Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and found on the Parliament website.

I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

This bill responds to persistent issues with alcohol licensing processes in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. When the Act was introduced over a decade ago, it was intended to give communities a say in the way that alcohol licensing decisions were made in their respective communities and areas. However, we’ve heard from communities themselves that the Act is not working in the way that it was intended. The bill responds to these concerns by making changes to the licensing processes in three key areas.

First, the bill supports territorial authorities to adopt and apply local alcohol policies—or LAPs—to better guide licensing decisions in their area. It does this by removing the ability of parties to appeal provisional LAPs. It also gives District Licensing Committees, or DLCs, discretion to decline to renew licences where those licences are inconsistent with their local policy.

Secondly, the bill allows anyone to object to alcohol licence applications, save for a very narrow exception for trade competitors, to ensure licensing remains squarely focused on harm reduction.

Third, the bill makes licensing hearings more accessible and fairer for everybody taking part, by requiring DLCs to avoid unnecessary formality in their hearings. This includes removing the ability for people to be cross-examined in those hearings.

By making these changes, the bill ensures the voices of our communities are really at the heart of alcohol licensing decision making—the way the 2012 reforms were indeed intended to be. Before I discuss the bill in more detail, I want to just really acknowledge there were 420 people or organisations or groups that made submissions on this bill specifically. That’s a large number of submitters and I think it really goes to that point of just how interested people are in this particular area.

I want to, again, just acknowledge our colleagues across the House, chaired by Vanushi Walters—excellent chair that she is—that sit on that Justice Committee. They have been working incredibly hard to ensure that we are getting these pieces of legislation through in the form which they are intended to be. I’m pleased that the committee has recommended, by a majority, that this bill be passed. I also want to acknowledge that we’ve welcomed some suggested amendments as well.

The changes relating to LAPs make it easier for councils to adopt an LAP if they wish, and ensures that they are more effective once they are put into place. For too long, territorial authorities have worked with their communities, developed policies, only to be held up once it comes into that appeal process. This has cost ratepayers millions of dollars and it’s also delayed—and sometimes prevented, in some quite big examples—councils from being able to adopt their LAPs at all. LAPs have a role in reducing harm and they are an important way for communities to influence alcohol licensing decisions in the areas. This bill will remove the costs and delays associated with appeals and ensure that community voices are carried through to those licensing decisions.

I’m pleased the committee generally supports these changes, and we welcome the minor and technical amendments to fine-tune the proposal. In particular, I note that the bill is a lot clearer about how the new rules will apply to LAPs that have been developed when the provisions come into force. This will help territorial authorities navigate what the changes mean for them. It is absolutely important that we get this change right because this bill needs to strike that fair balance. These transitional provisions respect appeals that are under way when the changes came into effect, and protect the right to fair proceedings for the people involved in those cases.

I was pleased, also, to see that the committee agreed, by majority, with the change allowing anyone to object to an application for an alcohol licence—with a discrete exception for trade competitors. I also welcome the recommendation to apply this change regardless of the type of licensing application—be it for a new licence, renewal, a special licence, or an application to vary licence conditions. This ensures consistency across alcohol licensing, no matter the type of application, making the law simpler for everyone to engage with.

I know, also, that the committee carefully considered how to extend the eligibility for who can object to an application to best enable and protect community participation in licensing processes. Ultimately, allowing anyone to object means that no person or group is excluded from that process.

The committee heard from submitters who gave compelling evidence to support this. One submitter noted that allowing all community members to object to a licence will enable communities to have greater influence over their community environments, including where they live, where they work, where they learn, where they play, where they shop, and where they socialise. Another submitter said this change respects those who have family elsewhere and those that have whakapapa or ancestral connections to particular areas. For whānau across the country, this change means that they will have the ability to influence alcohol licensing decisions, those that impact their rohe, their whole painga, their iwi—irrespective of where they reside.

With greater inputs, DLCs will have a broader range of information to inform their decisions and it will be for DLCs to weigh the evidence presented. The committee has recommended an extension to the exemption for trade competitors. The bill now prevents people that are helped by a trade competitor to object to a licence. This change ensures that the licensing process is not about trying to get a competitive advantage over another business, but focuses, as I previously said, on that harm reduction point.

