Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Winery Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill

Members, the House is in committee on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Winery Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill. The Business Committee has determined that the powers of this committee be extended to consider out-of-scope amendments in Amendment Papers 31 and 32 in the name of the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. Members will be aware that personal votes will be taken on substantive questions such as votes on amendments or on the question that a part stand part. However, in accordance with Speakers’ ruling 73/4, party votes will be taken for votes on procedural matters such as closure motions. We start with clause 1.

Point of order, Mr Chair. I seek leave for all provisions to be taken as one question.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. The question is that clauses 1 to 9 stand part.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, members. This bill is an important bill for the wine industry. It will fix a longstanding anomaly in the law and make it much easier for wineries to operate their cellar doors by enabling wineries to hold an on-licence and an off-licence together. That can be done in some cases, but it’s quite difficult, and this bill makes it much easier to achieve and will make it more equal across the whole country so that it’s very clear how this can operate.

I want to point out something about licence combinations, which I’ve just alluded to, because there has been a lot of different interpretations around the country. So I want to get it on the record what this is going to do. There is a technical anomaly in the Act, as I’ve mentioned, meaning that some wineries have to apply for a second, different type of licence through a separate legal entity in order to charge for tastings. This creates additional costs and administrative burden. This bill allows winery cellar doors to hold an on-licence and an off-licence simultaneously. It means that a winery cellar door will be able to share the same licensed footprint as a restaurant or a cafe. In doing so, the bill grants winery cellar doors the same exemption that is already available to hotels and taverns.

So I’m quite happy to take questions on this matter. I do thank the members who have supported this bill to this stage and thank them for their contributions, and I’d also like to thank those that contributed through the select committee process to get the bill in the shape that we have it in today. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair. The member in the chair, Stuart Smith, will be aware that I have a number of Amendment Papers, which are aimed at addressing some of what I see as the anomalies or shortcomings in the legislation. I thought I’d just start, if I may, with Amendment Paper 30, and that’s really about what a winery cellar door is. I’m concerned that the bill, as it sits on the Table, enables a so-called winery cellar door to, in fact, be a great distance from where the wine is produced.

I’m aware that there’s the requirement that a licensing officer has to have the opinion that it is a winery cellar door, but “winery cellar door”—that must be within the legislation. As amended by this bill, a “winery cellar door means retail premises”—this is in clause 4 of the bill—“operated by a person for the purposes of selling grape wine (as defined in section 58(3)) that is made by or on behalf of that person—(a) [either] on those premises;”—that’s a real winery cellar door—“or (b) from produce harvested from land occupied by that person”. So it could be that the grapes are grown in Waipara, in the Canterbury region—fantastic wine comes from there—but the cellar door could be in Blenheim or Christchurch. It could be a great distance away, because that’s what a “winery cellar door” means.

I accept that you could have your vineyard in Omihi, just outside of Waipara, and then your cellar door in the township 5 or 6 kilometres away; that kind of works, I understand. It’s within what’s expected—it’s in the wine region. But certainly not 50, 60, 100, 500 kilometres away. My Amendment Paper 30 adds to that, and says that “the retail premises are located no more than 10 kilometres from where the main ingredients were grown or the wine was manufactured”. It makes it—and the member in the chair will remind us—it attaches the cellar door to the geographical region from which the wine in this case was produced. I’m wondering if the member will support that, and, if not, can he—because I understand that in his view, the cellar door must be close to the vineyard, but that’s not how I read the legislation. If he can work through how I’ve got that wrong, then my Amendment Paper is redundant, but I honestly don’t see how that could possibly be the case—

Hon Matt Doocey: What, that you couldn’t be wrong?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: —in which case, will he—I can’t see how he could work through it in a way that doesn’t lead to that conclusion, Mr Doocey. Me being wrong—it’s possible. Hasn’t happened so far, but it’s possible! But, frivolity aside, you know, I understand the member’s intention, but I honestly don’t think the legislation’s quite got there. If I’m wrong in his intention or I’m wrong in the interpretation, I’d be keen to hear it. Otherwise, will he support that Amendment Paper?

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have got a couple of things I want to work through, but I’ll just focus on one of them at the moment because it’s connected to the one raised by the Hon Duncan Webb, and that is my amendment on the floor which is at clause 4 and it’s the definition of cellar door from produce harvested from the land on which the retail premises is situated. So it’s a very similar problem that I’m seeing. You need to have very much a connection with the produce and the land on which the retail premises is situated.

I actually remember as a teenager walking down Sandringham Road, which was dry at the time but it had these old-fashioned shop fronts where they just sold wine that was a little bit like tar. I think it was just me and my friends buying that wine. I’m not sure it was the best thing for “Brand New Zealand”, but that was going on. It certainly wasn’t produced at the back of the Sandringham shop, but it was a kind of glitch in the system. It would be very nice if you would not glitch the system in this way, and so I’d like your response about that connection between the growing—I can see what you’re trying to do; I can see you’re trying to support your region. But that would provide that kind of security of connection and quality of the produce, presumably, that means it’s not being sold in the Sandringham shops next to the dairy.

Also, I might actually just take the opportunity to talk through the second one of the amendments that I put. This is quite a significant difference, and it is really in support of the manufacturers of other products where they are producing the products on site, and that is really about the beer manufacturers that are out there. Now, I’ve got that manufacturing and small-business portfolio. It’s an industry where we’ve seen the big brewers go sliding down and the struggling of small, amazing new industries in this area of really boutique breweries. I cannot see why we would distinguish and keep this for those people who are in small business. They’re manufacturing product of this kind in a region like Blenheim, and not do that for the people of Morningside, who actually do have incredible breweries going, and they are there, and they are in exactly the same position. That’s like-for-like.

I guess I see that as avoiding what we used to call pork-barrel politics. We don’t just look after our own region. We take the logical position. We’re representatives of all New Zealanders and we need to make sure we’re looking after New Zealanders. So I’d like to know why it is that there has been this distinction between the two, and why we wouldn’t go the whole way to support the same kind of outlet if that’s the position. If that’s the logic that this is really supposed to help those little businesses, why wouldn’t we help them all? Especially when we’ve had an industry that struggled, actually, in urban areas, and right now it’s picking up. You can see those little boutique brewers. They are doing better than the bigger industry, which is coming down. This would help them enormously. They actually do, in my area, have tastings, etc. So it does happen. There are flights of these specialist beers. So I would genuinely like to know why we wouldn’t keep them in the equation. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you for the questions, to both of the members. It was quite interesting hearing about your teenage years there and the wine that you had which was glitchy. It was not a descriptor I’ve used when tasting wine, but it’s interesting, none the less.

