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

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

It’s a great pleasure to stand in front of the House and speak to the second reading. It’s a quite sobering exercise—

Hon Members: Aw, come on!

STUART SMITH: —and I don’t mean any pun intended! But following on from the very serious subject that we were debating just before, it quite makes me take a second thought before I speak on this bill.

But it is a great thrill to have your own member’s bill, particularly, get through to the second reading, going through select committee—particularly so when we’ve crossed into another Parliament. The first reading was in front of the previous Parliament, but it went through the Justice Committee under this current Parliament. So it is one of those different scenarios.

This bill will allow wineries to charge for tastings at their cellar doors for the wine that they have made. The wine industry has, actually, the sixth largest goods export by value, and the important thing about that is, actually, the main markets that wine is exported to are OECD countries. These are discerning customers who, with the wine experience that they have, actually add to the value of New Zealand’s other products, because people say if we can make serious wine in the world, then we can also make other products that are very serious. That’s how it’s treated. And some people, of course, travel to New Zealand to actually experience wine, or they experience wine here, for the first time, at a cellar door. That’s why this bill has a far greater effect on businesses than just on those small businesses that have cellar doors—because tourism, after all, is our second largest business and our second largest export earner, actually, in New Zealand. Cellar-door wine experiences are a very important part of that. A lot of the tourists that do visit wineries tend to stay for a longer period of time, and they spend more money while they’re here.

However, for cellar doors, it can be quite an awkward situation, because it is very difficult for them to charge for tastings. There is an anomaly in the law which makes it quite difficult for them to have a licence to be able to charge for those tastings, and this bill addresses those shortcomings.

I’d like to thank the submitters that came and gave evidence to the select committee. We had small wineries that came and gave evidence about how they are actually giving their wine away for tastings, at some cost to themselves. They do it because it’s part of their business, but it would make it much more economic for them if they were able to charge for it. Other wineries would actually open a cellar door, if they were able to recover those costs.

We also heard from Pernod Ricard, which is one of the biggest wineries. It’s a French-owned company, listed on the CAC 40. They gave evidence that their Church Road winery—while they have a licence and they are able to sell food and, therefore, provide food in their restaurant and, therefore, charge for tastings—is so desperate to get staff some days that it means they can’t serve food. Therefore, they can’t charge for tastings, so they don’t open their cellar door. Having this law in place would make it much easier for them to charge for tastings.

We also had a small winery in Marlborough, Tupari Wines, which is in the Awatere Valley, quite some distance from the main road, which is State Highway 1. They have a cellar door in the old railway station, not on their property, but it’s sort of a remote winery that belongs to that winery. They gave evidence that we had a definition in the bill which would enable those wineries to actually have a cellar-door licence and charge for tastings. So it was great to get that broad range of submitters who came and gave their experience and brought that to the Justice Committee.

I’d also like to thank the members of the Justice Committee, ably led by James Meager and co. It’s quite difficult—for those that are not involved in Parliament, with all the best will in the world, you can write a bill the best way you think you can, you put it before a select committee, and actually you find things that need to be adjusted. The only way you can do that is by having the public take part in the political process by giving evidence—in this case, cellar-door operators and other people. We even had distillers and brewers who wanted to be a part of this bill, but, unfortunately, that’s not what this bill’s about, and it was outside the scope. But they all had their opportunity to have their say. I know, as the select committee members would agree, that having those people in front of the select committee really added so much to the process, and so I would like to thank the select committee members for the way they approached that.

So there were some amendments that were made to the bill. Originally, as drafted, it had “allow a sample size to be 40 millilitres”. We found, from evidence, that 30 millilitres is the average pour size, but we thought we’d leave enough room for human error. It’s not something that’s bottled; it’s poured by hand and often in larger glasses, so it’s not simple to measure. But, in the end, we thought, well, that was too much tolerance, and, therefore, we went back to 35 millilitres. So that was one of the changes.

As I mentioned before, the remote winery—well, we did bring in a specific definition for what would be a “winery”, which is producing and selling grape wine products, or selling grape wine or grape wine products that have been produced on that person’s behalf. But that does not open it up for retailers to be able to get involved in that; you have to be a winery or a grape grower to actually qualify as a cellar door.

So I think the other issues that were changed was to have snack foods available. So that’s actually defined in the Act already. That could be a cheeseboard, for example—those sorts of things. It’s not too onerous, as it would be otherwise. Bearing in mind, a lot of these cellar doors are quite small.