I also welcome the committee’s recommendation to extend the time frame for submitting an objection to an application from 15 to 25 days. The committee recognised that 15 days doesn’t always allow for people, and particularly community organisations, adequate time to put their objections together. Coupled with a change that allows anyone to object to a licence application, whether as a representative or a group organisation, this amendment gives people sufficient time to prepare and gather evidence. Increasing this time frame to 25 working days is a small but potentially quite a significant change to enable that community participation.

The changes to how the DLC hearings are run received particular scrutiny by the select committee. There are a number of changes to the bill as a result. First, the committee recommended including some suggestions for DLCs to consider when deciding on the procedures, to avoid unnecessary formality. This is particularly in response to submissions that called for more guidance to support the DLCs whilst also enabling individual DLCs to decide what works best for them in their local areas.

Secondly, the committee considered how to better support Māori to participate in hearings. I recognise that many submitters said tikanga can be poorly observed, while many more highlighted the inequitable alcohol-related harms experienced by our hapori Māori.

The committee recommended changes so that DLCs can support people to be heard in te reo Māori and allow for tikanga to be incorporated into proceedings as they are also in the other parts of the justice system. These changes will better enable DLCs and their communities to figure out what works best for them when it comes to licensing, and recognise the unique characteristics of the region.

Third, the committee also strengthened provisions related to people giving evidence remotely. The bill now requires DLCs and the licensing authority to consider reasonable requests by people to participate in hearings remotely. This gives a signal to those that have asked to participate in this form.

Finally, the committee heard a range of submissions on the provisions for DLCs to manage the volume of objections. Submitters pointed out that there are existing provisions in the Act already which give DLCs the powers, but many submitters also raised strong concern that these clauses will undermine the purpose of bill; that they could exclude valid objections and discourage participation.

Again, I want to acknowledge those that have worked on this bill and I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

The National Party is not supporting the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill, and we don’t think that it is a reasonable response to what are real issues in our community. Communities of New Zealand do obviously have the right to have a say in how alcohol is sold in their communities, and that is why the processes that are dealt with by this legislation were set up, to have local alcohol policies in place where a community can have, within reasonable bounds, some say over the way that alcohol is dealt with.

Now, there is an issue that this bill is trying to fix, which is that the process for getting local alcohol policies through has not been effective; it’s been too slow and too costly, and the court processes have been long and drawn out. So I think there is a very good argument for a review of that and an improvement of those processes so that they should be done quickly, so that a community, through its appropriate channels, can put up a local alcohol plan and people can argue about it and test it, and then it goes through. But that’s not what the bill proposes; the bill proposes to eliminate any appeals to the local alcohol policies.

The problem with that is it sort of works on the assumption that all decisions made by a council in this place are always going to be right and that the council will always get it right. I think anybody even vaguely associated with the workings of councils up and down the country would struggle to claim that councils always get it right and that they never make mistakes or they never overreach, or that they never do things which are unreasonable or make no sense. In fact, that seems to happen with monotonous regularity. So the fundamental assumption of this piece of legislation is flawed, and it’s ridiculous, ultimately, to think that councils will always get it right and that there should never be any basis for an appeal. I think that fundamental point is very weak.

The second part that concerns us around this bill is that, once these local alcohol plans have been through without appeal and adopted, the next phase of the system—the district licensing committees (DLC) which decide upon particular instances or particular requests for a liquor licence, or indeed a renewal of a liquor licence—can take into account those local alcohol policies. Now, the problem with that is that—and this is what many submitters said; they came in and they weren’t listened to by the Government members. Well, they listened to them, but they didn’t hear it or change their views in response to the submissions. Many of these people came in saying, “We’ve got a store or a cafe or a club that’s been operating for decades in a particular place. Every three years, we need to renew our licence.”

What can happen, under this legislation, is that a new plan could be passed through which says you cannot have a liquor outlet within a kilometre of a school, for example—and that, effectively, takes out just about everywhere in urban New Zealand, where there are schools tightly packed all over the place. You’d struggle to find too many places in Epsom, where I come from, for example, which aren’t within a kilometre of a school. And because the DLC can take that into account, they cannot renew their licence, and that particular little business—mum and dad business—could have been operating for 30 years with a perfect record, a perfect track record in terms of dealing with the community, could be highly regarded and respected in the community, but arbitrarily they could be shut down because of a local alcohol plan that has been put through which wasn’t appealed and now can be taken into account by the DLC when it comes to renewing their licence.

