Sharples Pita: Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction: Purchase Age) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Sharples Pita: Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction: Purchase Age) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6348] 
Dr PITA SHARPLES (Co-Leader—Maori Party) 
: 
 The health services research centre at Victoria University in its 1999 study  
Te Iwi Maori me te Inu Waipiro 
 said everything we need to know about our rationale for supporting this bill. The first two sentences of that resource are definitive: “Prior to contact with Pakeha Maori lived in one of the few parts of the world that had never developed alcoholic beverages. The Inuit people of Canada the Trukese of Micronesia and a number of Native American Indian tribes share with Maori the attribution of being indigenous peoples who did not develop alcoholic drinks.” 
Last night this House witnessed an unusual attack on the Maori Party. That speech was the most intoxicating I have heard in my short time in this House. Indeed we did wonder from which spirit bottle that genie escaped. The nature of the delivery was such that I also queried how one could savour the taste of the beverage of bile that was spewed in the direction of my Maori Party colleagues along with the lessons that we should learn from the orators on the marae. What I experienced last night masquerading as a speech in a debate was really the type of personal attack I have never heard from any orators on the marae. But then of course my marae experiences may not be as extensive as the honourable member’s. 
The central thrust of the attack was that one should not need to prepare or develop a position on any issue before rising in this House but instead members should simply rise—as the spirit moves them so to speak—to speak off the cuff. The Maori Party believes that looking to history is a valid tool for understanding an issue; that planning and preparing to respond to significant issues of State should be the solemn responsibility that all members of this House take seriously. It is a responsibility that we will continue to take up in our commitment to defending the rights of Maori in advancing the interests of Maori for the benefit of this entire nation. 
It is precisely because of the state of an alcohol-free Aotearoa that we in the Maori Party know that alcohol use and more particularly alcohol abuse is something that was foreign to Maori. Indeed the botanist Joseph Banks wrote in 1769 that “Water is their universal drink”. He said that Maori showed great repugnance for wine especially strong liquors. Perhaps that is why liquor is frequently referred to in te reo Maori as waipiro or stinking water. Set against that context fast forward 237 years later to 2006 to the grim reality that Maori report a higher incidence of alcohol-related problems and one inevitably has to ask where it all went so wrong. 
A national Maori alcohol survey undertaken in 2000 Te Ao Waipiro 2000 helps us to work it out. The survey took in some 2000 people who identified as Maori. Out of all men surveyed one in five indicated that alcohol was causing problems to their health. The most frequent drinkers were 18 to 19-year-olds particularly men who drank every 1 or 2 days. Again out of all age groups it was 18 to 19-year-old Maori who consumed the most alcohol on typical drinking occasions—12 to 13 drinks for men and eight to nine drinks for women. This is the exact target group affected by the bill. It is figures like these that give proof to the theme song of the Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC): “It’s not the drinking it’s how we’re drinking”. 
These figures are sobering in all senses of the word but what is even more disturbing are the alcohol-related problems that emerge from such patterns. Twenty-one percent of 18 to 19-year-old Maori surveyed said that they drink and drive. Out of all age groups it was young people aged from 14 to 16 years who were most likely to have reported experiencing problems from other people’s drinking including sexual harassment car crashes physical assault and other accidents. It was for all those reasons and more that when the membership of the Maori Party started developing our policy programme in mid-2005 special commitment was included to promote changing legislation to restrict the sale of alcohol from 18 years to 20 years or older by the entire Maori Party of 21000 members. The research reveals that youth binge drinking has increased and it is this binge drinking that is especially harmful. I know the argument has been put that most 18-year-olds are mature enough to consume alcohol responsibly but the same national Maori alcohol survey I quoted earlier reported that 62 percent of 18 to 19-year-old men were consuming over 20 litres of alcohol per year. Frequently feeling drunk was highest amongst young men aged 16 to 24 years and amongst women aged 18 to 19 years. 
When the survey actually asked young people whether it was a problem for them the answers in themselves were revealing. Twenty-two percent of 14 to 17-year-olds and 23 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds were concerned about their own alcohol consumption. So when nearly a quarter of our rangatahi are saying they are drinking more than they are happy with should we not be listening to them or do we know better? Should we ignore the New Zealand Drug Foundation the Ministry of Health ALAC and other public health organisations that have advised Parliament that when Canada and the United States raised their drinking ages alcohol-related harm decreased? Or when we turn to the justice sector and observe the dramatic increase in the numbers of drunk disorderly teenagers since the drinking age was lowered in 1999 should we just turn a blind eye? When the injury prevention research unit of Otago University advises us that hazardous alcohol consumption is the leading modifiable cause of injury and accounts for 78 percent of all deaths amongst 15 to 19-year-olds in New Zealand is anybody else in this House shocked by that? When we open the pages of the  
American Journal of Public Health 
 and see that earlier this year an article featuring the New Zealand law change reported that the rate of alcohol-involved crash rates after the law change was 12 percent higher for 18 to 19-year-olds and 14 percent larger for 15 to 17-year-olds do we just close the book and pretend we never saw it? Is ignorance really bliss when those white crosses on the roadside are increasing? 
I work amongst the problems of youth drinking virtually every week. The Maori Party agrees with all those parties who have stood in this debate and said that raising the purchase age on its own will amount to nought unless it is combined with education and other targeted strategies. We are also of the view that all we are doing today is restricting the purchase age as one aspect of a strategy. We are not saying and indeed would not say that 19 and 18-year-olds cannot drink. The emphasis is specifically on the purchase of the drink. The issue we must turn our minds to is a broader strategy to reduce youth hazardous drinking and indeed New Zealand’s culture of hazardous drinking. For example we have to address things such as the availability of liquor the way in which we drink adult binge drinking and the whole culture of liquor abuse in this country. We must be open to every possibility and search for effective strategies to find ways that actually work. Maybe Dr Mapp’s amendment could be part of the solution. One such strategy has to be the active and willing participation of whanau—family involved in becoming responsible mentors cause champions and role models; leaders in this whole initiative instead of as in too many cases actual perpetuators of the binge culture. The Maori Party supports this bill. Thank you.