So going to the second part of your question: why is this for wine? Why are we discriminating between wine and beer? Well, wine and beer are different; they’re quite different under the law as well. What you’ve described and your desire to support the brewers sounds like an excellent member’s bill for you to bring to the House. Members’ bills are about narrow issues that you can generally get agreement with to be successful, and that was why I brought this bill in the way it was.

We’ve been through the select committee process already and we’ve heard evidence and improved the bill. We didn’t do that with beer in mind. I note that one of Dr Webb’s Amendment Papers alludes to having beer available in a tasting size of 115 millilitres versus 35 millilitres for wine, but beer can have alcohol levels similar to wine. To be a wine, the minimum amount of alcohol you can have to be classed as a wine under the law is 8.5 percent. There are a lot of beers over 8.5 percent, and so why would you have a different tasting amount like that if it’s similar to wine?

So the rationale is that we didn’t do the work on that. I didn’t intend to bring that in. Personally, if someone brought a member’s bill allowing brewers to have cellar doors in a similar way under the licences that wineries have, I would support that, subject to it meeting all the right criteria, but I haven’t done that work on brewers, nor have I done it on distillers. They’re quite different products and they’re referred to differently in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, so the work hasn’t been done.

If I can quote from replacement section 32(g), inserted by clause 7, it says that for kinds of premises for which off-licences may be issued, which is what we’re talking about here—for premises that, in the opinion of the licensing authority or the licensing committee concerned, are a cellar door. So you would have to convince the licensing authorities that it was a valid cellar door.

Dr Webb talked about the bottom part of my electorate, actually, Waipara—not quite the bottom, but almost—and opening a cellar door for wines produced in that area. You’d have to actually convince the licensing authority or the licensing committee that that was a valid cellar door. I can tell you, from experience of dealing with licensing authorities and licensing committees, although I’ve only done it for my own purposes, that, actually, they are not silly people; they don’t have the wool pulled over their eyes. They’re very practical and they will interpret the law sometimes too harshly. So I have no fear that that will be anything that will cause any problem in the law the way it is written. Thank you.

Oh, Mr Chair—fantastic. I’m keen to talk further about the point that the member Mr Stuart Smith raised in his response there, particularly around the Amendment Paper put forward by the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, around amending clause 4 and the outline that Mr Webb has put in around an amendment in the sense that the retail premises are located no more than 10 kilometres from where the main ingredients were grown or the wine was manufactured. Now, I’m interested to hear your perspective on that, Stuart, particularly because I can think of a couple of circumstances where you have the winery in a particular location and you may have the tastings done somewhere else. An arbitrary 10-kilometre radius actually may not fit be fit for purpose from one location to the next.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Tell that to the Champagne region.

TOM RUTHERFORD: Excuse me?

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Tell that to the Champagne region.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Direct your comments to the Chair.

TOM RUTHERFORD: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I will direct my comments to the Chair, absolutely.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Thank you.

TOM RUTHERFORD: I’ll just have to ignore what’s taking place on the other side of the Chamber. So I’m keen to know: is the 10-kilometre radius actually functional and workable here in New Zealand, or is it just setting an arbitrary location and distance that actually couldn’t be worked for our local communities and our cellar doors and their tastings?

On this point of the nexus, I’m also interested in this and I think the committee would benefit from the member Stuart Smith expanding on this definition of “winery cellar door”. The member has already explained that the licensing authority in clause 7 has to have an opinion about this, and he’s explained that well, but it goes back, then, to the definition of “winery cellar door”. So that means “retail premises operated by a person for the purpose of selling grape wine … that is made by or on behalf of that person (a) on those retail premises;”—so that’s easy—“or (b) from produce harvested from land occupied by that person”. I think the concern that’s coming is about how that licensing officer—who’s got to have the opinion in clause 7—is going to interpret “from produce harvested on land occupied by that person”.

So, for instance, it might be useful to have some examples. We’ve heard about Champagne, but, of course, the far superior wine-growing region in the world is Central Otago, as we should all agree to. So if you have a wine grown—say, a very fine pinot noir in Bannockburn—and you are selling that in Queenstown or somewhere on the road nearby, does the member imagine that that would count as a winery cellar door? Whereas, if you have that same glorious pinot noir, grown in Bannockburn, being sold in Auckland in the viaduct—what is the proximity that the member imagines would be under consideration by that licensing officer?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Well, firstly, to Tom Rutherford’s question—that a very good question. We had evidence from Olivia Doonan from Tūpari Wines, and their vineyard’s in the Awatere Valley and it’s quite remote. They have a cellar door in the railway station at Seddon, which is 13 kilometres away. So if it was a 10-kilometre radius—

Tom Rutherford: They’d be crippled.

STUART SMITH: Exactly. Often, vineyards can be owned by the same person growing for the same winery and they can be more than 10 kilometres apart. So where does the radius start? Where do you centre that that radius? You know, would it be the closest corner of a vineyard, which may not even have the wine from some of the grapes come to go in all of the wines—maybe it only goes in parts of the wines. So it becomes a bureaucratic nightmare. I think this is really clear.

I have no concern at all that someone could grow grapes, say, in Marlborough and open a cellar door in the viaduct in Auckland. I think that no self-respecting alcohol officer would allow that—now, I think that’s crazy. Try and take it as a—like a bar, for example, you’re only allowed to sell 35-millilitre tastings. You’re charging for a 35-millilitre tasting of wine. If you want to lose money pretty quickly, that would be a good way to do it. So I think there’s no way that that would be a sensible business.

Hon Rachel Brooking: And Queenstown, from Bannockburn?

STUART SMITH: Well, Queenstown and Bannockburn is probably a bit far, I would have thought. But I would have thought Bannockburn and then on the road at Cromwell would be quite acceptable. But as the law states, I think that would be quite acceptable. I think that’s quite fair, quite frankly—it stays within the spirit of it. It wouldn’t be in the Octagon.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing the member’s bill. I’ve got some questions. It was the first select committee I ever sat on—I think it was the day after I had my swearing-in, as we would call it.

I want to ask the member, who brought this bill, why the definition of “wine” is so narrow, given that we have got—and I’ve looked up the definitions under the original Act, the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, and there was absolutely no mention of cider or perry, except as fruit and vegetable wines.

We heard from a lot of different people at the select committee. We heard from the really high-end Wairarapa wineries like Ata Rangi, where they cannot afford to give away free samples of the top-level wines. We also heard how attractive cycle tourism is, whether it’s Otago or, again, the Wairarapa, or, I’m sure, Marlborough as well. But there are cideries that could be included as well. There are craft breweries that could be included as well. You think of the Nelson area and the specialist hops that are grown there. I think it’s important to support these producers of these slightly different products.

I’m really disappointed that Catherine Wedd isn’t here and couldn’t talk about apples and the importance of apples, but there we are. I can talk about the importance of apples and cider in the Wairarapa.