I’ve actually visited wineries from Northland all the way to South Otago. They are all over the country and even in your own electorate, Madam Speaker, in Taranaki. So we do have wineries in quite out-of-the-way places. I did ask the library, as I mentioned in my first reading speech, to search the number of electorates that had wineries in them. It was quite surprising: they’re all over the country, quite frankly. They are small businesses, mostly.

The provision of water is usually provided and is actually required under the law when you’re giving samples away, but we had to add a provision in the bill to capture that for this specific type of liquor outlet, if you like—that being a cellar door.

Those were the main amendments I wanted to touch on. This would make a huge difference for small business in New Zealand as well as large business. It would make a huge difference and enhance our tourism offering for New Zealand. And I think that it’s just a sensible piece of legislation. The existing law was just an anomaly, in the way it was written—that cellar doors weren’t able to charge for tastings unless they were selling food. That, by the nature of the size of a lot of these cellar doors, would never ever be an economic proposition. So I thank all the members who have supported the bill so far. I hope they continue to do so. With that, I commend it to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The member in charge of this bill, Stuart Smith, is certainly an advocate for the wine industry and a bit of a fan, and good on him for that. Over on this side of the House, we will be treating this bill as a conscience vote, so our votes—we’re not at one. As is the case with most alcohol bills, they’re dealt with in this manner, at least in the Labour Party.

I’m one of the members of the Labour Party who doesn’t support this bill. I worked constructively on the Justice Committee to get it into the shape that it is, but certainly we have some concerns around it. I guess there’s a global concern about liberalisation of the availability of alcohol generally. Having said that, I don’t think that would quite be enough for me to oppose this bill if it was done right. The member in charge stood up, and one of his first lines was “This will enable wine tasting at the cellar door.” That’s just not what this bill does. This bill allows wine tasting anywhere, providing it’s provided by the winegrower or winemaker. So one of my real concerns about this bill is that someone could become a winemaker by contract, contract to have some wine made, and set up a bar anywhere and without all of the usual controls around the provision of alcohol. The only constraint would be the size of the serving. The provision of proper food wouldn’t be needed, host responsibility programmes wouldn’t be needed, the whole alcohol-control regime—the bar would be lowered.

Now, the member in charge, I know, thinks that that’s fanciful and kind of pooh-poohed the idea, but we know that whilst most people who grow wine and so on love their work, love their product, and are great advocates of it, there are nefarious actors out there who will take advantage of what is a legal loophole, and this is a massive legal loophole. That’s one of the concerns that I have, probably the most significant concern.

And the second-order concern is that simply by limiting the size of a serve to 35 millilitres—about a fifth of a usual glass—the controls around alcohol provision generally are significantly lowered. Whilst it might be a little onerous to top up your glass frequently or to pour them five at a time, it’s certainly not out of the question. So my main concerns are around alcohol harm, but even that by itself—I don’t know; I’m probably on the fence.

The other kind of problem I have with this bill is that it actually skews the market. In select committee, I was very clear—and other members were also deeply concerned; and it’s recorded in the select committee report—that if we’re going to go down this road and if we’re going to get the rules right, then, surely, our artisan brewers should be able to have brewery-door tastings as well. Our artisan cideries should be able to have—and I do like a good cider—cidery-door tastings as well. Even our fruit wines, our Barker’s elderberry wine, should be able to have their tastings as well. But the member in charge was adamant that, no, this wasn’t a change he would support, because it was just about grape wine. Apart from the snobbishness of that, it’s actually—

Hon Member: Come on!

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Come on, put away your pinot noir. Apart from that, it actually skews the market. It gives quite an unfair advantage to wineries and grape growers who can have this particular sales technique—this particular tasting arrangement—which other people who brew alcoholic beverages cannot have. And that’s just not right. It’s just not fair. I would have hoped that in the National Party, they wouldn’t just be interested in helping along the wine industry, but they’d be wanting to help along all businesses: small breweries, small cideries, small fruit wineries. So why is it that we’ve got this very targeted reform?

Now, it’ll probably get over the hurdle. It’ll probably get through tonight, and onward we’ll go. Certainly, when we get to the committee stage, I’ll be putting in some Amendment Papers. I’m very happy to talk to the member about those in advance because I’m here for the debate; I’m not here to ambush anyone. I certainly don’t think it should be called the “cellar door tasting bill”. It should simply be called the “tasting bill” because you can taste it anywhere. You know as well as I do, Stuart Smith, that under the rules as drafted, Montana can have a tasting bar in the middle of Christchurch Central, 30 kilometres from the nearest winery. So it just doesn’t work.

