Anderton Jim: Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction: Purchase Age) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Anderton Jim: Sale of Liquor (Youth Alcohol Harm Reduction: Purchase Age) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6344] 
Hon JIM ANDERTON (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 Studies by the injury prevention research unit of the University of Otago show that hazardous alcohol consumption is the leading modifiable cause of injury in New Zealand. It accounts for 78 percent of all deaths among 15 to 19-year-olds in New Zealand. Our child and youth injury record is among the worst in the developed countries and it has got worse since the drinking age was lowered to 18 in 1999. Is there anything about that that anyone in this House does not understand? Many argue that we need to change the culture of drinking. Of course we do; I agree with that. But in doing so we need to choose strategies that are known to have a high probability of being effective. The laws of our land are part of our culture too—firearms control compulsory breath-testing compulsory seatbelt wearing—and they have an important role to play in producing positive health outcomes. 
We urge members—I say this on behalf of somewhere between 70 and 80 percent of New Zealanders—to make a decision that is based on that research; not on how they feel but on how they think when they read the evidence. This is a day when we are challenged to make a difference to the health and well-being of teenage New Zealanders. The single most destructive drug in New Zealand—and I speak as the Minister in charge of the Government’s drug policy—is alcohol by a country mile. The single biggest predictor of criminal offending in New Zealand is the use and abuse of alcohol. The single biggest inflictor of harm is alcohol. Raising the age at which alcohol can be purchased will not of course solve all those problems and no one has ever suggested that it will. But that is why the Government is working across the board on a wide range of harm reduction issues connected with alcohol: community alcohol and drug programmes Community Action on Youth and Drugs and so on. 
Parliament has to back up the community as well—not with excuses but with positive steps that make a difference. Putting up the minimum age for legally buying alcohol to 20 will make a difference. We know it will because we know that lowering the age made a difference; we know that. Many many countries that have lowered the age have raised it again and it has made a big difference the other way round—absolutely. The proof of that is irrefutable. If any members have not read the Otago University studies in that regard they should. Professor Langley from the injury prevention research unit at Otago University has found there were significantly more alcohol-involved car crashes among 15 to 19-year-olds than there would have been if the purchase age had not been reduced to 18. The research found that if the purchase age was set at 20 an annual prevention of over 400 injury hospitalisations and 12 fatalities among 15 to 19-year-olds from road traffic crashes alone would be expected. How sobering in every sense that finding is. 
Imagine the 12 families a year who lose a teenager. Imagine meeting those parents knowing we could have saved a life with our vote here tonight. It is no exaggeration to say that Parliament is making a decision tonight on which lives hang. It is making a decision for 400 hospitalised teenagers a year—eight a week. Let members go to those families at the bedsides in the hospitals and tell them that their kids should be encouraged to abuse alcohol and smash themselves up! 
This country has a massive alcohol problem. According to the Ministry of Health the social costs of alcohol misuse alone total between $1500 million and $2500 million a year. But economic measures alone of course do not really describe the full extent of the damage to individuals to families and to communities. I put it to the House tonight that every member here knows that the choice we face is not between competing facts. We know what the facts are. We know in our hearts as well as in our heads that lowering the minimum age for buying alcohol increased harm to young people. Many people of goodwill thought it would not; they were wrong. It has. 
The proposed review to look at the supply and sale of liquor to under-18-year-olds is one review we do not need. The jury is already in on whether lowering the drinking age has been a successful measure in improving New Zealanders’ binge drinking culture. It has been a miserable failure and it is costing lives. I have to say as an interpolation that this is not a Government measure. I am a member of the coalition Government and I was not consulted on that review so I am not part of it. The Labour Party part of it can say it is its review but it is not mine. This is the kind of review we have when we want to give parliamentarians a soft option. I hear that sigh of relief in many places: “Oh gosh we’ve got a review so we don’t have to make a hard decision.” Well this is the place for hard decisions and this is where the buck stops. 
We do not have the luxury as parliamentarians of a soft option. The issue of access to alcohol by under-18-year-olds and alcohol-related harm has already been reviewed. It has been before a select committee of this House for 11 months. The Law and Order Committee has had Ministry of Justice reports and health reports on the impact of lowering the drinking age. It has received 180 submissions from medical researchers non-governmental organisations police the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand and many others. Raising the purchasing age to 20 years is of course not enough by itself to change New Zealand’s excessive drinking culture but it is part of a comprehensive package. The Minister Damien O’Connor is right. We have to do more regardless. It could be an important and integral step in the right direction. 
I accept that 18-year-olds can vote and join the armed forces. So the question is why they should not have the same rights of citizenship as say 20 or 21-year-olds and so on. Well it is known that brain development is not fully complete until age 20 as a matter of fact. Eighteen and 19-year-old New Zealanders certainly have the judgment to exercise the rights of citizens but not if that judgment is badly affected by alcohol. Do members think that young people go into the Army and get on the field and are given some drink before they do that? If they do then surely that is not what we are proposing here. 
Those most likely to consume large quantities of alcohol are overwhelmingly young. We are not talking about 18 and 19-year-olds only. Massey University found that a quarter of 14 and 15-year-olds have had at least six drinks on one occasion. The proportion of young people drinking as heavily as that has doubled in the last decade. Why would that be do we think? Do members think that the much more widespread availability of alcohol could have anything remotely to do with that? Police and social agencies know. They drag drunken teenagers off the streets more than they used to. They clean up the mess. They pick up the bodies. That is why 84 percent of police officers according to one survey and 90 percent of the ones whom I have met in the regions of New Zealand where I have spoken at public alcohol and drug meetings support putting up the purchasing age to 20. Yet the police supported lowering it to 18 when it was lowered in 1999; I know that. They did it in goodwill and they thought it would work and now 90 percent of them say it has not worked and that we should put the age back up. We should at least be listening to the people on the front line of the streets of New Zealand whom we ask to clean up the mess. 
Every parliamentarian here knows that there is no more virulent lobbyist than the liquor industry lobbyist. I have been around for a long time in this place and this is a day when the health and well-being of young people have to come before lobbyists. The health and well-being of young people in New Zealand are tragically impaired by overindulgence in alcohol. The lowering of the drinking age—while one measure alone either way is not in itself the solution—is a message a direction and an indicator from this lawmaking body. If we started to say that it is all right at 18 why not 17 16 15 and 14? People would start saying “Oh that’s rubbish.” Well in England they actually had no drinking age at all and when they introduced it at 12 there was an uproar from the liquor industry. 
I am just saying to members that I implore them to put themselves alongside the police officers social workers and families whom they must think of tonight when they vote. Putting this bill through will give hope to many many people in New Zealand who think that this Parliament does make mistakes from time to time. The respect they would have for an institution that acknowledged a mistake and reversed that mistake when it had the opportunity would be profound. I suggest that we think that way very clearly when we come to vote this evening.