I’m particularly interested in whether you can expand the definition of “wine”. I think the question of location and distance—not having anything there is a bit dangerous, but I’m not certain of the 10 kilometres radius, either, at the moment. So if you could enlarge on those points.

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Just for our newer members, it’s important not to refer to the absence of other members from the House.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Thank you for the question. I do remember you in that first—you’d just given your maiden speech, virtually, and were in select committee and asked a lot of relevant questions, so it was a great start to your parliamentary career.

Actually, the questions you asked were quite valid. The issue is that wine is defined in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, so it has to be referred to in that way. We can’t expand the definition of it in this bill. So you could bring in a member’s bill for ciders and so on and have them treated similarly, but you wouldn’t be able to do it in the way this is being done in this bill. We know that because it was suggested by one of the members on the committee at a select committee, and the clerk said it would be out of scope of the bill and wouldn’t be able to be considered, so we didn’t do that.

So it’s pretty clear and cut and dry. That’s not to say I’ve got anything against cider or mead or other products, but this is a narrow bill, as I said, and it addresses a very small anomaly in the law, and that is why it has got to this stage so far in the process.

Thank you, Mr Chair. It’s a good moment, if I may say so, that I come to talk about one of my other Amendment Papers, which is Amendment Paper—

Tom Rutherford: Tell me what a “vegetable wine” is?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: There’s nothing wrong with vegetable wine. Look, it’s a bit of frivolity now, and it is nice that we can do that on a bill like this. I mean, I know this is a matter that’s very dear [Clears throat and drinks from glass]—excuse me. [Interruption] Excuse me!

Tom Rutherford: Oh, is that vegetable wine?

Hon Member: What’s in that glass?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: That’s a little bit of parsley wine there for me to help it go down. But, no, look, if I may, talking about the definition of “wine”, I think we’ve got to be clear here that we are talking about the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act and the definition of “wine” is there set out in section 58, and it makes it quite clear. It talks about two things: wine and grape wine. I think the member will find it’s the Wine Act which talks about the alcohol content of wine, because the Wine Act is the Act which deals with, essentially, the quality of the wine and the standards of the wine for export and sale. Whereas it’s the sale of liquor Act, which deals with the regulation of the sale of wine and other beverages of an alcoholic nature in New Zealand. Now, under section 58, any beverage which is made by the fermentation of fruit, vegetables, or grain, is, in fact, wine. That’s what section 58 of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act says.

So it’s entirely appropriate and possible for this House to adopt my Amendment Paper 32, which simply says to remove the references to grape and make it any wine. That impact would include not only the kind of parsley and pea wine of The Good Life but also perry—that is, beverages made from pears—and cider—that is, beverages made from the fermentation of apple juice.

Helen White: And beer?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Not beer. Beer has the addition of hops, which is separately defined in the Act, but I’m just talking about Amendment Paper 32, which simply replaces “grape wine” in various places with “wine”. That would make it entirely possible for all of those other beverages, other than beer and mead, which are separately defined in the legislation, to have a cellar door, if you like.

So I really don’t see any difficulty with this proposal, because all it does is extend the capturing of this. I must say, I have been contacted by a number of people, particularly from cideries, who are quite affronted—I haven’t done a field trip yet—by the fact that down the road—and this is actually in the Wairarapa—wineries are getting a special permission to have these licensing indulgences, whereas they are not given the same indulgences. It’s putting them on the back foot; they’re small artisan cideries.

Hon David Parker: They’ve got the pip!

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: They have got the pip. That was quite nice. Well done! But to get to the core of an issue—we could go on all night!

Tom Rutherford: You’re a barrel of laughs!

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): We don’t want any sour grapes, though!

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: I just want to reduce the frivolity, because this is actually a serious amendment about creating an even playing field.

My concern that I expressed in committee to the member was that this was, in fact, creating an anti-competitive environment where people didn’t have the same abilities to compete, that grape wine had a competitive advantage by an unequal regulation. We don’t want that. This is relaxing the red tape for grape wine and not relaxing it for cider. So let’s sort that out. So I would implore the member and the other members of this House to vote in favour of this Amendment Paper 32. If the member doesn’t agree with all wine being part of this bill, I’d really like to understand why—other than the fact that it’s a narrow bill and I thought of it first. So if he could respond to that, I’d really appreciate it.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to make a call, and I thank our colleagues who have traversed and had a good kōrero about wine. I wanted to ask some questions around—I’ve been reading the commentary, but also clause 8 inserting new section 62A around snack food.

I wanted to understand because it’s not clear to me, as a member, in terms of what is stipulated in the amendment bill—and I refer to 62A. The question I have for you, sir, is I wanted to understand snack food because it’s not clear to me the word around “reasonable”. So in the commentary at the beginning of the bill, what it does—

Tom Rutherford: More than one!

LEMAUGA LYDIA SOSENE: Let me finish—what it talks about is the snack food. Now, it doesn’t explicitly state whether that’s hot or whether that’s cold or whether that’s chips or what type of snack food. Obviously it’s up to the host’s responsibility, but it does have a dollar sign there. So I just wanted to understand—because for some people who are not big wine connoisseurs or big wine drinkers, they will want something not complimentary because obviously it’s clear here that they have to pay for that and that’s understandable. But what type of exact snack food?

Because in my own personal experience, when I’ve been to a place in Māngere, what is important is around that snack food. Because not all people just want particularly wine; they want something with it, depending on their choice. But also it’s got to be very clear. So I understand the intent that you’ve got a choice—and especially people that like to go and visit these types of facilities, but also what is available, and in that it does stipulate that the host has the responsibility to provide.

So I wanted to understand—because I couldn’t find it in here in terms of the definition around “snack food”—because some people will want that offered and want to take that opportunity. So thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank the member for the question—it’s a very good one. The select committee spent some time discussing this. “Snack food” is defined in regulation 10, and it includes items such as potato chips, crisps, biscuits, crackers, processed seeds, and nuts. But some wineries might choose to offer cheese and other types of food. So the whole purpose of this change is so cellar doors don’t have to become a restaurant. In fact, it might be of interest to the member that Pernod Ricard, which own Church Road, they gave evidence to the select committee about their difficulties. Even though they have a restaurant, they were having difficulty getting staff to staff the restaurant on the weekend, and, therefore, they had to close their cellar door. So if this bill was in place, they would be able to address that issue. So it’s really snack food. I would imagine most wineries would not want to associate their wines necessarily or show their wines off at the best value with potato chips—they’d probably do it with some cheese, probably. But everybody’s tastes are different.

