Mitchell Clayton: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Clayton: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee[Sitting date: 06 April 2016. Volume:712;Page:10258. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLAYTON MITCHELL (NZ First): I am rising on behalf of New Zealand First in support of Paul Foster-Bell’s bill—Supplementary Order Paper 168 is coming up in the next reading—the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Exemption for RNZRSA Clubs from Special Licencing Requirements for Anzac Day) Amendment Bill. God I am sure we could shorten that a little bit but that will come up in the Committee stage as well. Goodness me! That was about 1 minute just to get through the title.It does come as no surprise to us that we are back here having this discussion which we said would happen in just August of last year. It is like “déjà voodoo” or a glitch in the matrix. There is a bit of a glitch because we are coming back to something that we said would need to be readdressed in this House. This is about the sale and supply of alcohol. The architect as it was so eloquently pointed out by Paul Foster-Bell was of course Miss Judith Collins the honourable Minister there. It does have some serious flaws in it that we need to readdress and we would be certainly suggesting strongly that this Government bring the entire bill back so that we can have a look at some of these unintended consequences that have been pointed out.This bill the sale and supply of alcohol bill is starting to resemble more of a Monty Python skit or potentially a little wee skit from The Muppet Show where Kermit the Frog would sing about “Lydia oh Lydia the tattooed lady” because there is so much legislation being put now into this legislation. There are a number of blotch marks that for years to come we will have to go back through and refer to with regard to the sale and supply of alcohol. We are talking about the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill and of course now we are talking about the Anzac Day bill.We do support the common-sense approach to let the Anzac supporters to let our RSA members to let those people who do support and hold and cherish the values of those returned service people have the simple act of having a drink and a celebration. It is a celebration of the life that they have given up. It is a celebration of the lives that they fought for for us to all enjoy and absolutely this is one of those moments in time when you could not have anybody other than somebody who is on a different planet think that this is not a special occasion.However the current legislation does allow some interpretation to go a little bit askew. For some reason we have had in the past some amendments put into these agreements these licensing agreements for special licences that do not allow for example pool tables to be used at a special event or that the event must be ticketed for or the fact that you cannot have live music being played through because the purpose of the event is for a celebration of the Anzac commemoration or Anzac Day as it was.So this bill does address that. It goes even further to say that if there is in your local alcohol policy a one-way door policy it will be negated in this policy. That does make sense. It does also allow drinking to establish itself at 4 o’clock in the morning. The overarching liquor licence says that the standard hours of operation unless there is otherwise a good reason are 8 a.m. until 3 a.m. Many of those councils have opted out of that and they have actually shortened those hours even further but again rather than having an interpretation of a council or the police or the health department saying what is right this is exactly what New Zealand First is saying. It should come back to the House for a proper review to make sure that the rules that apply in one area under one council actually apply across New Zealand to give us some sort of continuity and some consistency. It takes away that ambiguity.We do acknowledge that there are 181 registered RSAs around New Zealand and that breaks down to some 104000-odd members. Anzac Day is a day of celebration as I have already outlined. My family and I will be attending those Anzac celebrations as we do and we certainly would like to see this bill speedily read through the House today so that come the 25th of this month Anzac Day can be celebrated and all Anzac Days forward from here without the sort of hassle and bureaucratic nonsense that has to be gone through in applying for a special licence which is what has been happening up until now. Thank you.