Now, that is arbitrary in the extreme, and it is unreasonable for any Parliament to pass that. Since this bill has been introduced, there have been other pieces of legislation introduced which do similar things and they’ve always grandfathered them or made it clear that it would not just end a business on the basis of such a change. So we don’t think that’s a reasonable policy, and we don’t think it’s a reasonable thing to do, because, ultimately, people who have invested in developing a business and a brand in a community, if they have been doing the right thing and providing a service that people want and are prepared to pay for and enjoy, should not be arbitrarily just waiting and vulnerable to having their business literally closed down by decisions made by the council regardless of how well they’ve been performing. That’s what this legislation does, and we can’t support it on that basis.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. This afternoon, we’ve been reflecting on two bills which have demonstrated the heavy process-element to achieving real justice, and this is absolutely one of them. Whether or not you have a right to have a say in a room, if you feel intimidated, if it’s too costly to travel to arrive at a hearing, or you feel that the language is not accessible, it is not justice to have that right on paper. And that’s in part what this bill addresses.

I would also like to thank the Minister of Justice for facilitating and stewarding this really important bill through the House. She reflected on the fact that we had 420 submissions. We heard from 80 people. There was a lot of interest in this room and quite a broad range of views. I’d also like to thank our advisors and the diligent team at the Parliamentary Counsel Office who navigated some of the quite technical changes that we did end up making.

I’d just like to walk through some of the aspects of what the bill does. So the first thing is removing the ability to appeal provisional local alcohol policies (LAP) to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority (ARLA)—that is something that Opposition member Hon Paul Goldsmith also spoke to. But what he didn’t mention is that it’s not a total removal of appeal rights in their entirety. So he spoke to the fact that local councils aren’t always going to get it right. I agree. Local councils are subject to having to work within the bounds of the law, which is why there’s still an opportunity for entities to take a judicial review to challenge whether those decisions have been made within the bounds of the law or not.

The second is giving district licensing committees and ALRA discretion to decline to renew a licence if the licence would be inconsistent with conditions on location or on licence density in the relevant LAP. Mr Goldsmith spoke about this as well, and I can assure you, Madam Speaker, and those in the room that we did pay very careful attention to the business owners—there were a number of them who presented to the Justice Committee. I did feel that they raised, actually, very good points.

However, the concept that we don’t need to ask our institutions and our businesses to adapt to our growing and maturing understanding of the world is simply false. It’s also not what we do. We’ve done it in the area of climate change, where we’re asking businesses to adapt, today, to what we know is the science. We’re asking our businesses to do it in terms of ESG—environmental, social, and governance standards—where there are currently suggestions that businesses listed on the NZX should be reporting in this space as well. So it is absolutely the case that we should constantly be looking to research, to science, be reflecting on the modern world, and then asking—yes, business, but all our institutions to respond in this space as well.

The third thing is requiring territorial authorities to consult on a discontinued LAP if they choose to recommence its development six or more years after the date when initial consultation was completed. The fourth, allowing any person to object to an application for a licence or renewal of a licence application.

And then there are a series of others which look to accessibility provisions as well, which would allow more people, essentially, to engage with the process through things like joining by audio visual, for example, and through things like ending the cross-examination of those people providing evidence, where a lot of people would choose not to if they were made to go through that process.

Here, I would just like to reflect on some of the people who did choose to submit. And I’d like to do that for two purposes. One is to show the ambit of the submissions that we received, but the second potentially is the chair of the Justice Committee to encourage people to use their opportunity to make submissions to select committees, because they come to us in many different forms.

So here’s the first. The first is an example of a brief, succinct, but to-the-point submission from Clifford Hallett: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill—Clifford says, “Yes.” Now, some people do just express their support for bills in that form, and I would actually like to encourage members of the public, when you do feel that you’re in favour of a bill, simply write “yes” and submit. It does make a difference. I think what we find as select committee members is those who often have amendments they’d like to propose, which is a really good thing, and those who are in hard opposition to a bill will submit. Those who are in support often choose not to. Submit “yes” like Clifford; fantastic.

The second one is from Josiah Tualamali'i, who submitted in detail in terms of his community in Ōtautahi. He bullet-pointed the effects that he’s seeing in his community, but also his sense of why people choose not to submit at the moment and his view of the future and what we could look like. And he done that in one page: one very effective page that I’ve printed out—that I printed out when we were listening to submissions because it was incredibly powerful. If you have a brief set of views about an issue: submit, in bullet-point form, about your experience.