Let’s have a constructive discussion at committee stage, assuming—and I’m pretty certain it will—that it does get through this reading. But let’s also have a careful think about what a “cellar door” really means, because I think, perhaps, a better rule for “cellar door” would be something like “within 10 kilometres of where the grapes are produced”, because that would make some sense. There’s a fancy French phrase which I can’t recall but I’m sure the member would remind me about the connection of the wine to the local land.

Helen White: Appellation. The appellation.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: No, no, it’s not “appellation”, Helen White. You’ve got to be—everyone knows that one. So let’s have a think about that, because that would make a bit more sense. But that’s for another time. At this stage, I know there are some members who are not in support of this bill and others on this side of the House who are. Let’s have a decent debate, and I hope you’ll have the same approach in the National Party with differing views across the members.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I just wanted to acknowledge the member the honourable Stuart Smith and put him out of his misery by stating, up front, that all 15 Green MPs in our caucus have had a discussion about the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill, and all 15 of our MPs—unless anything crazy happens tonight—will be supporting this bill.

The reason for that is that despite some of the longbow arguments that I have heard from the member in charge of this legislation, perhaps this could be a form of alcohol harm minimisation. And, sure, that could potentially apply at the margins with regard to charging for those tasting samples. We have a situation where—actually, as the former speaker from the Labour Party, the Hon Duncan Webb, was just outlining—there is actually a far broader point to be made. And while I wouldn’t use some of the language that he did to characterise this legislation—that being, in his own words, “snobbish”—it is the case that this House does tend to treat certain substances in far more highbrow ways than we do other substances. So I would appeal to members of the Government, in particular, as well as members of the Opposition, and members of this House as a whole, to apply the logic that they apply to this to all substances—in fact, to open the lid on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, as a whole, and the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 to take the approach that all substances can cause harm, and therefore the approach that we should take is: how do we put in place legislation and regulation to reduce that harm?

So, as I was just outlining at the start, it is a bit of a longbow to try and argue that what we have here is a piece of alcohol-harm minimisation, but none the less it could potentially make some difference at the margins by allowing for the charging for those samples. However, I think that the far more compelling argument, as the member in charge has very ably made, particularly as it affects my electorate in Auckland Central and the wineries of Waiheke, is that there is an opportunity here for, again, albeit at the margins, a little bit of that economic development. Again, wouldn’t it be amazing if we saw these kinds of things applied to, I don’t know, the medicinal cannabis industry in this country?

So that’s it, really. The Greens support this legislation. It’s a pretty simple piece of legislation. It does what it says on the tin. I’m looking forward to actually seeing some of those Amendment Papers from the Hon Dr Duncan Webb. I’d invite him and members of the Labour Party who have seemingly discussed this at great length to come and speak to us about some of those Amendment Papers, because we may be interested in supporting them. But I also would say to the member in charge that they can look forward to some robust questioning at the committee of the whole House.

Just in summarising that, we’d like to thank the 72-odd submitters, both individuals and organisations, who put their two cents in at the select committee stage. That is, of course, something which we would invite all New Zealanders to do, to engage in the democratic process, to inform, and to upgrade our legislation, and something that I would encourage members of the Government to indulge in all the more often, given the processes that they have currently taken to ram through pieces of legislation. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

It’s a real pleasure to rise tonight. It’s getting late in the hour. It probably would be great if we had a cellar door somewhere on the premises, but we don’t. But I do want to rise and speak on this bill and congratulate Stuart Smith, the member in charge, on his advocacy for this. He’s obviously a very strong advocate for his local region of Kaikōura and the wine industry.

Just before I talk about the bill, I also am a great advocate of the wine industry. I come from down south. I live in Queenstown. We obviously have a wonderful wine industry in Central Otago—some might say the best in New Zealand, but I wouldn’t want to prejudice that. And, of course, we have a very long history in Central Otago of wine. Actually, the first recorded win for a gold medal wine in Central Otago was in 1881, which is quite something. But it was actually more recently in the 1970s that the Central Otago wine industry took off.

