Seymour David: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6204. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I move That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I have already spoken for 10 minutes on this bill today so I am going to keep my remarks fairly brief except to say I was remiss in acknowledging the very fine officials who advised the Justice and Electoral Committee who I think did an excellent job in supporting us. We are very grateful to them.Also I acknowledge the many submitters who I have to say were of varying quality. There were a large number of form submissions of a form that were largely inaccurate. In fact there were some quite helpful and intelligent submissions such as those from Auckland Council the Auckland District Licensing Committee and also from the Hospitality Association and Local Government New Zealand which pointed out useful new information that assisted the committee in drafting a very good bill to return to the House.I would like to thank the members for some of their speeches and I particularly pick up on what Chris Bishop said at the second reading. The facts are that if you look at the quantity of alcohol consumed by New Zealanders the concentration of consumption the amount of binge drinking and the distribution of that drinking across different age groups it is a myth that New Zealand is somehow an outlier by international standards and that young New Zealanders have the worst of drinking problems. Quite the opposite is true and in a liberalised environment over the last 30 years alcohol consumption and harm has actually gone down. Those are the facts and I think they should be recorded for the House—none of which of course are incompatible with saying that there are difficulties with alcohol in New Zealand and we should always ensure to do better.I would like to thank Peeni Henare for a very good contribution. He said I had a Magna Doodle. I was not aware that the member spoke Latin but I thank him for that and for the rest of his contribution.I want to put on record one matter in regard to this bill. Several people in what is actually an unparliamentary way insinuated that the bill was drafted by lobbyists with my help. I can tell the House that there was no such occurrence. I drafted this bill and did I get on the phone and ask people in my electorate? Yes I did. If there is one thing that I have noticed throughout this debate it is that it is very humbling to have to walk up the driveway in the middle of winter knock on the door and say: “Hi I am here to ask you to vote for me.” You learn a lot about what happens in your community and you become a lot more worldly about the effect of the policies that we make in this House.That is not to say that there are no very good list MPs because I have just complimented one of them but it may also tell us something a little bit about the approach of the Green Party members who of course do not have any. Did I ask for example the Hospitality Association for its advice? Of course you would ask for the view of an organisation that represented the people who run the facilities but this was a drafting very much initiated by me.I would like to thank one of my staff members who brought it to our attention that the British actually had what we regarded as a piece of model legislation passed for the FIFA World Cup just last year. So I want to put on record the genesis of this bill and if the people who made those allegations want to repeat those unparliamentary allegations then I challenge them to do so.While we are talking about politics I think that one of the things that Chris Bishop touched on was actually the intergenerational aspect of this. Can you not imagine being a new member of Parliament thrust into the limelight after having been made the leader of your party and the guy whom you beat to be the leader—we have been using a lot of sporting analogies today—forces you to do a triple somersault? Three positions on the same issue in just 2 weeks—if that is not dissension and difficulty within a party then I do not know what is. I repeat what other members have said which is that the public will be the judge. I suspect they will conclude that the younger James Shaw had it right and the internal dissension in the Greens is going to have to be dealt with one way or another. I just wish James luck on that not only on this bill but for the integrity of the Greens’ being able to take one position on a bill for 2 weeks in a row.Finally this bill is fundamentally about community. Members have said: “Why can’t you just open without alcohol?”. Well the fact of the matter is that most of us actually do responsibly enjoy alcohol and most of the licensed premises have their special licence on the basis that they cannot open if their primary activity is to serve alcohol—they must be allowed to serve alcohol when they open. So they are one and the same. That does not necessarily mean that what they are going to do is serve excessive alcohol. In fact I predict that what will happen is that the overwhelming majority of people will come out early in the morning for breakfast and a coffee maybe a lemonade or a shandy and maybe a pint of beer.The question for the opponents of this bill is “Why should law-abiding responsible New Zealanders not be able to do that?” rather than the question the opponents would like us to answer which is “How will you justify yourselves to us?”. This is fundamentally about individual freedom and personal responsibility and what the opponents have done is taken a very cynical bet. They are a little bit like an Opposition party I once heard when it was learning of bad news for the country. It said: “Good grief it’s even worse than we hoped.”The members in opposition to this bill have taken the cynical position that if there is an unfortunate occurrence that coincides with the Rugby World Cup and this bill and if there is an unfortunate occurrence that may or may not have been caused by this bill they will be in a position to say: “I told you so.” It is cynical and dirty politics to do that. What I hope is that we are going to have a warm communitarian festival event where we are able to use our community facilities our pubs and our clubs to come together as free and responsible New Zealanders. Thank you. I commend this bill to the House.