The third: a submission from councillor Sarah Thompson. Now, she is a councillor at the Hamilton City Council, who made their own submission as well. Sarah chose to submit separately in her personal capacity, and she obviously has a wealth of experience with multiple hats on. I thought that was an interesting example of a submission, because I suspect a number of people who are a part of organisations who religiously submit to select committee feel that they can’t express their personal views. That is not the case; you have extraordinary expertise, and Sarah’s personal submission was beautifully done, because it also attached a transcript of a cross examination that she and another individual had gone through, which really gave us a sense of how aggressive it could get for some of these individuals from the community who were objecting.

So again, this is a very needed bill. I do think we’ve landed in a fair space between business and also listening to community values. I think we must always be looking to ask our businesses to rise to the challenges that we’re facing in a modern world, and the science that shows we need to take action. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s interesting that the previous speaker said this has landed in a fair space, and that’s probably the element I’d quibble with. I don’t think it is fair, I think this is a bill which its exact intention is to tip the balance in a very particular direction. We’ve heard, obviously, the elements, particularly from the Minister, about how the law now will sit—basically to give the submitters a lot of influence around how things are set up, and in effect, whether or not they are happy or not with the physical set up, the translations and everything else in order to present. We’ve heard that cross-examination of one side of submitters is basically going to end. We’re hearing as well that an appeal process is effectively tossed out the window. Now, you can argue, as I’m sure the Government will do, that those are good things, but I would not say that they are fair.

But to back up the horse and cart somewhat, let’s be absolutely clear that New Zealand has a major problem with alcohol. That’s an absolute given. That said, I am not convinced that this bill is going to fix that. One, I think the problems—well let’s not get into it tonight, but why and what drives New Zealander’s drinking behaviours is one thing.

But the second is that actually a lot of the providers, those who sell alcohol—and I’m thinking of the liquor stores in my electorate. I’ve visited—and don’t take this the wrong way. I visited them all the way that I visit all the businesses in the Tāmaki electorate, but they are good, hard-working people, running small, little businesses to support their families. I don’t believe that those that I’ve met in my electorate are the problem, and, unfortunately, this particular amendment bill is targeting them.

At the very least it’s creating an enormous uncertainty, which anyone who’s been in business knows is one of the worst things you can have. Why is this bill going to create uncertainty? As some submitters—and it was interesting, the Government hasn’t chosen to speak to those submitters here in the House today—said that they could have run their businesses, their little liquor stores, for five, 10, 30 years, and all of a sudden a change of the local alcohol laws will mean that they have to shut down, and there’s no real appeal rights.

Yes, you can do a judicial review. But, boy, that is a massive overreaction, if you will, or rather it is causing a business owner to go down a very expensive, troublesome route which may or may not be successful. But the removal of what has been a good process to date to appeal doesn’t make sense to us. Paul Goldsmith touched on it—councils don’t make the right decisions. God, I mean, we know it ourselves that this House doesn’t always make the right decisions. So the idea that, again, the appeal rights go, doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

The last point for me—I mean, it hasn’t been touched on so far—is we are talking here about local alcohol policies, and yet this bill allows anyone or any organisation from anywhere within the realm to submit. So some of my local Tāmaki liquor stores could have people from Invercargill—no offence to people from Invercargill; they’re fantastic. But why would a group or a person from Invercargill have any right to opine on what’s happening in the electorate of Tāmaki is beyond me, and so it just doesn’t make sense.

I do understand though—and I want to finish on this—the intention. I do understand why the Government is looking to do this. It comes back to that fundamental point I think we all, or most of us, agree on, that there are alcohol problems—but this is not the way to address it. Fundamentally, I think it’s not going to solve the alcohol problems in New Zealand. All it’s going to do is cause a lot more harm to our business owners, and so I cannot support this bill.

Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I want to open my contribution to this debate by congratulating the Minister for doing something that has been long sought by many in our community over many, many years. Ever since the Act itself was passed in 2012, it has been a matter of great disappointment to many of our communities around New Zealand because what they watched was a bill that was supposed to put the power to determine how many and where the alcohol outlets should be where it should be, which is in the hands of the community. That bill was not capable of achieving its aim because it was stymied, and it was able to be stymied by the use of the legal process in a way that was impossible to combat for community organisations.

