Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. It’s something that I noticed in my own community—that these local alcohol plans were actually just not being adhered to, because you had a real disparity of power, and you had big supermarkets and big lobby groups with lots of power up against the community. That really was causing issues, and it has undermined the purpose of having a local alcohol plan. So it’s a pleasure to see this bill come through and streamline that process and give power back to those communities.

I can say that I know of a case in Auckland where people spent over a million dollars just trying to do what they needed to in their community, and that’s just in legal fees. That case remains before our Supreme Court. It’s just not a sustainable position, and I’m proud of the Labour Party for noticing that—for making sure that it really takes account of the realities of economic power—and has amended the law accordingly. I’m pleased to support this bill.

I’m pleased to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. This bill gives power back to the community concerning alcohol licensing. I love that this bill considers the aspirations of the people and not those of corporate and power positions who clearly care about the bottom lines. So I welcome the bill. It’s important communities have a say in what happens in their backyard.

Alcohol consumed sensibly is a lot of fun. Alcohol consumed excessively is dangerous and a scourge on society. I just want to share some research by Rose Crossin et al.: the aim of the study is “to evaluate and rank drug harms … using a [multi-critical] decision analysis (MCDA) framework, and … separately consider harm within the total population, and among youth.” The results: “When considering overall harm … results indicated … alcohol, methamphetamine and synthetic cannabinoids were the most harmful to both … overall population and … youth, followed by tobacco in … total population. Alcohol remained the most harmful drug for the total population when separately considering harm to those who use it, and harm to others.”

I want to support this bill wholeheartedly. The current law clearly does not work in the best interests and as was intended, so this bill gives mana motuhake back to the communities. I commend this to the House.

I rise to speak on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill. The National Party is not supporting this bill. We don’t think it’s a good response to what are some genuine issues.

Communities in New Zealand, obviously, have the right and should have a say in how alcohol is sold in their communities, and that’s why we have these processes established in legislation to enable that to happen. But this bill has gone about it the wrong way to try to deal with what is a real issue—and there is a real issue in that it can take too long for the appeals process to wind their way through the system, and for decisions to be held and the costs associated with that. But this bill has approached it in the wrong way, and it’s probably going to have some pretty unintended consequences, which aren’t good at all.

It reminds me a little bit of that old saying that “The path to hell is paved with good intentions”. Sometimes you might be wanting to do the right thing, but you end up achieving completely the opposite outcome, which I think this bill will do, and I will just touch on a couple of points about why that is. This will allow any person or group to object to a new or renewed licence application, except for trade competitors where the objection relates to trade competition. So that means that an application in, say, Queenstown or in Gore could be objected to by people living in Auckland or Northland, or an application in Tauranga could be objected to by someone living in Nelson, and that really begs the question of how this is helping local communities have a say in where alcohol is sold in their communities. It’s just got it, frankly, quite wrong.

This also removes, effectively, appeal rights. The idea here is, obviously, to try and address the issue of these appeals taking too long and costing too much, but completely removing any appeal right is frankly, in my view, bizarre. There should always be an option and an opportunity for affected persons to appeal against a decision made against them, and to completely remove that, I think, misunderstands the way our justice system works and the way that we resolve disputes in our communities. Frankly, it’s just not good law and it’s not good rule of law to remove those appeal rights, so I find that quite extraordinary, actually, that that’s the process to be taken in this bill.

The other thing is that this bill allows parties or their representatives to question other parties or witnesses of other parties, but it does not permit cross-examination. Now, having spent many years working in courts all across New Zealand from the top to the bottom of the North Island and the South Island, I can say that it’s critical to allow cross-examination of witnesses, because witnesses have a tendency, consciously or unconsciously, and parties have a tendency, consciously or unconsciously, to advance their own best interests, and it’s only through the process of cross-examination that it’s actually possible to bring to the surface other facts and other issues that they don’t necessarily want to, or haven’t thought of alerting the decision maker to.

But it’s actually really important for the decision maker or makers to understand so that they can make the right decision. So to completely remove the ability for a cross-examination takes away that key, fundamental cornerstone of our justice system—and it’s a system that we’ve established over many, many hundreds of years—to bring to the surface the best facts available so that the decision maker or makers can make the best decision based on the information available to them.

So that, again, just completely misunderstands things. This doesn’t go as far as it, but I just think of the best intentions in judicial processes that have been done in the past, and this is obviously not the same, but I’ll just touch on the historical example of the Star Chamber, which is probably well-known to those who have a legal interest. That court was originally established many hundreds of years ago in England to ensure the fair enforcement of laws against socially and politically prominent people whom ordinary courts would hesitate to convict. But the way it developed—despite that good intention—was that it became known, and it is still known well to those who have a legal interest, as a court that had strict, arbitrary rulings as due process rights were ignored. It went as far as even having secretive proceedings, and it became synonymous with social and political repression through the arbitrary use and abuse of the power that it wielded.

This is not to that degree, but this, unfortunately, does have some similarities in that it removes the appeal rights, it removes the ability for cross-examination, and, ironically, it enables anyone from anywhere in the country to make a submission on a local application or renewal of a whole licensing application.

Like I said at the beginning, there is certainly a case, and an appropriate case, to be made, and communities should have a say on the way that alcohol is sold, etc., in their community. But we need to be careful, and I think of the history in my own region, where between 1902 and 1957, the Gore District was under strict prohibition. No alcohol at all could be sold between 1902 and 1957, so it was a very, very long period of time. What is also well-known in my region is that the Hokonui Hills behind Gore became alive with stills, where illegal alcohol was brewed merrily and sold without any kind of oversight or control around the district. People were happily accessing alcohol between 1902 and 1957, but the Government had no oversight and no control. The community—

💬 Hon Judith Collins: It’s like the King Country.

My colleague the Hon Judith Collins says it’s like in the King Country—the same thing.

So the Government might come in and say, “All right, we’re going to just stop things.”, but it has to be workable. It has to have an opportunity for people to be heard and to have their say and for the best facts to be provided to the decision maker, and it needs to be so that local communities are making submissions for their community, rather than people all around the country, which simply doesn’t make sense.

Well, I should just do a shout-out when I’m talking about Gore and Hokonui. The Hokonui Moonshine Museum in Gore is a fantastic place. It tells the history of prohibition and what led to it and what happened during those merry 50-plus years when the moonshine stills were up in the mountains of the Hokonui Hills, where the water was being used to make liqueur and other alcohol around the region. In fact, you can buy some responsibly brewed and sold whisky there, which is actually extremely good.

So look, with that, I’ll say that the intention in this bill is certainly good but the execution is not. It is bad and it’s not good due process. It won’t lead to good decisions, and, fundamentally, that’s what this House should be focused on.

Members, the Government has indicated that it no longer wishes to continue with urgency. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. today.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 12.47 p.m. (Thursday)