As the member in charge spoke about, the wine industry is actually very, very important to regions like Central Otago in New Zealand, where we have some 130 or more wineries down there where this legislation that we’re debating tonight actually might be able to be used, which is great. Obviously, we have lots of wonderful varieties, but we are known for our pinot noir. We’re certainly not chardonnay socialists in ACT, but we do like the wide variety of wines which Central Otago delivers.

Also, Mr Smith talked about the types of submitters we heard from. Again, I was lucky enough to be on the Justice Committee where we actually had a very good, I think, discussion around the issues, and I’ll talk about some of those in a minute. But we did actually hear from a wide variety of different types of wineries. In fact, in Central Otago, a lot of the landscape, the unique geography—the winery or the vineyards, I should say—are actually sometimes quite a long way away from the actual premises where they might be able to do a cellar door. So while it’s interesting to hear about some of Dr Duncan Webb’s possible amendments he’s going to propose later on if this bill continues, we did have a very long debate about trying to get the balance between actually ensuring that this would be used by unique wine growers who might want to have a cellar door and where their actual cellar door, their locality, could actually not be at the vineyard for physical reasons.

Wine tourism is very, very important. Currently, as we discussed in the select committee, if you want to have an on-licence or an off-licence under the current regime, that is actually very complicated. What the member’s done with his very nice bill, quite simply, is actually, I think, address an anomaly in the law where wineries could actually give away the wine—as much as they wanted, in fact—with no controls, but obviously there’s some economic downsides to doing that. So what we’ve tried to do in the select committee was balance some of the concerns with some other practical amendments, which I will talk about in a minute, but actually make this workable for our wine industry who would want to offer tastings.

Interestingly, the 30 millilitres, which is the novel thought—we’ve got a maximum of 35 millilitres proposed in this bill. Thirty millilitres is only six teaspoons, so we’re not actually talking about a lot of wine. And even if you went to the maximum of 35 millilitres which is allowed, you’re only talking seven teaspoons of wine in these tasting samples. I know Dr Webb raised some concerns about this. He described it as a loophole; I don’t. But the idea that people who could set up, I suppose, tasting venues—I really don’t think that’s going to be economically viable when your pour size is only 30 millilitres. So, again, I think if people who have got a background in business actually went and did the numbers, the actual cost of opening a special venue to take advantage of this I just don’t think is a concern we need to worry about.

I do, again, want to say that I thought we actually had quite a constructive discussion in the select committee. I want to also thank the officials that came and gave us some advice. As we work through some of the changes that we made to the original bill, and I think Mr Smith has already acknowledged that—I think he’s acknowledging that we made some improvements or some changes that were sensible. I was worried. Mr Smith was away when we had our last discussion on this bill, and I was hoping we weren’t going to ruin it for him, but he was very pleased with the result that we’re now discussing tonight in the House.

One of the more subtle changes is that we changed the title slightly to add “(Cellar Door Tasting)”, just to make it very explicit that it was actually related to wineries and cellar doors.

One of the other things was that, obviously, we had this long discussion about what a winery is. So we tightened up the definition of “winery” and “cellar door” and did, really, try to relate that to the businesses that are, obviously, growing these grapes and then actually making the grapes into wine and a product that people will come to taste. As we know, New Zealand wines are world renowned. They’re some of the best in the world and, for some varieties, we’re obviously always at the top of the category in the worldwide wine industry.

I’ve discussed the sample sizes. Again, obviously, originally it had a 40ml maximum pour. We had some back and forth and some debate and arrived at 35ml, which, again, allows for 30ml being the normal pour at a wine tasting at a cellar door, but 35ml allowing for some margin of error. As I say, a teaspoon is the margin of error.

I think, actually, the discussion around snack food was quite interesting, and again, as we dived into that, we thought that was actually a reasonable provision, to require that snack foods be available at these premises. Again, as the member in charge, Stuart Smith, said, this could be a cheese board, but it could also just be a packet of chips or some other food. Again, that’s outlined—what that would look like. Obviously, there are some requirements from local authorities about the kind of licensing you might need for the provision of snack foods, but again, that’s not astronomical. And we thought that that was a good compromise, where for between $300 and $600 every few years, they could be signed off to be serving these snack foods.

The provision of water: again, I think that was touched on by one of our earlier speakers. Again, that was just a tidy-up. If we had gone ahead as the bill was presented, when you were actually giving away wine samples, you’d have had to provide water, but if you were charging for these samples, you wouldn’t have had to provide water. So that was one we picked up and quickly noted to justice officials, and they added that in. I think, again, that’s a very sensible change.