Oh, Mr Chair, 13th time’s the charm! Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, as the chair of the Justice Committee which considered this bill, it gives me great pleasure to stand in support of it. I actually was looking forward to our clause-by-clause debate for the night. I had all my clauses lined up. I was going to crack on with the definition of the title, adding “winery” into the title of the bill. Then, all of a sudden, we’re debating the amendments right from the get-go. So if we’re talking about snack food, it’s a sandwich of a debate! We should be debating it from the start rather than the end, and then we’re going to fill it in in the middle!

But I will start off by congratulating the member for bringing this bill to the House and by starting off with making a few comments in relation to the definition of “winery” and “winery cellar door” because that’s what we’ve been focused on for the first part of this debate, and on Dr Duncan Webb’s amendments.

I won’t be supporting the amendments at this stage, because I haven’t been convinced by Dr Webb and his arguments yet. So if he wants to convince me and perhaps my colleagues on my side, he may need to rise to his feet many more times and make many more lengthy, studious, academic contributions to convince the committee that his amendments are worthwhile and are worth supporting, because, of course, tonight, we are in a personal vote situation, and every single member has the choice whether or not they support particular amendments. So if Dr Webb feels passionately about putting a 10-kilometre barrier in place, then I’m happy to be convinced, but I would need a lot more energy and enthusiasm and rigour in the arguments, I think, to be convinced at this stage.

I did want to pose a question to the member in the chair. It’s a question that my colleague Tom Rutherford, the wonderful member for Bay of Plenty, the second-best electorate in the country—and I wanted to ask the member Stuart Smith if he was aware of what a vegetable wine is—what an example is of a vegetable wine. As someone who has never, I don’t think, drunk a vegetable wine in my life, I would just like a couple of examples that the member, as an experienced connoisseur of all things wine, may have come across in his life.

Of course, it’s actually somewhat ironic that I speak on a bill which is looking at the alcohol restrictions, as someone who doesn’t actually drink. Coming up in July, it will have been about four years since I last drank wine or beer or any kind of alcohol. But, in saying that, I do support those who are working in this sector and working in this industry to make common-sense changes.

If I can distil what the bill is actually about at the end of the day, it is to make a very simple, straightforward, practical change so that the law then reflects what happens in practice. Obviously what happens at cellar doors and vineyards is that we have a lot of instances where people are, essentially, as a member opposite mentioned, buying flights of wine, and paying for an experience and not paying for the particular sample, and that’s generally how it’s done. Then they go into the off-licence part of the vineyard where they can sell bottles of wine, and they can purchase bottles of wine. But, of course, at the moment, they cannot provide samples in the part of the premises which sells the bottles of wine—or they can actually provide samples; they cannot charge to recover the cost of those samples. So all it does is it makes a pretty simple, straightforward change to allow a tiny bit of cost recovery in a time where there is a lot of pressure on cost of living. So I wanted to put that on the table straight away, when we’re talking about the definition of “winery” and “winery cellar door”.

I think the submissions in the select committee were well made. I think when you’re talking about—there’s an amendment from Helen White, the member for Mt Albert, as well—trying to require the retail premises to be on the same land as, I think, the produce is harvested, well, that creates a couple of issues. One of which may be that the premises might be on the other side of the road or on a slightly different title. It could be incredibly close to the cellar door but on a different bit of land. Or you could go the other way; you could say, “Well, the South Island—Te Wai Pounamu—is one piece of land, so, under the definition of the bill, you could have a cellar door in Bluff and a vineyard up in Marlborough, and the retail premises would be strictly, under this definition, on the same piece of land.”

So I wondered if the member wanted to elaborate on those two particular amendments while we’re still discussing issues around the definition of “celery” and “winery celery door”.

Hon Member: Winery celery door?

JAMES MEAGER: But, just in general, I just wanted to thank the contributions of all—winery celery door—sorry; winery cellar door! Maybe that’s the vegetable wine we’re all looking for! Maybe at the end of the night, we all want a zero percent beautifully crisp celery wine to enjoy at the end of the night!

But I’ll ask the member if he can address some of those points and then I’d love to move on the next two, three, four, five clauses of the bill over the remainder of the night.

I have to, sadly, inform the member that I have never tried a vegetable wine. Given the “celery” definition, I’m unlikely to. I will put my body on the line for some things, but that wouldn’t be one of them! But, no, I think the definition of where a winery could and should be is adequately covered in the bill. I think I’ve covered that already, so I don’t need to go any further.

Thank you. I just wanted to actually reinforce and elaborate a little bit on the issue that you have started to discuss, about the inclusion of breweries, because I have this amendment which I think would solve the problem that you saw; the problem of the definition. There’s an amendment on the Table which talks about—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Which amendment?

HELEN WHITE: —what a winery cellar door is. Sorry, it is Amendment Paper 39, and it has a definition in it of a “distillery cellar door”. So, it is specifically possible by accepting this amendment, and I’m heartened that there’s an indication that this is a personal vote situation, we could include by accepting this amendment the architecture to stretch this out. This would really assist in our cities in a way that is incredibly important at the moment. We have businesses in the fringes of our cities which are doing this well, but as has been mentioned, they are doing flights. This would allow a whole other option for them, and it would be a boost to those businesses, and allow them a chance to innovate.

So I’d like to know why you think it is not possible to simply accept this amendment, and then move to that state? I take your point that you consider members’ bills often narrow, but there is an issue with being narrow, and being actually representatives of the entire nation. So having a law that zeroes in on one place is really—it’s something that we don’t tend to do. We tend to think strategically and structurally. I would like to know why this would do any harm, if you consider the other part of your law overall positive?

Mr Chair, thank you very much. I wanted to move on to the next issue that we dealt with in the select committee, which was, of course, the sample size provision. I’m aware that there are some amendments in Dr Duncan Webb’s name around different types of alcohol, and different sizes of the samples that are being put forward. The member in the chair outlined pretty clearly why he thinks that some of the sample sizes being often poured aren’t appropriate, but during the consideration of the bill, it was originally proposed that the sample size be 40 millilitres. For the insight of the members of the Chamber, I understand that a teaspoon is around 5 millilitres. So, you’ve got about 8 teaspoons of wine there—

Stuart Smith: Six, I think.

JAMES MEAGER: Six millilitres? Well, I can’t do that maths—to the member in the chair. So let’s say around about 5 millilitres—so around about 6 teaspoons for a 30-millilitre pour.

Now, the officials did provide advice, and the advice was that they believe that for alcohol harm minimisation reasons, the sample size should be reduced to 30 millilitres. The issue with that though is that when you are pouring these samples, there was a very real risk that 1 millilitre over a 30-millilitre sample size could put you strictly in breach of the Act. With no tolerance, we wouldn’t want, you know, well-meaning sommeliers or whatever the fancy wine word is for when you pour these things; my other colleagues around the Chamber—Matt Doocey might well know more about pouring wine samples, the Minister for Tourism and Hospitality. But one of the issues was, without enough tolerance, the standard pour tended to be about 30 millilitres. So if you poured 1 millilitre over, you’d technically be in breach of the provisions.

