Franks Stephen: Customs and Excise (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Franks Stephen: Customs and Excise (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5399] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 This bill could have had many titles that were much more direct and told New Zealanders exactly what it is about. One of them—the most simple and direct—might have been chosen by the Prime Minister. She prides herself on being blunt straightforward and telling it like it is. If she had had anything to do with this bill and maybe she did it would have been called the “Distract the Punters Bill.” This would be the bill that one brings in under extraordinary urgency to attract attention at a time when the House has been paying very unwanted attention to a few other things where one’s directness has not been paying any dividends. 
This bill might or might not distract the punters from matters of real importance but it certainly has nothing to do with its stated intentions. This bill will not distract from the failure to use the strategic assets the Government retained when it said that it would not sell electricity generation. This bill will not distract from the fact that sucking up to China Russia France and Germany has no morality when the Prime Minister refuses to comment on Chinese aggression against Tibet or Chinese treatment of Sars or brutal Chinese treatment of Taiwan. This Prime Minister would never talk frankly about those matters. Instead she directs her attentions to our friends and allies. She will talk frankly about the United States and attack it for freeing the Iraqis. This is a distraction bill. 
But worse this bill does nothing about the problem stated in its introduction—namely young people drinking and ruining their brains. If this bill did intend to deal with that problem it would have been brought forward at a time when we could debate whether the right way to deal with youth drinking is to return to what several members on the Government side have mentioned and that is an older minimum drinking age. If the bill had really been intended to deal with youth drinking it would have allowed evidence to be brought forward as to whether it targeted what young people actually drink. How many young people drink Pimms? How many young people get stuck into Campari? How many young people get drunk on port these days when there are so many more drinks that have much less flavour but are much easier to get hold of? They drink the alcopops and the ready-to-drinks and most of them can simply drink themselves silly on almost any alcohol that is readily available whatever its strength. 
So the idea that this bill is in some way justified by an attempt to attack alcohol abuse would perhaps have been slightly credible if it contained provisions that directed enforcement against the problem. Why for example has United Future—the family party—not raised the simple prospect of treating drinking young people as though they were responsible for their own behaviour? Why are we continuously targeting the vendors without looking back at what our grandparents or even our parents did? When I say “our parents” I look to the 1950s and 1960s when we as young people knew that if we were breaking the drinking law we and not just the anonymous vendor might pay a penalty. I say to the family party that it might be possible for this bill to contain something that would direct enforcement against the people committing the wrong. The wrong in this case it seems is young people drinking too much. 
This bill does not seem to be a “retrieve the initiative” bill. It will not succeed in allowing the Prime Minister to distract attention from other failures in the areas of electricity and foreign policy. It certainly will not in the end persuade anyone for very long that it addresses youth drinking. A much more direct title for it would have been the “Youth Drinking Bill.”