldsmith, that this is just a simple thing that New Zealanders like to do. It’d be remiss of me not to make a parallel to another substance, which is just a simple thing that New Zealanders like to do, which actually registers, based on national metrics, outed again—I believe it was either the University of Canterbury or the University of Otago looking at the drug harm in this country—that alcohol is the most harmful substance on a macro scale, and cannabis sits substantially below that.

To that effect, to the Hon Paul Goldsmith and members of the Opposition, if it’s just about being a simple thing that New Zealanders like to do, well, 635,000 New Zealanders consumed cannabis last year alone—that’s approximately 15 percent of the population. And we heard throughout the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill debate—obviously, the referendum—that members of the Opposition didn’t want to see people locked up for that personal use. Well, 180 New Zealanders were sentenced to prison for cannabis possession last year alone. So if we want to talk about logical consistency, then we need to apply that logical consistency to drug harm in this country, because this stuff does not happen in a vacuum.

We obviously heard from the member of the ACT Party, Damien Smith; I wrote it down here that “Talking about drug harm is part of another agenda.” No, again, this stuff does not happen in a vacuum and we’ve got to be grown-ups—in this space, least of all—to look evidence in the face and to say that we can do better and create better laws and regulations that reflect evidence. To respond to the point that was raised by Dr Emily Henderson, that “we need to enable Kiwis to watch our national game”, again I’d say that this bill actually doesn’t enable Kiwis to watch our national game. It enables Kiwis to drink while watching our national game, in licensed premises.

The basis of this bill is about enabling greater access to alcohol, and that’s kind of the basis of it. These premises can still open, if they choose not to serve that alcohol, to serve a coffee or a bacon butty, as the Hon Paul Goldsmith was talking about—those will still be on the table for ya if this law was not passed.

But, once again, for the reasons I’ve outlined throughout all of the readings of this legislation, the Greens just can’t in good faith and on an evidentially consistent basis support this legislation happening in an ad hoc manner. Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this bill. The speeches around the House I’ve listened to carefully; the work of the select committee as well. It was really useful for me in crystallising my thoughts around this bill, which is a good bill. It’s a simple bill, and, like the member before me, Chlöe Swarbrick, who drew on the comments of the Hon Paul Goldsmith, I will too. He did put it very succinctly when he said this was about enabling things New Zealanders want to do and expect to be able to do. This bill is about balancing those things like going to the pub to watch the game, against things that New Zealanders expect to do, like sleeping, if you’re a neighbour of a pub that’s open early in the morning, or using your town centre the next morning after a game has been on late at night, or using the public playground when you live next to an area where people go to drink after a game. This is exactly that. This is about striking a balance between what we as New Zealanders expect from the Government to regulate something which is fun, but make sure that it’s fun for everyone. I think this bill does that.

But that is why the Labour members of the committee spent a lot of time speaking with the submitters who chose to submit to us on this and the advisers who mounted swathes of evidence around the need for further reform in this area, when we asked them about the reform that was needed to make a logically consistent piece of legislation. In our committee report, if anyone cares to read it, we recorded those comments around the need for recommendation as part of further reform for the Government to consider suggesting amendment of the principal Act to provide stricter controls on advertising, sponsorship, or promotion of alcohol, including in relation to sports, because that will end up giving us a piece of legislation which makes sure that alcohol is fun for everyone and continues to be fun for everyone. That’s the goal here. This bill does that, but there’s more work to do.

