Hague Kevin: 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 VolumeHague Kevin: 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:10257. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I think it is probably true that all parties in the House will be supporting this bill today—certainly that is what I hope to be the case. But I do want to in this first reading contribution express some concerns about process.I well remember the debates in this House on the 2012 Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill. In particular I want to recall the testy mood of some of those debates and what happens when a complex piece of legislation is going through the House with a Government that is not very interested in actually talking with some of the experts in the community and across party lines with some of the Opposition parties. As a result of that the Government in various forms has had to come back to this House on a number of occasions with fix-it-up legislation. And that is a situation that could have been avoided.So the question that springs to mind—and should spring to the mind for the public—is: although this is indeed a weakness of the legislation that Paul Foster-Bell’s bill is dealing with why was this not dealt with in 2012 or in any of the intervening 4 years? So that is the first concern about process. It is a downside of rushed legislation or legislation that occurs with inadequate consultation across the House.I guess the second point that I want to raise is: when this shortcoming of the bill—or the Act as it was by that stage—came to light why did the Government not step in to remedy that shortcoming? Why was it made a question for a member’s bill instead? This is a classic situation surely for the Government to introduce its own bill because the Government gets to control the process of a bill through the House. It is the Government that is in a position to determine the place of legislation on the Order Paper and how quickly it can move it through all of its stages in the House.So it would have been appropriate for a Government bill to remedy this problem. But instead what we see is the way that the Government has used members’ days and the members’ ballot. It has tended to use that members’ ballot in a way that enables Government members to put in bills that ought to be Government bills and are largely non-controversial pieces of legislation that are intended simply to reduce the odds of an Opposition member’s bill being drawn from that ballot. Although I totally understand that that is within the rules of the House it is not the spirit in which members’ days should proceed. Myself I have two important bills: one that is about protecting endangered native species and another that is about overhauling New Zealand’s antiquated and obsolete adoption law. The chances that those bills have of being drawn are diluted by the Government’s choice of using members’ day to advance effectively bills that it ought to be advancing itself.The third point is the truncated process that both speakers so far have referred to and that on this occasion we are forced to agree to—because if we do not agree to that truncated process this bill cannot take effect before Anzac Day this year. Both of the most recent examples of fix-up legislation to the Act have featured both of these characteristics: a member’s bill when it should be a Government bill; and a truncated or amended process when actually better planning could have seen a bill proceed in the proper way.