This bill, by removing the power to appeal, cuts that red tape, cuts that long delay, and enables councils to get on with the job of doing what their communities want them to do in controlling liquor outlets and reducing the pernicious influence of alcohol in our community. So just to give you a sense, 12 years after the Act was enacted, two-thirds of Kiwis still do not have local alcohol policies. And that’s not for want of trying: 86 percent of attempts at local alcohol policies were appealed by supermarkets and 73 percent by bottle stores. We only have 5 percent of Kiwis who are actually covered by a local alcohol policy, and that is despite 12 years of community attempts.

When my colleagues and the previous speakers spoke about those 420 citizens and organisations who came before us to talk, many of them were local activists and local advocates who had been volunteering and donating their time to try to get through the alcohol policies that they as a community wanted—it’s about community voice—but had been unable to do so. It was greatly useful to us on the committee that we not only had those voices, both from the liquor outlets and the hospitality industry and the organisations that wished to open outlets, but we had those grassroots community organisations. We had also the benefit of a great experience in amongst our Labour colleagues, and I do want to call out my colleagues Arena Williams and Lemauga Lydia Sosene, who have immense practical and long-term experience in trying to negotiate good, sensible alcohol policies within their local communities.

So the first thing of the three major things this bill does is to remove that ability to use the normal appeal process to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority. But—and this seems to have somewhat slipped the attention of some of our members of the committee on the National side—it does not remove the ability for these matters to be judicially reviewed, because it retains the judicial review. Now, a judicial review is a tougher type of appeal process. What you’re looking at is not the strength of the decision but of the processes and the legality of the processes that were gone through to get there. So what it is about is the fairness of the decision-making process. It is a really rigorous process. It takes place in the High Court only, and I can tell you as an ex-lawyer and having run judicial reviews, it’s tough work and it is highly scrutinised. So should councils get it wrong or people feel that councils have got it wrong, there will be this extraordinary thing that they can do: the judicial review.

But in other circumstances we are going to prevent the tying up in the courts, the Bleak House type scenario, the Jarndyce and Jarndyce situation of over-expensive litigation that prevents communities having their way in their own rohe.

The second thing it does is make it easier for communities to speak. So it enables community participation, as has been said. It opens up those who can participate and who can make submissions. Now, just to make it clear, because the suggestion has been someone from Invercargill might come to Tāmaki and make a submission—they can make a submission, perhaps, but it is up to the district licensing committees (DLC) as to how much weight they put on the submission from someone from Invercargill. So, you know, it is not that someone from Invercargill will be dictating process in Tāmaki, although I have to say it is clear from the submissions that the DLCs themselves do need to pay greater attention to the links of mana whenua and, frankly, greater attention to tikanga in making their decisions.

The third thing we have done is to make hearings more accessible, because anyone who has been through a court process knows that it is legalistic, difficult, and intimidating. And we heard that again and again from the community grassroots activists who have been doing this work. We had, for example, Vanushi Walters, who spoke about the submitter Sarah who brought the example of the cross-examination. And I do briefly want to touch on this, because cross-examination is something I know a fair bit about. It is often regarded, and it was regarded by a number of our submitters and a number of people during the process, as a wonderful process that is absolutely vital to justice and should never be removed.

The truth is we have so much research that says cross-examination is pretty much the worst form of questioning you can get. It is complicated, usually antagonistic, it is very scary, and even the most robust adults—and I’m talking people who are, say, judges themselves who have come under cross-examination or expert witnesses—talk about just how impossible and how tied up and confused they become under cross-examination. It is not a necessary process and I’m very happy, as someone who has spent a lifetime working on justice reform, to see it go in this context.

So on that note, this is a fabulous, fabulous thing that is putting the power in our community where it should be: back in that same community. I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Unsurprisingly, I rise on behalf of ACT to oppose the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. The bill was brought in under urgency last year, but, just like the last one, it wasn’t that urgent. This is quite bad process.

The bill has six main parts, one of which we do agree with: make clear that licensing hearings can be conducted by phone, audiovisual link, and other means where appropriate and available. That sounds pretty fair and reasonable. But the other ones, we’ll go through them.

ACT, in general, support the devolution of powers down to communities that can make decisions democratically. But that also has to be balanced against the rights of individuals and businesses to operate in what is a legal activity and with a robust and democratic process that can’t be captured by interest groups. So allowing appeals is very important.

The assumption in the debate is that anti-alcohol groups represent the community and that the shops that sell alcohol don’t, but that’s just totally wrong. These shops are part of the community. They’re not aliens. They’re owned by members of that community, and the people they’re selling to are part of that community.