We did, again, have some submitters from other industries, like the brewers and distillers, but I’ve got to say that would actually require a different bill and a different debate. Even artisan brewers couldn’t give us a definition of what an artisan beer is. That’s not something that has got a recognised definition yet or some alignment throughout the industry. I’m hoping that maybe Dr Duncan Webb will be advocating for those artisan brewers and maybe for some of the other distillers and other types of alcohol that were mentioned.

Finally, probably as no surprise, ACT supported this bill in its first reading and sending it to the select committee, where, as I said, I think we’ve done some good work, amongst all the parties on that select committee actually, understanding the issues and working with the member in charge and officials to make some improvements. This is obviously going to be, at the appropriate time, a conscience vote. I think it’s now called a personal vote in the Standing Orders, and I’m delighted to say I actually hold proxies for all of the ACT MPs to vote in favour of this bill.

I do, again, want to commend the member for his advocacy for this very important industry, for actually taking a really great pro-business stance and allowing them to actually highlight to tourists and New Zealanders the wonderful wine products we have and actually, I think, make things a little bit easier. Again, ACT is all about making things a little bit easier for business and removing regulation or having appropriate regulation, and I think the sensible changes we are proposing here and what we’re putting in place does that. So thank you, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill. This bill is, I must say, common sense, and that’s something New Zealand First supports. Firstly, I’d like to say New Zealand First supports this bill, eight members have given me the proxy vote to be able to vote in favour. So we will be voting eight votes for you to support this bill to go to the next reading.

The wine industry in New Zealand is a growing industry, and where I’m from in Marlborough, it’s an industry that keeps on growing. We talk now of a $3 billion industry—this is an industry that has put New Zealand and places like Marlborough on the map—a $3 billion industry that is growing, and out of a $3 billion industry, that’s created a massive amount of tourism. Where I’m from, in Marlborough, tourism and wine tourism is a massive thing. People specifically come to visit Marlborough to see the vineyards, to visit the cellar doors. Where I am also, in the heart of Renwick, which is the heart of the wine industry, people come and they go from cellar door to cellar door. It is a thing. On the weekends, my wife and I do it. We go around, and we visit the cellar doors. Generally, we don’t walk; generally, we start on the bike, and we get off to the first cellar door, and we go along and we visit. By about the third cellar door, the bike’s probably put away, and we’re walking along.

But the cellar-door concept is such a great thing for tourism, and it’s a great thing for linking up businesses. So, as you go along and you visit different offerings—and those different offerings are growing in the offerings that are put out there; it is a reason to come visit. And it’s not just about international tourism; it’s about local tourism. So everyone comes to visit and has a look around. In Marlborough, for instance, we’ve got over 80 percent of the wine industry, and that’s something we are really, really proud of and something we want to promote. Tourism, as I say, is one of my favourite things; it’s one of my portfolios. And, when you think of it, people come into the Marlborough Sounds, the beautiful Marlborough Sounds—we all know where that is. People come in, they come in on the cruise boats, and they get off in Picton, and sometimes they get on the bus, or they get on to the flyer or on to the train, and away they go, and they go off to the cellar doors.

So, once they get to those cellar doors, the offering’s there, but the person, the winery, cannot charge. In most cases, they cannot charge. It’s not common sense. So, all of a sudden, the businesses are giving away their product. And the most ironic thing was that—and we heard this through the submissions—businesses—and for one particular submission, they said their bottles of wine were worth between $70 to $90 and they were giving away eight of them a day. You do the maths on that. Seven, eight, $900—and they’re not getting nothing in return.

And here’s the rub. The rub about it—[Interruption]. No, no, listen. No, this is the rub about it. Those same people that get off the cruise ship boat—they can’t actually sell a bottle of wine to them, because they can’t take the bottle of wine back on to the cruise boat. So the only thing about that is the person gets the offering, the person gets to go on the trip, but the actual business doesn’t get to make any money out of it. So this bill allows a small charge to cover the cost of that tasting. That, to me, is common sense.

The Justice Committee was chaired by our leader—by our chairman—James Meager. Over 72 submissions came in, but we heard a number of submissions—

Hon Willie Jackson: Never heard of him.

