Ardern Jacinda: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Display of Low-alcohol Beverages and Other Remedial Matters) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9721. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I think it is a useful opportunity—now that we have as the Minister has described a relatively minor tweak to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act—to have a slightly broader discussion about whether or not this bill could have been a vehicle for perhaps some other tweaks that even the Government itself flagged at the time that it introduced the primary legislation in 2012. I will come to that point later.But first to address the substance of what otherwise is a rather minor and technical bill—and for that reason one that Labour will lend its support to but as always we will be interested to hear from submitters via the select committee process as to what their views are on this amendment. Just to explore probably the most substantive of the amendments which is around section 114 of the Act which will allow for the display promotion or advertisement of low-alcohol or non-alcoholic beer wine—important—or the mead that apparently we still retail within an alcohol area part of our problem is that within the legislation as it stands “alcohol” is clearly defined. “Alcohol” is defined as a product that is 1.15 percent or more ethanol by volume. When you give such clarity in your legislation—as good drafting does—as to what constitutes alcohol anything that sits outside that definition is therefore precluded.When you go to the primary legislation which of course is the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 many members of this House will remember that it required that supermarkets and grocery stores in particular have designated areas for the sale of alcohol. The reason for that was people were complaining that when you would come through a supermarket you would often be forced even if you were getting bread or milk to go through the area where there was the sale of alcohol. It would be a thoroughfare for the supermarket often because there were heavily discounted alcohol products within the supermarket and these were often used as advertising to draw people into supermarkets. Some debated whether or not there was loss-leading—we will not go there in this debate—but that was one of the things that was raised during that discussion.I remember at the time that we had people coming to the select committee and saying for instance: “I have suffered from alcohol issues in the past. I have overcome those but I feel confronted every time I walk into a supermarket.” So that is what section 114 was attempting to remedy. It required those suppliers to create these single areas and it had conditions around how they might be constructed. They could not be the most direct pedestrian route for instance between any entrance to the premises and its main body. They basically had to be able to be closed off in order to fulfil the requirements of off-licence hours and so on.Part of section 114 for instance (1)(a) says “no display or promotion of or advertisement for alcohol occurs on the premises at any place outside the alcohol area;” and section 114(2) says: “If the alcohol area has not been so described that it is divided into 2 or 3 sub-areas a single-area condition also takes effect as a condition that the licensee of the premises concerned must ensure that no display or promotion of or advertisement for a product that is not alcohol occurs on the premises at any place inside the alcohol area.” There are two things happening here: (1) you cannot advertise alcohol outside the designated area and (2) you cannot advertise any non-alcohol product within the designated area—obviously to stop that crossover—so you could not advertise bread in the alcohol area.But the problem with saying that a product is not alcohol as I have already raised is that “alcohol” is clearly defined as a product that contains 1.15 percent or more ethanol by volume. So immediately a DB Export Citrus drink that is intended to be a substitute for beer and that is zero percent alcohol—but is considered to be a beer substitute—could not therefore be advertised within the alcohol area. Obviously that is not what this Parliament intended. It is a by-product of some very tight drafting in order to try to achieve a particular outcome but it has had a knock-on effect.Here is my question though. That legislation was passed in 2012 and here we are debating this amendment in 2016. I know that the Food and Grocery Council has been involved in advocating around this. I know that for instance DB Breweries and groups like this became aware of the problem and have lobbied to have it changed and why would Parliament have a problem with allowing those products to be advertised in an alcohol area if we are trying to promote alternatives to alcohol including low-alcohol or no-alcohol options as a substitute. When was this issue first raised with the Minister of Justice?The reason that I am interested in this is that I am going to make a bit of an assumption here that most members of this House are likely to support this amendment bill. I am making an assumption; I might not be correct. But most of us I assume are wanting to promote if you are in an alcohol area an alternative to full-strength alcohol when you are in that area. I think that probably if we are in that trade-off situation then that is what we would want to do. Why was this not done in a Statutes Amendment Bill? It strikes me that for something like this—and statutes amendment bills are designed to be non-controversial where you are able to garner the support of the—Chris Bishop: It’s about alcohol.JACINDA ARDERN: —entire House. Oh write down your little note there for your piece of rebuttal Mr Bishop. But I would have thought—now I take your point. Alcohol has been treated as a conscience issue by this House before; not by your party because conscience issues do not exist for National. But on this side of the House we have started treating it as a health issue. So we would have looked at that as a party and said: “Does this have some benefit in terms of encouraging alternatives to the use of alcohol?”. Therefore we would have looked at that and if Amy Adams came to us and said “We would like it as part of a Statutes Amendment Bill.” we would have said: “Look that sounds reasonable.”—that sounds reasonable. Even if there might have been a question mark over whether you could treat an alcohol issue previously treated as a conscience vote as part of a Statutes Amendment Bill why not test it? It is up to this House to decide whether or not we universally agree as a Parliament that this is the kind of amendment we would be happy to make within a Statutes Amendment Bill. Anyone who has seen the way statutes amendment bills work would know that we get a little list from Simon Bridges with an individual amendment for every suggestion that has been made and an explanation of what it is and we tick yes or no—simple. Why did it not happen that way?The alternative is that we now have to go back to the select committee—a very robust process which of course allows the public to have their say on whether or not we want to promote no-alcohol and low-alcohol options for the public within our retail chains. The question could be asked: is that a great use of time? Why if we are going to have to be in a situation where we debate this little amendment did we not go the whole hog and review the other things the Government said that we would review as part of this Act? In 2010—and this is really important so I want to read it out. On 8 November 2010 in response to the fact that the Law Commission said: “We regard pricing policies as the central plank of any reform package aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm.” what was the one thing the Government’s bill on alcohol did not do? Anything on pricing. It did nothing at all. So what did Simon Power in his defence say? On 8 November 2010 “Mr Power says”—and I have got this from a Beehive release—“the Government is committed to investigating a minimum pricing regime but does not have the evidence base it needs either locally or internationally to set a minimum price immediately.”He gave retailers a year to give him that information and said that if they did not he would legislate to get the information. What happened? How is it that 6 years later we are in position where we do not have that information and we do not have any suggestion from the Government that it is going to look at it even though it gave us that guarantee? What happened? I will tell you what happened: Judith Collins happened. Simon Power left this House Judith Collins took over the portfolio and with one fell dismissive swoop—no talk of evidence or research—she wiped out the chance of doing any review on this. The only thing she said in response in the National Business Review was: “It’s important to understand the vast majority of New Zealanders are quite happy to have a glass of wine.” That was it—review over. Minimum pricing investigation gone. The evidence did not matter. Judith Collins declared it was unnecessary. So if the Government wants to do work—