I’ve recently had to renew a liquor licence, and the hoops that licensees have to jump through are huge. People outside of the industry obviously just don’t understand. Business owners are already right into harm reduction and they care about their community. This word I often hear, “the alcohol industry”—in brackets—referred to like they’re the devil, it just doesn’t exist, no matter how they try and spin it.

If there’s a legal process to strip businesses of the right to sell what are legal products, and that process is through a licensing committee, then people affected have a right to be represented and to appeal. That’s just natural justice. The fact that anyone can object—and the bill commentary says that clauses 10 and 11, inserting new sections 102(1)-102(1A) and 128(1)-128(1A), “allow anyone except for a trade competitor and surrogates, to file an objection to an application for a new or renewed alcohol licence.” That is a real overreach. It will affect, or can affect, existing business—those businesses are family businesses, often passed down.

The chance of vexatious submissions are right there. And as someone mentioned, if a dope-smoking Green Party member in Auckland can complain about a bar in the West Coast, then there’s something not quite right with that system. The other one is: giving more powers to the district licensing committees. That’s just going to equal less democracy. We just know it.

The bill removes the voice of the local business owner. When the business owner disagrees with what a local alcohol policy may come up with, they’re being restricted in their ability to oppose it. We’re talking about people’s livelihoods. We’re talking about, like I said, families’ businesses that have been passed down and that they’ve worked hard to build up and to actually make a living, to live in this country. It’s getting so difficult.

I had a look at some of the first reading speeches. Once again, if you disagree with the left, then you’re evil, you obviously just don’t care, and you’re only interested in money—you’re only interested in money! And it’s just because we like to ask questions; we want to question the actual rationale of policies that go through. Sometimes I come to wonder why these are actually called debates. We will hear from the Greens about how much worse alcohol is than cannabis. That naivety would be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous, and I’d be quite prepared to have that argument any time.

Once again, this Government has managed to divide us. This time it’s with those who take the moral high ground with those in the real world.

I’ll finish with a quote from Nicole McKee, who actually sits on the committee and gave ACT’s first reading speech. She said, “Not everybody is drinking, but everyone should have the ability to make the choice. And everyone should have the ability to be able to conduct their business, or at least debate the reason why their business has been taken away from them.” We oppose this bill.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker, thank you. I’m very pleased to take a short call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. Normally it would be Chlöe Swarbrick who would be speaking on this bill, because of course it was triggered, in part, by her member’s bill on the sale and supply of alcohol and harm reduction, which was drawn from the ballot last year and created a momentum around the issue, which encouraged the Government to introduce this bill. But, of course, Chlöe Swarbrick is in Tāmaki-makau-rau after the tragedy earlier today, and like others in the House, we extend our huge condolences to the victims of that incident, the first responders, the survivors, and those who are in hospital with serious injury.

It is interesting, the National Party and the ACT Party’s stance on this bill. It is a very sensible bill, and I commend the Minister, the Hon Kiritapu Allan, who set out what the bill does very clearly in her speech. But, of course, it was local alcohol policies that were introduced under National, and they were intended to provide the community with the opportunity to have more say on what happened with licensing premises locally. This bill is not doing what Mr Goldsmith claimed—it is not going to completely override the ability of local hospitality businesses to operate. What it does do is stop booze barns, the alcohol industry, and big outlets from contesting councils’ ability to have a local alcohol policy, through repeated objections, and through appeals—and in Auckland, it’s been 10 years—including appeals at the Supreme Court. In Christchurch, it was five years, from 2013 to 2017. It cost the Christchurch City Council over $1 million before they withdrew their provisional local alcohol policy, because of the way the whole process worked.

This bill is really sensible in ensuring that objections cannot be based on trade competition. That is not a novel concept: it has been in the Resource Management Act for years to prevent supermarkets objecting on the basis of trade competition. So it is not new, members of the National Party—it operates in other spheres. I think it is really disappointing that we have had some speakers who have almost been apologists for the alcohol industry, exaggerating the impact on existing businesses and assuming that local councils will not exercise good judgment. I don’t expect that councils will try and put existing hospitality businesses that are operating well out of business by implementing a rule that they can’t continue to operate within 300 metres of a preschool or a school. But, in Christchurch after the earthquakes, locals were concerned at the “confetti-like” growth—they called it—of liquor outlets; off-licence premises, post-earthquake. Communities objected to that. It’s these sorts of issues, the proliferation of new businesses when you’ve already got businesses serving an area—that local alcohol policies can address.