JAMIE ARBUCKLE: And we’ll be hearing a lot more—hearing a lot more. Those submissions, they were an eye-opener. We heard submissions from large producers; we heard from those little boutique wineries as well. And the majority of those submissions were in support of being able to charge to cover their costs. Red tape—and we’ve heard a lot about red tape on this side of the House. This is getting rid of a silly piece of legislation, something we can change quickly to make businesses—the wineries—more profitable.

It was really through the election campaign in Kaikōura that I first heard about this bill, and I heard what Stuart Smith had done. He’d put this in as a member’s bill, and it had been pulled out, and I must say that even while I was campaigning at that stage against Mr Smith, this was well-received. Everywhere we went, he could get up and say, “This is something that I can achieve—something that will do real good for the industry.”, and I must say that I couldn’t say anything bad about it. It was actually a really good idea.

Then hearing the submissions through the Justice Committee and hearing the arguments for and possibly against, it was by far favoured, and we heard in the first reading that, I think, it was one of the bills that was the most supported of any bills going through a first reading. It was also well supported through those submissions that we heard.

What we are trying to stop, here, is a free-for-all, so to anybody who would want to vote against this, I would say to you: why would you want to vote for a free-for-all, because that’s actually what you’ve got at the moment. You can turn up—my wife and I on that bike—to the first winery, have one, have two, and there’s no limit. Maybe we’ll get back on that bike and we’ll go to the second winery, the second offering, and you just keep on going and keep on going. There’s no offering of food, no offering of water, but a lot of offering of wine—I’ve already forgotten the bike; I don’t know where the bike is any more—so it makes a lot of sense to stop that.

It’s common-sense, responsible consumption, so we can get responsible consumption, and we can actually charge. It’s actually going to make a situation where when you turn up, you’re actually going to think a lot more about what you are purchasing and what you are tasting, because you are going to be charged for it. Also, there are going to be the offerings of food and the offerings of water.

Also, another thing we heard through the submissions was the size of the samples, and it was quite surprising to hear that the size of the samples ended up being quite contentious. I think, originally in the bill, it was a 40-millilitre pour, and through hearing about that and through maybe the views of some members on the other side of the House, it has been reduced to 35 millilitres. A standard pour of wine is 30 millilitres, and we heard from the sponsor of the bill, Mr Smith, that the people have wine glasses especially for the wine as it’s poured, so that that’s done in a controlled way. So 35 millilitres, 40 millilitres—to me, that doesn’t make a lot of difference there.

The provision of having the snack food there is something, again, that is common sense. Having provisions of water, and giving people water and provisions of food, just makes sense.

I think also that some of the definitions—through the Justice Committee, we heard about the definition, and another member of the House said that he is worried about the definition. But I think that the definition gives enough ability to control who can sell and who can’t, and so that has also been well thought through, I believe, by the Justice Committee.

There were some differing views, and I think we’re going to hear this as this proceeds through the House. We did hear from the brewers around craft beers, and that is something that has to be dealt with in a different bill. It can’t be dealt with here. We’ve had a bill with this scope, and we’ve heard about the scope through the Justice Committee. The scope here is not about bringing in other providers—not about bringing in craft beers.

So I think what we have in front of us and the changes that we’ve made through the Justice Committee are common sense. New Zealand First will support this, and I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

The next call is a split call. I call Ricardo Men

Fair enough. Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. So we are supporting the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Cellar Door Tasting) Amendment Bill. I think there are members’ bills that are discrete and ambitious—they can be both—and this is this at least meets one of those criteria; it’s a discrete bill. As a former duty manager on an on-licensed premises, I think it’s worth acknowledging the role that people at the front line, who actually work at premises where alcohol is sold, play to minimise the harm that alcohol causes. And I think this bill is actually a good example of acknowledging that a drug can cause harm but that prohibition isn’t the answer. Rather, sensible regulation is the way forward. In some ways, I wish the arguments that have been used to describe how we regulate alcohol applied to other drugs as well.

But, in relation to this bill, I think we do want to acknowledge the sensible changes that have been brought forward to make sure that this is a workable bill and that, actually, the health of our communities is taken into account. I think, particularly, the way to work around having the provision of snacks and water goes a long way towards that, because it’s not just about how this bill can benefit businesses but how we can protect staff against intoxicated members of the public who, ultimately, would be engaging at wineries. The provision of snacks and water actually create a protective factor as well for the front-line staff who will be working at these wineries. So these are sensible additions to the bill that we do support.