So I understand that that’s why the member originally brought 40 millilitres as the sample size to the House. Now, there was actually a significant amount of back and forth in the select committee on this; we were actually concerned generally, and the bill’s concerned with it, and the Ministry of Justice gave a significant amount of advice on alcohol harm minimisation and what this could do in the bill. We came to a conclusion that 35 millilitres might be an appropriate level to go with. The member was very gracious to accept that and not to put much of a battle up with that.

But we’ve got to quantify this. If members think back to their teenage days, or whether or not they were skulking around the Bowler in Dunedin, which, actually, I managed the Bowler in Dunedin. So I know what a 30-millilitre pour looks like.

Hon Rachel Brooking: Did you?

JAMES MEAGER: I managed the Bowler, and then it turned into the university’s health sciences department—Māori Health Workforce Development Unit. Then I ended up working in the Māori Health Workforce Development Unit in the pokies room that the Bowler used to have.

But, that aside, if members can recall their days in the Bowling Green Tavern—30 millilitres is the size of a shot glass. So, when you’re talking about alcohol harm minimisation, going from 40 to 35, or 35 to 30, is not making a significant amount of difference. In reality, what this is doing is actually saying that we’re now going to put a cost or a charge on that sample size of 35 millilitres. Previously, you could provide all the free samples you’d like. You could have 100 shot glasses of wine, of Central Otago Pinot Noir lined up—you could line them up, and, you know, you could go for your life and not charge a cent for it, but now you’re putting a charge on it. So, who’s going to go along and line up 100 shot glasses of Pinot Noir and $7 a glass, just so they can get blotto on shots of wine at a time?

I think it is unrealistic to expect that this is going to have a significant impact on alcohol harm minimisation, and as a member of the House who doesn’t actually drink—and, actually, ironically, the other member from this side of the Chamber who’s taken a call, Tom Rutherford, also doesn’t drink. But we can understand, we can think through the process, we can think through the logic of why sample sizes might need to be 35 or 40 millilitres to make sure you build in that tolerance. Because, when you’re making standard pour, and you’ve poured these samples over and over and over, you want to make sure there’s a little bit of grace there in the case of an accidental overpour, of a teaspoon or two more. So, for the sake of a teaspoon or two, I’d like to ask the member whether he thinks that 35 millilitres has come to the right place on this particular bill; whether or not, you know, he would even propose pushing back up to 40 millilitres, because I certainly wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to that, or whether or not other amendments on the Table concerning sample sizes are at all relevant to touch on.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Firstly, to Helen White’s Amendment Paper 39—actually, this was raised in select committee, and we were advised it would be out of scope of the bill—

Helen White: Not anymore.

STUART SMITH: Yes, that may well be the case, but the reason it was to be out of scope was because it didn’t really fit in the bill. So, on that basis, I don’t support it at all. There’s not been enough work done on things like 35 millilitres, or whatever the sample sizes are, and all those other implications that actually require quite a bit of work behind them.

In terms of the 35 millilitres, I did check around some cellar doors in Margaret River, when I was over there, checking on—

Tom Rutherford: Doing some tastings.

STUART SMITH: Yes, I did do some tasting there, to see what their practice was. It was very similar to what this bill is proposing. It is 5 millilitres in a teaspoon, so 30 millilitres is 6 teaspoons; 7 would be for 35. You do need to allow a little bit of—people like to pour it by hand. Yes, you could measure it out, but it all becomes—you know, it would ruin the experience, quite frankly. People are very good at pouring it to that level. So I think that 35 millilitres has been a good compromise. I think it will work really well.

For those who think you should have less: really, for wine tasting, you need enough wine in the glass to be able to get the aromas to taste it. Many people—having had a cellar door myself—who taste wine don’t drink it. They swirl it around their mouth and they spit it out. You have a spittoon for that. It might be sacrilege to some people; it’s quite commonplace in the wine industry. It’s about getting a mouth feel, and about having enough wine to get the aromas to come off that glass, and so you can enjoy that experience and assess it. So I make no apology for 35—I think I wouldn’t want it to be any less. I do accept the argument of it not being 40 millilitres—reluctantly, but I did accept it.

First of all, I wonder if the member could—and I’m most surprised at my colleague over the Chamber for actually misreading the amendment bill where it says, in replacement section 17(2), inserted by clause 6, that the licensee can also do one or both of the following: supply alcohol for free or sell alcohol as a sample. I’d like the member to confirm that there is still the choice for the licensee to do whichever suits their business model appropriately.

I’d also like the member to answer why—and I’m speaking here as somebody who actually has made raspberry wine, rhubarb wine, elderflower wine, and elderberry wine, so I have some experience here. Tonight at the British High Commission, I enjoyed something slightly surprising, a zero-alcohol British chardonnay, so you never know what’s coming next.

But, getting back to this, there is no reason that we should be putting grape wine on a pedestal compared to the most excellent ciders and fruit wines. I mean, if you look at the South Island production of blackcurrants and things like that, let’s be a little bit more innovative. Let’s look at the different producers. Can you tell me why you are fixated on Vitis vinifera rather than any other plant that can be used to produce a pleasant tasting and relaxing beverage?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Actually, I covered that before, so I think that’s all been covered. So I thank the member for the question, but the reality is it wasn’t considered to be within scope of the bill and so we didn’t consider that. It might be worthy, but that’s something perhaps you could take up as a member’s bill. I’d probably support it.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I appreciate I’ve had two calls already, but I just want to speak to my last Amendment Paper, which is Amendment Paper 31. This is the one, essentially, in respect of beer. I know that there’ll be a number of votes, and I’m hoping that the whip on the other side has got his proxy forms—there is no whip on the other side—signed and ready to go in accordance with Standing Order 152. I hope that your members have thought carefully about it.

I do want to make it clear that the Business Committee has said that this House can consider the fruit wine paper and the brewery paper. Even though it might have been out of scope for the purposes of this debate and the instruction to this committee, these two Amendment Papers are within scope. I thank the member in charge of the bill for perhaps not celebrating that but at least accepting that it was appropriate for this House to debate them.

This Amendment Paper expands the scope of the Act to include tastings of beer. It’s all it really does—and mead, although you can buy mead, but it’s pretty unusual; it’s not a huge market. But just for consistency across all beverages, it includes brewery and mead. And, of course, beer isn’t the same as wine and it does have a slightly larger sample size. Most beers are around the 5 percent mark. Some creep up. Occasionally you might get one at 8 percent, but that would be truly extraordinary—115 millilitres seems entirely appropriate. But I’m really interested in, again, why the member isn’t—and I guess I should really be speaking to the House as a whole, because each member will have a vote on this. If they haven’t given a signed proxy to your whip, then I hope they’ll come down and vote on this because it’s really just a matter of making it consistent.