This bill also, in ensuring that organisations that have an interest in an area can participate in the process, is also a good advance. In the regulatory impact statement, I think, it was noted that Hāpai te Hauora, which is a health entity part-owned by Waikato-Tainui, was declined the ability to stand in support of an objection by others in the Waikato, so this bill ensures that that sort of participation in the process can happen. We want the community to have a say. We want councils to get on and develop these local alcohol policies without having that work stymied by appeals to the authority. Local councils are elected representatives, so they can well represent their community.

What speakers like Mr Goldsmith have failed to acknowledge is the huge harm caused by the alcohol industry: $7.85 billion annually. It was unprecedented in 2021, when 20 former district health boards called for an urgent review of our alcohol laws because of the 800 deaths and more than 60,000 disability-adjusted life years that are lost due to alcohol consumption. We need to reduce the harm from alcohol. It is our most harmful drug. This bill is a small step towards reform. We need much more comprehensive reform, and the Green Party is disappointed that, in the Prime Minister’s policy bonfire earlier this year, further reform has been postponed until April next year, because the Law Commission did a very comprehensive report back in 2011 which set out a charter for reform. We need, for the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders, to get on and do much more comprehensive reform. That’s what Chlöe Swarbrick’s bill was about: a small part that has helped contribute to this bill. The Green Party supports the bill, and we commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. I find it really interesting to hear this debate that somehow communities and businesses will be in combat as a result of this bill. There’s the concern raised that it’s going to tip the balance and that it’ll cause harm to our business owners. I would have thought, if we had responsible business owners, that they would welcome engaging with their local communities. The assumption that by giving communities voice and access to participating in the decision making about how these businesses operate it would somehow stifle these businesses is a question—if I was owning one of these businesses, I’d be starting to wonder what it was I was actually trying to do. I think it’s a really fundamental question that should be sending these businesses scurrying off to have a think about what they’re doing and how they do it.

I want to reflect on a couple of the submissions that were made. There were many from communities that I am deeply involved with: rural women and women and young women. And I don’t necessarily qualify as all of those things, but I engage with those communities. Rural Women New Zealand and the National Council of Women of New Zealand (NCWNZ) had some very clear views about why they supported this bill, and I take their views seriously. I do my best to represent their views in this House, and I think they had a lot of really valuable contributions to make in the submission process.

They talked about the fact that it is really important that the communities have access to participating in this process. The NCWNZ members and branches overwhelmingly agreed that the community’s best interests are not represented in the current procedures, and they should have more influence and say. Respondents to their survey talked about local communities knowing their communities far better than those outside of it, because they are the ones most directly affected by the consequences of alcohol sales and consumption. This will enable communities to be responding to the difficulties, the challenges, and the opportunities that are unique to them.

We heard about an urban community where, because the schools are jammed in—you know, you’ve got a liquor licence, you’ve got to have a liquor licence, they will always be within one kilometre of a community. My local communities will be lucky to have a school and a pub, and maybe a dairy that has a bit of vaping on the side. So it’s almost inevitable in rural communities that there is going to be an impact, because they are within one kilometre. And the conversation to be had in an urban community about the approach and the access to liquor is going to be a very, very different one to my community.

There were some really powerful voices brought to the table by NCWNZ from some of our younger women, some of our university students. Hearing their stories and their testimony about the impact that alcohol has on their lives is really powerful. They should have an opportunity to participate in a process where they feel free to be honest about the impact and about how these decisions are going to impact them. These young women talked about events where there’s alcohol present and the impact that it has on them in a different way than older people. And it is really, really important that we recognise the unique perspectives and the different vulnerabilities that different communities have, and they should be considered.

We need to make sure that—you know, we heard about how it’s going to tip the balance. Well, that would be great to tip the balance so things are more equitable. Communities, vulnerable communities especially, do not have the resources to ride out the delays, the intimidation, and the access to lawyers that some of the other side of the balance have access to. We need to make sure that they are able to have some control and some influence over things that can have such an impact on their lives. For the young women, for the women who have children in their lives, and for the women who are impacted in rural communities more than some other members of our community, I support this bill and I recommend it to the House.

Members, this debate is interrupted and is set down for consideration next sitting day—resumption for next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. Tuesday, 25 July 2023.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 5.57 p.m.