I think there are some worthwhile concerns that were raised around who could be caught up in this bill. I acknowledge that the Justice Committee, obviously, has made it really clear that some of the retailers that could be captured are not intended to be captured. I think this is one of those things that we’ll just have to keep an eye on and see how it works. If we need to continue doing regulation, then we may just have to do that.

At the end of the day, I think it’s important to acknowledge, yes, wineries play a big role in our economy. It’s been a growing sector for a while, and we do have a huge number of staff who, I think, deserve to be protected. So I just want to commend the work of the select committee to find ways to create amendments to protect those staff members. So we commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much. I’d like to begin my contribution tonight as we enter what was just described as the graveyard shift—or the circus shift—with the acknowledgement of Stuart Smith for his bill. We had the new co-leader of the Green Party give him a promotion to “the honourable Stuart Smith”, and I think that’s the closest we’re going to come to a blue-green coalition for a couple of years. So I’ll take that, as we can, as a start there, Stuart. No, congratulations. Like the member Greg O’Connor, this is your second member’s bill that you’ve brought forward to the House, so I’d just like to say congratulations, but, please, give someone else a chance next time as well.

Actually, like Mr O’Connor, I’d like to acknowledge your contribution to the committee throughout the consideration of this bill. You yourself brought a range of lived experience not only as a consumer but also as a producer from one of the best wine regions around the country. Actually, we had Jamie Arbuckle on the committee as well from that region—from Marlborough—and Todd Stephenson with us too. We had many, many submitters appear before us from Marlborough and from Central Otago. It was a little bit of a love-in at one point. Then, of course, I would like to acknowledge Celia Wade-Brown, who joined us for a portion of the consideration as well and who was, of course, from the Wairarapa, which is another well-known wine-growing region—home of the mighty Mike Butterick.

Can I acknowledge, also, what has now become known as the “busy and effective” Justice Committee, and I thank the committee for their hard work in taking two bills off our workflow. But we still have 10 on the go, and I’m looking forward to looking to Tracey McLellan’s bill in a couple of weeks and seeing if we can add another one to our workflow as well. It’s interesting because I sat on the Education and Workforce Committee this morning, subbing in, and they had their very first departmental report to consider for the session. So it was a bit like a proud dad seeing his kids take the training wheels off their bike as we plough through item number 10 on our legislative agenda.

So I’d just like to acknowledge the Justice Committee. It is a busy committee. We enjoy the work. I think we do work very, very well together as a committee—representatives from all parties—and I think you can see in this bill that we’ve done a decent amount of work to get it to this stage. The member himself acknowledged that members’ bills will often come to select committees with limited resources behind them in how they’re produced, and it’s our job as a committee to work together to try and find the ways that we can to improve them. That’s the important scrutiny function that select committees perform, so I just wanted to acknowledge that.

Finally, can I acknowledge the contribution before from the Greens co-leader, Chlöe Swarbrick, who indicated that the Greens would be supporting the bill. I thank her for that. I was curious as to why she was supporting this, because there’s been some, I think, quite reasonable apprehension from the Greens in the past around alcohol legislation, and the harm minimisation requirements need to be in that. Then I looked at the back page of the departmental report and saw that the Waiheke Wine Growers Association had made a very powerful submission. So it goes to show that submitters, big and small, from all over the country, can make an influence on how we consider pieces of legislation like this.

Finally, can I just acknowledge the officials from the Ministry of Justice. It is important to acknowledge them, especially when we have members’ bills. They are giving up their time, off the Government’s legislative agenda, to support us and be our advisers through that process. They provided us with very clear advice on some relatively tricky issues—in fact, some which we, as Dr Webb alluded to earlier on, haven’t quite come to a conclusion on about whether or not we’ve reached the right drafting around some of those potential loopholes. But I do acknowledge the clear and consistent work that they gave to us.

Now, I’d like to talk briefly about the purpose of the bill. Like most members’ bills, the purpose is very simple: it is to make it easier for winery cellar doors to charge for samples—and that’s simply it. Actually, I wanted to talk about the scoping issue that has come up in the select committee report, because—and we had a bit of back and forth at length about this with the member in charge. But what was the purpose of the bill? The member was very clear: the purpose of him bringing this bill forward was to address an issue faced by winery cellar-door operators and the issues that they face with the complicated licensing regime under the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act.

