Blue Jackie: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Blue Jackie: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6158. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr JACKIE BLUE (National) 
: 
 I am very pleased to speak on Part 3 of the Alcohol Reform Bill. It is the most substantial part of the bill. It is where the rubber hits the road. Just before I start I would like to record that I actually was passionate about increasing the purchase age to 20 years old. Unfortunately that did not happen. That is democracy; that is the will of the House. 
On local alcohol polices I could not agree more with the Hon Lianne Dalziel. Engagement and empowering communities are so critical. You just cannot prescribe something or cut and paste someone else’s plan into another community’s plan and that is so true. The community is in the best position to decide where those outlets should be and how many it should have. I will give you the example that happened in the community that I work in in Mount Roskill in the last term of Parliament. Molley Green is an area in Mount Roskill and an outlet was threatening to open up. It had been given the go-ahead. In fact there was a lot of density of alcohol outlets in that particular area. There was a kindergarten and there were a number of schools. The community was absolutely outraged that this outlet was going to open up opposite an intermediate school. It took people who were passionate about the community to rally support and they protested. 
I joined that protest. I was very happy to. It was actually a very uplifting experience knowing that the community was being galvanised like a lightning rod. It was a glue. It brought the whole community together and there was a huge amount of passion. Well they really did not have much show in the sense that this outlet had already been given the go-ahead and so there were not a lot of remedies they could follow but they decided they would protest anyway and they did. They got loud hailers there we had placards and we got toots from cars. That is when I realised there is a real public activism happening out there. There is a real passion and concern about how alcohol is impacting on our communities. 
I am just going to sidetrack a wee bit: that is why we have got the FebFast and we have got the different initiatives like Dry July and Hello Sunday Morning where people—celebrities high-profile New Zealanders—are saying “Look I’m giving up alcohol. I’m going to review how it affects my life.” and good on them because they are becoming role models. This legislation is going to go a long way but it is no magic bullet and we know that. There are some excellent excellent parts to this Alcohol Reform Bill which I believe will go a long long way and local alcohol plans will be part of that. Students would have been walking past the outlet. The concern was that there were kindergartens there were greens and there were reserves where if people had easy access to alcohol—there was already pretty easy access but this would make it easier—we would have glass bottles and broken glass in parks and reserves near kindergartens and so forth. 
I am really pleased to say that that outlet decided not to go ahead. I am not sure of the reasons why. Maybe it saw the outpouring of emotion and concern from the community and realised it was on a hiding to nothing and I am pleased it did not go ahead. So it was a win for the community and I thought it was fantastic. I thought it was an excellent suggestion by the Minister of Justice Judith Collins that local body election candidates could actually campaign on this. If we can get this bill through in a timely way and on the statute book our candidates for the local bodies next year could go out and campaign on this. Boy it would be like a lightning rod. I know it would be because I sense it and I feel it. There is a real undercurrent there. For any candidate worth their salt if they want to actually get votes and actually engage people—it is all about engaging; I know we are very concerned about the voter turnout in local body elections—that would be an absolute issue of concern. I think we all feel it because as MPs we walk through the community and we discuss it; we know the severe impact that alcohol has. 
The other part to this Alcohol Reform Bill that I am really pleased about is supermarket displays in that supermarkets will be able to display alcohol only in the single non-prominent area of their store. It will not be at entrances. It will not be at checkouts. It will not be at the end of aisles. There will be no grandparenting laws which someone did tell me about the other day. They thought that was going to be OK for their local supermarket and it was all OK—they were going to be grandparented in. Well that is not going to happen. I think that is excellent. There are also going to be much tighter restrictions on alcohol advertising. Unacceptable practices will no longer be allowed. We will not be able to encourage people to drink heavily. There will not be any advertising of free alcohol advertising discounts of 25 percent or more on alcohol or offering free gifts with the purchase of alcohol. Thank you.