Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6070. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I will rise to speak in support of the amendment moved by the honourable Hone Harawira. I note the additional elements. 
I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This would be helpful for me. The other elements of a new Part 2A and Part 7 relating to advertising and sponsorship will be dealt with separately. So this is purely on the amendment moved by the honourable Hone Harawira on Supplementary Order Paper 121? 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Correct. We will move to the others shortly. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: That is fine. I will speak on that. I am hoping that the honourable Hone Harawira himself will take a call on his Supplementary Order Paper but I felt that it was important that we get the debate going on this matter. I felt that I was an appropriate person to speak to it because I voted for the split age in terms of the age issue which we in fact dealt with the last time we debated the bill. I want to speak in favour of the amendment even though I voted for the split age and then ultimately voted to retain the age at 18. The reason that I want to support this amendment is that it will answer I believe one of the concerns that the public have around the age question. What it asks the Parliament to do is to amend the Alcohol Reform Bill by inserting provisions for the Ministry of Justice to review the ages for the sale and purchase of alcohol on licensed premises within 5 years of the commencement of the bill. I think that what the member has been trying to do is to ask the Parliament to have a mechanism where there is an automatic review taking place. There might be a willingness expressed by all parties to review the operation of legislation after a particular period of time but I believe that to have it written into the legislation would actually be a help and it would help people understand that the Parliament will not let another 12 years go by before the law is reviewed again. That is because a lot of the public have actually accepted the argument that the purchase age is such a top issue although I do not believe that any of the evidence presented by the Law Commission and by those who have been advocating for the five-plus-one option has put age at the top of the range of measures that need to be taken. The reason that they have not put it at the top is that it is effective to a certain extent but it is not the most effective measure that could be taken and it certainly does not rate in the top three of those measures but it certainly does warrant the Committee’s ongoing attention. 
I think that the public have bought into this issue of the age being so important because it is the only issue in the legislation that has been the subject of a conscience vote on the part of the Government. The Government has whipped the entire caucus on every other element of the legislation. Something that I had hoped we would get to ourselves is that we were hoping to be able to get rid of the conscience vote. I was the one who actually raised it in the first instance when I was Associate Minister of Justice back in 2008. It occurred to me that the only year when it is absolutely impossible to get any alcohol reform is election year and it is because of the conscience vote. The huge amount of pressure that came on people to vote in a particular way—certainly the community’s voice could not match the pressure really of big business that was able to I believe put a lot of pressure on people in terms of how they voted on particular issues. The purchase age has never been a particular issue for the industry so that is the one issue that is just not an issue and I think that is why the Government was prepared to give that away. It was not prepared I think to let brand new MPs confront the reality of their constituents who were looking for a lot more from this Parliament than what they are getting from this bill. 
I like the idea of reviewing legislation on a relatively fixed date. The reason that I say that is that when I was first elected to Parliament or some years afterwards in 1993 we had the human rights amendment. I can see Kevin Hague nodding his head sagely because he knows exactly what I am going to say. Charles Chauvel is also nodding his head sagely because he knows exactly what I am going to say. The law required the Government to go through all of its laws and to actually work out which laws were in conflict with the changes that were made to the Human Rights Act and to the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act at that time. So there was an obligation on the Government to do that and guess what? It did not do it. We actually got to the expiry date and it had not been done. The expiry date of that particular provision which exempted the Crown from the new provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act had to be extended I believe twice until we finally got through the statutory references legislation. 
I believe that the member Hone Harawira feels very passionately about this issue of purchase age and I know that not every member has the opportunity to put forward a Supplementary Order Paper but I actually think that we owe it to everyone who supports this amendment to actually debate it. To have a proposal for a review in 5 years I think is a very sensible one indeed. So I hope that the Committee will support the amendment. I had hoped that the member himself would be able to take a call and I thought my contributing to the debate in such a reasonable way might have given the member Hone Harawira the idea that perhaps he should take a call on this bill. If that message can get through to his office I am sure that will assist the debate. It is something that I think is important; sometimes it is important to stand for something. Even though I did not vote for the measure that he was concerned about I am perfectly happy to support a measure that says that we review the operation of a decision that is made by this Parliament within a reasonable time frame. We simply cannot allow 12 years to go by and then have somebody else ask why we never had a look at it again. I think if we write it into the law we will actually get the opportunity—well more than the opportunity; we have an obligation—to review it and to see whether the concerns that were raised at the time have in fact been addressed. 
In fact there are probably other parts of the legislation which we are going to be passing over the next couple of days or next three days or however long it takes—I think that what we might find is that there are other parts of this legislation that might also benefit from such an amendment. I might look at whether we need some additional amendments as we go through the Committee stage as this is an opportunity to do just that. 
So I do congratulate the member on bringing the matter to the attention of the Committee. It is an opportunity for us to talk about whether we have got an opportunity in the future to reflect on decisions that we have made based on the evidence because the evidence will be available. I would like to take the opportunity to completely disagree with everything that Trevor Mallard said about my very respected colleagues in Christchurch who have done nothing but devote— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Sally Casswell used to be very impartial. I used to deal with Sally Casswell. She was terribly impartial! 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: I am very proud of Sally Casswell and Doug Sellman and all of the public health people. They are not self-interested. All they care about is the public health of New Zealand. We actually should have people who care about the public health of New Zealand because if there is one thing that has actually diminished under this Government it is health promotion. We might talk about operations and various other things but health promotion has gone down the drain under this Government. It is not playing the leadership position that we ought to be playing in the world. New Zealand led the world on tobacco law reform. We should be leading the world on alcohol law reform as well and that is what I challenge the Committee to do with this amendment.