The Brewers Guild, who represent brewers in New Zealand, including small artisan brewers, were really quite keen for this to be included. So even if this doesn’t pass the House, can I say we have done our job, because that voice has now been properly heard and it’s open to all members to vote on this Amendment Paper and those other two Amendment Papers of mine. So I would absolutely commend it to the House. But I would be interested in the member’s response to it.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and thank you, Dr Webb. I’m addressing your Amendment Paper. So while we’re on the subject of teaspoons—so we’re talking a maximum of 7 teaspoons for a wine tasting, we’re talking 23 teaspoons for a beer tasting. Actually, if you look on the Garage Project website, you can find several beers at 12 percent alcohol, which is what a lot of wines are at. So you’ve an immediate anomaly there.

That is why I raised the issue about what the clerk had indicated on the scope of the bill, because the work’s not been done on it. If the work had been on that particular issue, you would end up with beers stratified in different alcohol categories with different tasting size, I’d imagine, if it was to fit with the spirit of this bill and what we have achieved with this. So I think it was a nice try, but I think we’ve got two potential member’s bills coming up—one in Celia Wade-Brown’s name and one in Dr Duncan Webb’s name. So I look forward to seeing those in the future.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I would like to thank the member in the chair as well, for his patience as we navigate through these questions. What I’d like to draw your attention to, please, just for some thoughts, some feedback, is, firstly, on the subject of—since we’re talking about beer and brewers, I’d like to ask the member what he thinks about the person that made the submission on behalf of the Brewers Association of New Zealand, Mr Stuart Smith. You may recall that the question was posed to him what the definition of “craft beer” is, and he acknowledged that there isn’t actually a definition of “craft beer”. So if you do recall that conversation taking place, Mr Smith.

Following from that, since Amendment Paper 31 suggests putting in “brewery cellar door” and mead, “meadery cellar door”—English is my second language—what do you envisage the impact would be on passing your bill if we were to enact these amendments with all these rafts of different definitions that need to be made and the conversations we’ll have to have around that? Do you envisage that it would be quite a swift affair, given how many conversations were made just about the definition of “winery cellar door”? Or do you envisage that it will take an extremely long time, thereby impacting the purpose, the scope of your bill and the ability for us to just pass this bill? As you said, there’s a few ideas for members’ bills coming up.

So, first, the submission given by the Brewers Association, where it was acknowledged that there’s no actual definition for something as common these days as “craft beer”; and, second, the impact of applying Amendment Paper 31 to the progress of this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank the member for the question. Actually, yeah, the Brewers Association of New Zealand spokesperson did—it wasn’t me, I don’t think, who’d asked that question. But the definition of a “craft brewery”—well, there isn’t one. Nothing in the law, anyway, or the standards that I’m aware of. But the reason Amendment Paper 31 is, you know, one we’re opposed to, I’ve just explored before.

Basically, there are so many other variables that haven’t actually been addressed through the good work that the Justice Committee did on this bill. If someone wants to bring a bill along that line—and I’m expecting to see Dr Webb’s name on one of those bills in the ballot, very shortly—that would be where they would go through all those potential fish-hooks that could be ironed out. A worthy idea, but not suitable in this bill, in my opinion.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I’m speaking on behalf of “brewers” up and down the country, mainly in and around Taranaki.

Look, I just want to test the theory that’s come out of Dr Webb’s Amendment Paper 30(b) where he’s pushing for “retail premises are located no more than 10 km from where the main ingredients [are] grown or the wine was manufactured”. I want to test that theory—and the sponsor of this bill may be able to help me on this—as to the financial viability. We heard the Labour member across the way there talk about the Auckland viaduct. I want to test the financial viability of Leo Molloy setting up a shop—a bar, if you like—that’s selling 35-millilitre pours of wine from, say, the South Island, the pinot noirs of Central Otago or the Gisborne chardonnays or the sauvignon blancs from where you are, Stuart Smith.

So I want to just test that; I want to get your view, and I know you’re listening intently to me, as to the financial viability—because you’ve been in and around the industry long enough—of setting up one of these shops; these wine cellars. Say if we call it “Webb’s Wine Bar”—W-H-I-N-E, maybe; maybe. Webb’s Wine Bar, Oxford Terrace—Oxford Terrace. How, given all the costs around rates, leases, staff, everything else, selling 35 millilitres, which is the proposition that has been put to us. How much of a likelihood is that as a business model? With your entrepreneurial hat on.

I also want to test, Mr Smith, just how strong, when you put the intent of legislation in the legislation. So we might be flying off the handle that people are going to set up cellar doors unless Mr Webb gets his amendment through for a 10-kilometre radius maximum. But from what I understand, and looking at the intent of this legislation—I know this was very important to the committee—is “It is not the intention of this legislation to enable opportunistic bars to operate as [testing] venues to avoid the protections otherwise found in the Act.” So the intention is very clear of the legislation.

So, again, my question to the sponsor is: is it, in his mind, a workable business model for the Leo Molloys to take off with this tomorrow—or whenever it’s enacted—and set up a bar that’s generously selling 35 millilitres of South Island pinot noir? Secondly, would the Auckland district licensing authority look at this legislation and see the intention and say to Leo Molloy, “That is not the intention of the bar—of the bill; or the bar—and we are not going to license you.” So I want to test both those scenarios with the sponsor. Thank you very much.

Well, I’d like to thank Cameron on behalf of all the “brewers”. Yeah, look, I think we’ve covered this before, but we’ll go with it for a minute. I would never want to second-guess what Mr Leo Molloy would find as a profitable business or not. But the reality is if he’s selling 35 millilitres, they can go down the street somewhere else and buy 150 millilitres or 115 millilitres or whatever it is. So it wouldn’t really be a viable option.

Generally, if you’ve convinced—and I doubt you’d be able to convince the licensing authority that that was a valid winery, but if you did, it would only be selling those products from that vineyard. Whereas successful off-premises businesses have a wide range of products for sale and people would pick up, no doubt, a six-pack of beer and maybe some spirits. Well, you can’t do that with a winery cellar door, so I don’t think that’s got any chance of flying at all.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, we’ve got a couple more parts—or, well, clauses in the bill that I’d like to touch on, one of which is the provision of snack food. But I needed to make a couple of responses.

Rachel Boyack: Already talked about it—repetition.