This is a split call. Five minutes—the Hon Michael Woodhouse.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I strongly support the comments of Arena Williams about balance, and I also want to acknowledge Chlöe Swarbrick’s comments. Chlöe Swarbrick is nothing if not consistent and clear in her view about the risks and the inconsistencies between how we regulate for alcohol as opposed to other mind-altering substances, and so I commend the consistency even though I don’t agree with it. I heard Chlöe Swarbrick say, “The purpose is to enable people to drink”, and that’s one way we could describe this. My view—and this is based out of, well, some years of experience of being at licensed premises during sporting events—is that it actually enables people to gather. They can gather anywhere, that’s true; they can gather at the local Scout hall. But our licensed premises are good, safe, effective places where people can go and enjoy the sports and recreation activities they love, when they are broadcast. They are free to—she’s right, they don’t need to drink; many of them don’t. They could open and not offer alcohol; some of them do just that. But as Ms Arena Williams said, this is about striking the balance between enabling people to enjoy themselves in licensed premises while at the same time acknowledging that the licence holders have serious obligations for host responsibility. And those obligations will be greater when those games are at 1 or 2 in the morning because they may have patrons who have already been drinking for a time and will need to be vigilant that they don’t put their licences at risk by their failure to control and moderate excess. And I would encourage those listening who are going to take advantage of this legislation to do just that.

My last comment—and I trust you’ll indulge me, Mr Speaker—is slightly wide of the mark, because we are 51 days away from the Rugby World Cup but we are 27 hours away from the kick off in the FIFA Women’s World Cup. Thankfully, there’s no change to licences and no need for change to licences because in Australia and New Zealand they are in much more civil hours. But I just want to encourage people to support our New Zealand women’s team, support the tournament, and I’m absolutely confident that it’s going to be a spectacular showcase for New Zealand. All the best to the New Zealand women’s team.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to take a short call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill. I wasn’t on the Justice Committee that considered this, but it’s been a pleasure to hear, during these readings of this particular bill, of the attention that was given to this bill, which is quite a discrete area that it covers. It’s mainly due to, as the last member, the Hon Michael Woodhouse, referred to, the time difference between where the Rugby World Cup is being held and the time that it will be in New Zealand. So quite a practical bill that looks to allow our really important hospitality industry to be able to support one of our national teams, fighting in the World Cup, which I’m sure the All Blacks will be successful in.

And I just want to note that although this bill is about the ability to provide alcohol at those licensed venues, it is also about them continuing to trade in the way that they normally would. Having worked as a hospitality worker in the past, I know that simply changing your business model to one which only provides a certain section of the beverages you usually produce is actually quite difficult for those businesses to actually adapt to.

So I think this is a very practical bill. I do note the comments that other members have made about the nature of alcohol—the fact that it does cause a lot of damage within our society. And I don’t think any member of the House would deny that. This is not a bill, though, that looks into those wider societal issues. And I agree with other members when they say that that’s perhaps a topic for another day.

But I do want to commend the Minister of Justice and the Justice Committee and members of the House for supporting this bill. I think that we can sometimes underestimate the importance of sport and supporting our national teams. But we’ve seen, I think, in recent events—including the Women’s Rugby World Cup, where our Black Ferns team was so successful—how important those can be for the nature of how the nation is feeling and also to empower our women and girls, and also our boys as well, to aspire to greatness within sport. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, it’s a pleasure to take a very short call, being number 10 in a long line-up of previous speeches. But just really to reiterate that this is a particular piece of legislation that fixes something that was previously fixed. It is similar to temporary changes that were made in 2015 and 2019, but with some added amendments, as the chair of the Justice Committee spoke to—some added amendments based on experience and feedback from the Police and other stakeholders.

Now, I was juggling a couple of other commitments during this debate and I’m not sure if it was pointed out yet, but I do remember that my colleague, the now Hon Kieran McAnulty, pointed out in the 2019 debate something else that is very important in this piece of legislation. So in the back of the bill there is a schedule of games for the World Cup. It’s not easy to find, so all people have to do is go to the back of the bill and there’s all the games listed there. In bold are the New Zealand games, and also any of the semi-finals and finals. So that’s just an interesting piece of information people might want to put in their back pocket. But it’s a good bill, I was pleased to be part of that select committee that worked on it, and I commend it to the House. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on the third and final call of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill. This has been traversed a number of times before, and I did get an opportunity to speak briefly at the second reading of this bill, but this is to enable those eligible licensees, who have bars etc., to extend trading hours for the purpose of televising games played as part of the men’s Rugby World Cup 2023 without applying for a special licence. Taking into account the fact that Wellington is 10 hours ahead of France and games that are being played—for example, the opening match of France versus New Zealand on Friday, 8 September this year—will be able to be watched by people in New Zealand and they don’t just have to be at home, in the early hours; they can be out with others in their community, enjoying it in a responsible environment with the responsibilities that come with being a responsible host. And this is a good bill, which will enable New Zealanders to engage in their passion, which is watching rugby and other sports, and do it in a social environment. And with that, it comes with having a few beverages, normally, for many New Zealanders, and this will provide an opportunity for that to be done in a responsible fashion. So that’s a good little bill that will make that possible and, like I say, take into account the differences in time between where the games are being played and, in this case, where they are being watched.

