Brownlee Gerry: Customs and Excise (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Customs and Excise (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5376] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 This is the second reading debate of the bill and ordinarily the House would be considering it after it had been to a select committee for perhaps 6 months. [ 
Interruption 
] Clayton Cosgrove laughs. He is the member for Waimakariri the member who normally sends an apology before he even gets an invitation to functions in his electorate. He is laughing and saying that public consultation on bills like this does not matter. Well it does matter. 
The Minister who just spoke and is now slinking out of the Chamber with an embarrassed look on his face should do so because he knows what an utter nonsense this bill is. The question I have is who has been got to. Which Minister in the Government has succumbed to the lobbying of foreign-alcohol importers? Which Minister has so influenced the legislative committee that it has decided to have the House sit under extraordinary urgency to pass this bill to please foreign-alcohol importers? Ninety percent of all the low-alcohol spirits sold in this country are produced in this country. What the Minister for Economic Development has done in succumbing to the pressure from the lobby group that supports those foreign-alcohol importers is to shut down a New Zealand business. There are 200 jobs at risk; they are on their way out. The Minister for Economic Development thinking he is clever coming here with some lame-duck story about the price of alcohol actually contributing to a reduction in its consumption is going to put New Zealanders out of work because of his own prejudices. That is very very sad. 
We are also hearing from Government speakers tonight that this measure is going to stop young people from going to bottle stores and buying their alcohol of choice—most usually the ready-to-drinks bought straight out of the cabinet. The various mixes of cola and all sorts of other spirits are not touched by this bill; nor is the consumption of beer in any way impinged on or the price of beer increased by this bill; nor are most wines touched by it. But spirits with a low alcohol content that are produced in this country are now to be taxed at the same rate as imported spirits. It is an utter disgrace that the Minister for Economic Development has caved in to pressure brought to bear on him and other Ministers by the alcohol lobby outside this House. And I say that fully understanding the extent of the allegation I make. 
There is a company in this country that produces 90 percent of all the low-alcohol spirits sold over the counter in this country. It employs 200 people. It will simply shut its doors. Why would that company want to battle a Government that knocks it at every turn? What sort of message is sent to other New Zealand entrepreneurs who try to build export businesses based in this country? They know they will be buffeted about by that sort of excess lobbying. 
I am fascinated to read in this bill that it simply lifts a tax. That is all it does. It does not differentiate between various quantities at all. It just says that there will be one tax applied to alcohol by litre volume regardless of the strength of the alcohol found in the bottle. How can the member for Rotorua Steve Chadwick stand up and say that this bill is about mitigating the worst effects of alcohol when in fact it makes very little difference to the products most often consumed by young people—the ready-to-drinks wine and beer? It is a total nonsense. 
I think that if those people really had the strength of their convictions they would have looked at changing the drinking age as being the first place to make some sort of difference. It is without doubt that the number of offences committed by young people as a result of excess alcohol consumption have increased since the drinking age was lowered. There is no question about that at all. The member over there might say: “Well we’ll make them buy a little bit less by putting the price up.” but would members not think that a better solution might be to make it an illegal act for someone under the age of 20 to go into a bottle store and purchase alcohol? People can always go into a bar at the age of 18 and drink there. They could do that under the old law. But no now they will be able to go into bottle stores at age 18—and we heard Minister Tamihere say even as young as 14 I believe—purchase these supposedly low-alcohol products buy huge volumes of them and go out and get themselves in a state where they cause all sorts of other problems for society. 
Anyone who thinks that putting $6.75 on the price of a 1.1 litre bottle of low-alcohol spirits is going to deter someone from buying it is sadly mistaken. All that will happen is some transfer of product of choice. I predict that the ready-to-drink market is about to take a huge boom a huge rise as young people decide that as there is no substantial difference in price they will get their kicks from drinks that on average are much greater in strength because they are premixed and young people have absolutely no control over how much alcohol they are mixing with their particular split. 
I come back to this question: why does the Government see this measure as being so important that it has to put it through under extraordinary urgency just a few days before the Budget is to be brought down? It comes back to the question I raised before. Who has been got to? Who are the Ministers who have succumbed to the extraordinary lobbying that must have gone on to get them to lift the legislative programme for some hours and in the height of an electricity crisis have every light in the building turned on right into the late hours of the morning simply so that they can raise a tax that will have absolutely no social effect whatsoever? 
But there is a question about the $14 million that this measure is supposed to raise. There was the suggestion from once again the member over there that the $14 million will go into additional programmes to help people get off alcohol and all the rest of it. Let me say that when this tax goes on this product will go off the shelf. We will have the extraordinary situation— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Dessert wine? No I don’t think so. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The Minister says: “Wine? No I don’t think so.” Wine by and large is not touched by this bill. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Dessert wine is what was meant. The member should clean his ears out. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Perhaps 1 or 2 percent of all wine products will be covered by this bill. I do not even know what dessert wine is but I am not surprised the Minister of Education does. Some of the work he has been doing in education lately suggests he has been drinking a heck of a lot of it. 
It is extraordinary that we are getting low-alcohol products taxed off the shelf. Our young people as young as 14 by the admission of John Tamihere—a Minister who hails from south Auckland where one might have thought there would be a greater predominance of this problem—will be making a choice to buy much much stronger alcohol because the price is not substantially different. We remain quite perplexed as to what this bill is about. It is not about mitigating the worst effects of alcohol. It does not appear to be about raising revenue. [ 
Interruption 
] As craven as those members are I cannot believe they would have the House sit until 5 or 6 o’clock tomorrow morning just to raise an extra $14 million. It might all add up but it seems to me that a group of Ministers have been “caballed” in a back room somewhere plied with some of the best imported spirits in the country then quietly prevailed upon to use the parliamentary process to destroy a New Zealand - based business and put in jeopardy some 200 jobs in this country. [ 
Interruption 
] The Minister sits there and says that is outrageous. Perhaps he did not get invited. Perhaps he was not one of the lucky few. 
This bill is a disgrace and it should not proceed.