Smith Stuart; Kuriger BarbaraSALE AND SUPPLY OF ALCOHOL (CELLAR DOOR TASTING) AMENDMENT BILLSecond ReadingSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): 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.DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to."