And Mr Speaker—Madam Speaker, now. Welcome, Madam Speaker. It might be timely; I’ll just segue from rugby to soccer briefly, with the Speaker’s indulgence, because it is tomorrow night that there will be the very first game in the FIFA Women’s World Cup, Australia and New Zealand, 2023. It’s the first time it has been held in the southern hemisphere, the first to be co-hosted by two confederations—we have New Zealand and Australia—and the first to feature 32 teams, which was quite an exceptional moment in history. And that kicks off tomorrow night with the very first game in Auckland, which is pretty exciting. The world’s best female footballers will showcase their skills, their talent, their passion for the game and their passion for sport. It’s the world’s largest global women’s sporting event, and it’s predicted that more than one billion people will watch the tournament.

So it’s a great opportunity for New Zealand to be showcased on the international stage as well and also inspire future generations, inspire future boys, inspire future girls, future women, to get involved in sport and to create new heroes—new people who future generations will look back to and say, “That was someone who inspired me to do something exciting with my life.” So that’s about to kick off, which is hugely exciting. And I should say it rounds out an amazing two years where New Zealand has been at the heart of women’s sport internationally. We also hosted the Women’s Rugby World Cup, the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup, and we also had the International Working Group World Conference on Women & Sport. So these are huge milestones in raising the value and visibility—also recognising and celebrating the value and visibility—of women’s sports, the growing female participation in sport and, like I said, creating new female sporting heroes and leaders.

Maybe I’ll just touch on a very personal note for me personally. It’s always been a matter of pride in my family, personally at least, that one of my grandfathers, Frank Mooney Snr, played 14 tests for New Zealand between 1949 and 1953 and subsequently became a national selector. He actually made his debut for Wellington, as it happens, in 1941-1942, but his selection as the first choice wicket keeper for the 1949 tour of England was a surprise. In fact, dockside workers indeed went on strike, preferring their local representative, but he went on to enjoy a successful trip, playing in three tests and scoring 100 against Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord’s. He then played against England at home in 1951, West Indies in 1951-1952, and South Africa in 1952 and 1953—well enough to keep the rest of his rivals out of the reckoning. And so my point is just we look back at people who’ve done well in sports, and we celebrate as a matter of pride. What we’re doing here with our celebration of rugby and soccer is celebrating these future heroes who inspire future generations. It’s something for them to look back on as well. So with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise and take the final call on this bill, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2023 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill. I want to acknowledge all of the officials and the members who have efficiently and effectively shepherded this balanced bill through the House. I just want to reflect, for a moment, that this is a reflection that it isn’t an unusual experience for a New Zealander to be participating and cheering on a team globally at really odd hours. I can remember I was in Canada in 1987 for the very first World Cup, up in the middle of the night with a Canadian family who had no idea about the game at that stage—it was quite a lonely experience—and I was in France in the 1990s, in Les Deux Alpes in a ski resort where I was working, and I was up watching the America’s Cup, and, again, a fairly lonely experience in that landlocked place.

So it’s wonderful that this bill means that we can stand together in solidarity in odd hours, and so I’m really pleased to be able to support this. I feel pretty confident in suggesting that I can speak on behalf of everybody in this House in wishing our fabulous All Black squad all the best—they’re off to France, so bon voyage. They’re leaving home, so kia kaha, kia ū, kia mārama nui. I guess all that’s left to be said is “Bring it home.”

I declare the House in committee for further consideration of the Business Payment Practices Bill.