JAMES MEAGER: Oh, well, I needed to have at least a chance to talk about what’s actually in the bill, so I will talk about snack food. But I just wanted to—

CHAIRPERSON (Teanau Tuiono): Yeah, I am looking for new material. Snack food was—

JAMES MEAGER: I’ll make a couple of observations. The first of which is that the key witness for the Opposition—Dr Webb—is from Christchurch, and then we also had Laura Trask saying it’s such a waste to spit the wine out, also from Christchurch. So I won’t draw any threads between the two, but something’s going on north of me in my neighbourhood. I just wanted to make a comment that perhaps an amendment to the bill could be to outlaw British chardonnays from being consumed in the Wellington area, because I think that’s close to treasonous. But I won’t make that accusation of any member.

Look, I’m glad Mr Brewer got a chance to have a call. I’m hoping we could also have a call from Mr Foster—and the Fosters who might want to contribute to the debate!

But just on the provision of snack food, we haven’t actually talked about why this clause is in the bill. It was quite a lengthy discussion at the Justice Committee and we actually went away to get some advice from officials on this. So this is a contribution which is not competitive—ah, repetitive; it’s very competitive. But it’s not repetitive; it’s brand new. The issue was that the member in charge, Stuart Smith, and the committee were weary of putting overly burdensome regulations and requirements in place for wine cellar door operators whereby they may have to go and get commercial kitchen - grade food licences if they were to have to provide full host responsibility requirements, where they may well be settled with thousands of dollars of compliance and costs, all for the sake of making a bit of money back on the cost recovery for their sample sizes.

So we actually went away and asked the officials to do some work on whether or not providers would be required to have significant compliance costs imposed on them if they were asked to provide snack foods, which was a suggestion under the bill. The advice came back that the cost would be in the vicinity of $200 to $300 over two or three years—I can’t quite recall what it was. The committee considered that piece of advice and considered that, in our view, that was quite a reasonable amount to place on providers in order to offset, again, some of those alcohol harm minimisation aspects that might come with providing these sample sizes. So I did want to mention that—that is why some of the snack food provisions are in there.

As the member in the chair, Stuart Smith, did point out, there are definitions of what snack food is. We aren’t expecting cellular providers to provide a full carvery. We aren’t expecting them to put a full course meal on. We are expecting them to approach this with common sense. That is throughout the bill. The bill really does just implement and codify what is happening in practice. Sometimes, we do get caught up in all the commas and all the colons and whether or not the right clause is in the right place. I’m sure, over the next term, there’ll be lengthy discussions about whether a clause is appropriate, and amendments to clauses, and all these kind of things. But, sometimes, we just have to get back to the principle that if you take a common-sense approach to a lot of these issues, you can actually resolve it—OK—in the first place.

The final thing I’ll add in my short contribution—before I ask the member just to make a comment or reflection on whether or not he does think it’s reasonable for those snack food provisions to be in place—is that I’m also looking forward to the ability to charge for sample sizes on Good Friday or Easter Monday, perhaps, if another member’s bill goes through. So we might see some further changes in this area, which may allow some small businesses in parts of the country to continue to thrive, which is what they really need at the moment. They need support from Parliament to make it as easy as possible to do business. I think this bill does this.

I’m aware that my colleague Tom Rutherford—to my right—would like to make a contribution around the provision of water, which we haven’t talked about at all, which is very important from a host responsibility perspective, It’s incredibly new material—I’m looking forward to it. As a man from a bay, he knows a lot about water. But I’d like to congratulate the member Stuart Smith once again. I’m asking for his view on the issue of providing snack food, the costs involved, and then take us through the end of the bill.

Thank you, Mr Chair, and I thank Mr Meager, who is the chair of the Justice Committee, which did do a great job on this. There was quite a lot of discussion on snack food or food provision, just per se, and then we narrowed it down—well, the select committee did—to snack food, which was a sensible decision. Ultimately, it’s because of host responsibility. The costs are very reasonable.

As you quite rightly say, it will—I think the example I gave earlier of Pernod Ricard, a large winery with a kitchen that couldn’t get staff on a day. Well, those are the challenges that small cellar doors would face every day. Ironically, if you’re giving samples away for free, you don’t have to provide food. Under this bill, they’ll be able to charge for samples, but they’ll have to provide food. Snack food isn’t everybody’s cup of tea—mixing metaphors there—but I think it’s absolutely appropriate and it will be well accepted by the industry.

Thank you very much, Mr Chair. As my colleague James Meager, the MP for Rangitata, did allude to in his contribution just before, I do want to talk about some new material now. We had colleagues from the other side of the House heckling, saying, “New material, new material.” Well, here’s some new material and wake up, because one of the aspects included here is around the provision of water, which we actually haven’t had any discussion or contribution or just debate on. What it says here is: “We recommend inserting new clause 9 to amend section 116(2)(c) of the Act.”

Now, the amendment would make it a compulsory condition of off-licences that drinking water must be freely available to customers at a designated place on the premises while grape wine—grape wine, Mr Webb, not vegetables or not fruit.

James Meager: Here’s a list of vegetable wines.

TOM RUTHERFORD: Yeah, yeah. I’m just having a look here. My colleague brings to my attention a list of vegetable wines: carrot, corn, cucumber, sweet pea, pumpkin, sweet potato, zucchini, and the chief whip said he had parsley wine—parsley wine. Goodness me! But this is particularly focused on grape wine as being sold as a sample. There is already a requirement that says in section 116(2)(c) for when alcohol is being supplied free as a sample. But when you’re moving to what the provisions of this bill are enabling around having cellar door tastings sold, rather than as free, this is looking to amend it around ensuring we’ve got water available.

I’m keen to understand from the member in charge of the bill around why provision of water and having it readily available is actually really important to patrons and to the cellar door sellers themselves, and in that space—[Passed a glass of water]

James Meager: A provision of water.

TOM RUTHERFORD: Oh, yeah, thank you. There’s my provision of water. I needed it. But why having that available is actually really important, because if I think about it, if I’m heading out to have my cellar door tasting—I might be going with my colleague Mark Mitchell, and I’m getting slightly parched, and I’ve had a few of my wine tastings, and I think, “Oh, actually, I might have some water instead.” Having this provision of water being available when I’m purchasing the wine, rather than when I’m having it sampled as free as it is at the moment, is actually really vitally important to me as the patron. So I’m keen to understand why that’s the case, and I’d invite the member to respond.

Well, I thank the member, but I think he answered his own question. He had a glass of water there, and that is why you have water there. If you’ve got alcohol available, you should always have a non-alcohol option, and that is water, in this case, and they’ll have to provide it. All wineries would do that anyway, because people often like to rinse their glass between different samples if they’re just using one glass.