There were submissions from other players in the alcohol industry—I think the Brewers Association made some very, very good points about whether the bill could be expanded to include the likes of your craft beer brewers or your gin distilleries, which could also possibly open up their own version of a cellar door. But, for us, in the majority, on the Justice Committee, our view was very clearly that the member brought forward this bill with the intention of supporting wine-cellar door operators. We sought some advice from the Clerk’s team, who indicated that amendments like that would be out of scope, so we came to a conclusion that while perhaps it was worthy of consideration of expansion—and members are entitled to put Amendment Papers up as well in the committee stage—it possibly may be a better option for another member’s bill. Maybe it’s third time lucky for Stuart Smith or Greg O’Connor. I’m sure a bill like that would be well and truly graciously received by committees such as the Governance and Administration Committee.

Can I move on to just some of our submitters. As mentioned before, we had 72 submissions; 12 of them appeared in person. Quite, I think, uniquely for a bill, the vast majority of submissions were for, or were by, or on behalf of, organisations. Quite often with the submission process, you’ll get a good fifty-fifty mix of organisations or individuals, or if it’s a particular issue, you might get mostly individuals. But this showed that this was an issue that was important to many operators across the country, large and small. And that was from across the board: wineries, hospitality, alcohol harm reduction advocates, and also a couple of district councils, the Waitaki District Council and the Rangitīkei District Council. Read into that what you will about members Miles Anderson and Suze Redmayne and what they get up to in their spare time, and the councils there.

So, finally, in the brief amount of time that I have left before we might rise to go off and do something else, I want to talk about the substantial changes that have been offered by the select committee. The first one goes to that scoping issue and actually is a change to the title of the bill. There was a recommendation to change it from “Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Cellar Door Tasting)” to “Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Winery Cellar Door Tasting)” to reflect the intention of the member in that bill. And I think that’s a pretty sensible change to make. Just for a notice, I got relatively confused because, when I picked up the bill, it had the old title on the front of the bill. So I now have learnt that that won’t change until it passes its second reading. So, all going well, later on, in a couple of weeks, perhaps, when we come back, we’ll be able to get that change through.

We’ve heard about some of the definitions around “winery” and about defining a winery as a person whose business includes producing and selling grape wine products or having had them produced on their behalf. There were some concerns that that definition would be overly inclusive and could incorporate or unintentionally capture bottle store operators and supermarkets. So the committee had resolved to change the definition of a “winery” and, in fact, provide for a specific definition of “winery cellar door”, so to limit the ability for bottle stores and supermarkets to try and take advantage of this law change. But, as mentioned previously, I suspect it’s very unlikely to happen.

Some of those changes being proposed about kilometre radius restrictions just get us into a situation where we become overly prescriptive as legislators. I think that’s a good change because it solves some of those problems that some of the small operators brought to us, which was that they don’t necessarily have their wine cellar door on the same property where they produce their wine—it may be in a different vineyard, or it may be 3 kilometres or 4 kilometres down the road. So this helps put them on a level playing field, the same as everyone else.

I wanted to talk about the sample-size issue, and Jamie Arbuckle covered it pretty well. There was an original recommendation from officials to reduce the sample size down to about 30 millilitres, but we as a committee took that to, basically, incorporate no margin of error, really. If you have a strict 30 millilitre pour, once you’re a millilitre over, you’re strictly in breach of the Act. We don’t want to be trapping people or getting them in unintended trouble. So we thought 35 millilitres was a pretty good compromise. It gives you that teaspoon of margin of error, as Todd Stephenson helpfully referred to.

In the last few amendments around the provision of snack food, there was a question, there, where we asked the officials to go back for some advice. While we were happy to consider and accept that provision as being part of minimising the harm from alcohol and improving host responsibility obligations, there were some concerns that this might put an imposition of cost on the operators who don’t already provide food. So officials went away and did some good looking around for us and came back and informed us that that, in their view, would be a cost of about $300 to $600 every two to three years. We thought that was a pretty reasonable cost for the benefit that this might open up for these operators, so we were happy to accept that recommendation too.

Look, I think that’s bordering on enough from us for tonight. I look forward to the remaining contributions in this debate. It may well be the first time that the class of 2023 needs to see a personal vote in a couple of weeks, so I’m very much looking forward to that. But I congratulate the member Stuart Smith, and I look forward to its passage through to the committee stage, third reading, and into law forthwith. Thank you.

Members, the time has come for me to leave the Chair. The House is adjourned until 2 p.m. tomorrow.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 9.57 p.m.