Look, out of interest, I’m going to ask two questions in relation to a couple of the Amendment Papers which are here, and I’d like the sponsor of the bill to respond to these. The first one of them is that the idea of having a 10-kilometre radius seems, to me, to be very arbitrary. I understand that the idea is to try and avoid having grapes grown in, say, Marlborough and then sold—as we’ve heard about—in Auckland. I understand that concern. Was any thought given as to whether this should be, say, within the province, within the district, or within the territorial authority area, or whatever it might be, so that wine grown in Marlborough is sold in Marlborough, and that becomes a cellar door sale. But if you wanted to sell it in Auckland or Canterbury, or whatever, that might not be. There might be some boundary issues there, but was any thought given to that kind of an idea, because 10 kilometres seems very arbitrary, and, obviously, there’s some concern that there is no limit in terms of the distance.

The second question I wanted to ask is in relation to Amendment Paper 31. The mover of that particular amendment, Dr Duncan Webb, wants to move away from just talking about grape wine, and I note that when I look at the definition of “wine”, it actually says that it is grape wine, and so if you want to make it something different, you’ve got to make it fruit wine or something else like that. But we’ve got in the Amendment Paper “brewery cellar doors”, we’ve got “meadery cellar doors”, but what we don’t have—and I heard some discussion around cider. I was wondering where are the cideries, and I don’t see those. My preference would be cider, rather than beer—but, you know.

So we don’t have that, but I wonder if any thought was given—and I look both across the aisle there, but also to you, Stuart Smith—about making it just simply “alcoholic beverages”, because we get ourselves into the situation of trying to micromanage these things to say that that one’s in and that one’s out. But why not be just more flexible, because the one thing I do know from having been a district licensing commissioner in a past life and having had to work with the instruments that central government imposes on local government is that sometimes things are so closely defined, it’s actually really, really unhelpful.

So I just wondered about those two questions: first of all, whether there’s a different way of approaching the distance one, and, secondly, whether there’s a different way of approaching the definition of what other beverages might want to be helped by this bill.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I think I’ve covered this adequately before, but I’ll do it again. Once you get an arbitrary line, there’s always going to be someone on the wrong side of it, and it was felt to be simple and it’s covered here. The licensing authority, as the member Andy Foster will know, having himself been involved as one—we’ll leave it to the judgment of them as to whether it’s a valid cellar door or not.

In terms of—what was the other question?—the cideries, and so on, we covered all that as well. That wasn’t in this bill. Originally, it was tried to be added to the bill, but it was ruled to be likely to be out of scope. The member Dr Duncan Webb has brought it in legitimately through Amendment Paper 31, and it is legitimately here for the vote, but the reality is that the work hasn’t been done on it. All of those little rough edges that were in the bill have been sorted out through the select committee process, but the ones in those Amendment Papers haven’t, and it’s not actually, in my view, suitable at all—those particular Amendment Papers. Thank you.

I move, That debate on this question now close.

Motion agreed to.

The question is that Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s amendment set out on Amendment Paper 31 be agreed to.

Helen White’s amendment to clause 1 set out on Amendment Paper 39 is ruled out of order as being the same as an amendment that was previously not agreed.

Helen White’s remaining amendments set out on Amendment Paper 39 are ruled out of order as being outside the scope of the bill.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s amendment set out on Amendment Paper 30 be agreed to.

The question is that the Hon Dr Duncan Webb’s amendments set out on Amendment Paper 32 be agreed to.

The question is that Helen White’s amendment to clause 4 set out on Amendment Paper 38 be agreed to.

I will report this bill without amendment.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Personal vote—personal vote.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Oh, sorry, was that a personal vote? My apologies, I missed that. Sorry, a personal vote was called for.

Hon Members: After you’d reported it.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): A personal vote will be held. Ring the bells.

Point of order, Mr Chair. Mr Chair, everybody present heard you record the vote, announce the vote, and report the bill back. I would contend that the vote is now complete and the result recorded, and the opportunity for a personal vote is no longer available to the Chair or to the committee.

Speaking to the point of order. Personally—and I’m just speaking because this has been a conscience vote, and there has been a lot going on and some of us don’t have proxies, and I don’t agree that we all knew and heard and were able to do it, so I would like to see the personal vote proceed.

Simon Court: Speaking to the point of order.

Hon Member: Speaking to the point of order.

Just before we do that—OK, what I’m going to do is I’m going to ask: was a personal vote called for?

Hon Members: Yes.

Hon Members: No.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): It was. OK, I missed that. We are now going to have a personal vote.

Simon Court: Point of order, Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): A point of order, but I’ve made a ruling. As a result of my error—and I realise that—I’ve taken advice and we are now going to have a personal vote.

I would contend that the vote was held in silence and that you recorded and announced the result, and I don’t think the Hansard would reflect that a personal vote was called for before the vote was recorded and read out. Is it possible now to seek a transcript and have that clarified now? I would contend that the result that you’ve announced should stand. Notwithstanding whether members were all paying attention, the vote was held in silence and there was an opportunity to raise it at the time, respectfully.

Actually, I’m prepared to do that. I’ll ask Hansard: was a personal vote called for? [Clerks give advice] OK. Right. Now, we have just taken all the advice from people that know more about this than I do, fortunately. Mr Court, your point of order is correct. I have announced the vote. The vote will stand. The only thing that can happen now is that someone can seek leave to have the vote recorded. Does anyone want to seek leave?

Point of order, Mr Chair. I seek leave for a personal vote to be recorded.

Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Ingrid Leary: Speaking to the point of order, Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Well, I think the points of order have now been ruled, unless it’s a new point of order.

It is a new point of order. With the greatest respect, when you had made your previous ruling, I understood that you had made a ruling, and then you actually gave leave to Mr Court to be able to do a new point of order. On that basis, I feel that it’s appropriate to be able to just say that this is a matter of great importance to people who follow the alcohol and drugs conversations, and to miss out on an—

Hon Matt Doocey: Nothing about drugs.

INGRID LEARY: —appropriate personal vote for the sake of—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): In silence, please, Mr Doocey.

INGRID LEARY: —to miss out on representing our constituents and our conscience appropriately because there has been a confusing succession of points of order and then a change of heart. With the greatest respect, I wonder if perhaps it’s better to go to the beginning of it and seek a personal vote and then see whether that takes place or not. I’m not suggesting how you do your job, but I just think it’s quite unfair, if you have made a ruling and then you have reversed that ruling in the face of a point of order and then ruled on that ruling.

No, no—I’ve taken a ruling on the basis of the best advice I am going to get tonight. So I take your point, but the vote stands. The vote will stand. I will now report the bill without amendment.

Bill to be reported without amendment.

House resumed.

Mr Speaker, the committee has considered the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Winery Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill and reports it without amendment. I move, That the report be adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.