Stephenson ToddTODD STEPHENSON (ACT): It's a real pleasure to rise tonight. It's getting late in the hour. It probably would be great if we had a cellar door somewhere on the premises but we don't. But I do want to rise and speak on this bill and congratulate Stuart Smith the member in charge on his advocacy for this. He's obviously a very strong advocate for his local region of Kaikōura and the wine industry.Just before I talk about the bill I also am a great advocate of the wine industry. I come from down south. I live in Queenstown. We obviously have a wonderful wine industry in Central Otago—some might say the best in New Zealand but I wouldn't want to prejudice that. And of course we have a very long history in Central Otago of wine. Actually the first recorded win for a gold medal wine in Central Otago was in 1881 which is quite something. But it was actually more recently in the 70s that the Central Otago wine industry took off.As the member in charge spoke about the wine industry is actually very very important to regions like Central Otago in New Zealand where we have some 130 or more wineries down there where this legislation that we're debating tonight actually might be able to be used which is great. Obviously we have lots of wonderful varieties but we are known for our pinot noir. We're certainly not chardonnay socialists in ACT but we do like the wide variety of wines which Central Otago delivers. Also Mr Smith talked about the types of submitters we heard from. Again I was lucky enough to be on the Justice Committee where we actually had a very good I think discussion around the issues and I'll talk about some of those in a minute. But we did actually hear from a wide variety of different types of wineries. In fact in Central Otago a lot of the landscape the unique geography—the winery or the vineyards I should say—are actually sometimes quite a long way away from the actual premises where they might be able to do a cellar door. So while it's interesting to hear about some of Dr Duncan Webb's possible amendments he's going to propose later on if this bill continues we did have a very long debate about trying to get the balance between actually ensuring that this would be used by unique wine growers who might want to have a cellar door and where their actual cellar door their locality could actually not be at the vineyard for physical reasons.Wine tourism is very very important. Currently as we discussed in the select committee if you want to have an on-licence or an off-licence under the current regime that is actually very complicated. What the member's done with his very nice bill quite simply is actually I think address an anomaly in the law where wineries could actually give away the wine—as much as they wanted in fact—with no controls but obviously there's some economic downsides to doing that. So what we've tried to do in the select committee was balance some of the concerns with some other practical amendments which I will talk about in a minute but actually make this workable for our wine industry who would want to offer tastings. Interestingly the 30 millilitres which is the novel thought—we've got a maximum of 35 millilitres proposed in this bill. Thirty millilitres is only six teaspoons so we're not actually talking about a lot of wine. And even if you went to the maximum of 35 millilitres which is allowed you're only talking seven teaspoons of wine in these tasting samples. I know Dr Webb raised some concerns about this. He described it as a loophole; I don't. But the idea that people who could set up I suppose tasting venues—I really don't think that's going to be economically viable when your pour size is only 30 millilitres. So again I think if people who have got a background in business actually went and did the numbers the actual cost of opening a special venue to take advantage of this I just don't think is a concern we need to worry about.I do again want to say that I thought we actually had quite a constructive discussion in the select committee. I want to also thank the officials that came and gave us some advice. As we work through some of the changes that we made to the original bill and I think Mr Smith has already acknowledged that—I think he's acknowledging that we made some improvements or some changes that were sensible. I was worried. Mr Smith was away when we had our last discussion on this bill and I was hoping we weren't going to ruin it for him but he was very pleased with the result that we're now discussing tonight in the House.One of the more subtle changes is that we changed the title slightly to add (Cellar Door Tasting)" just to make it very explicit that it was actually related to wineries and cellar doors.One of the other things was that obviously we had this long discussion about what a winery is. So we tightened up the definition of "winery" and "cellar door" and did really try to relate that to the businesses that are obviously growing these grapes and then actually making the grapes into wine and a product that people will come to taste. As we know New Zealand wines are world renowned. They're some of the best in the world and for some varieties we're obviously always at the top of the category in the worldwide wine industry.I've discussed the sample sizes. Again obviously originally it had a 40ml maximum pour. We had some back and forth and some debate and arrived at 35ml which again allows for 30ml being the normal pour at a wine tasting at a cellar door but 35ml allowing for some margin of error. As I say a teaspoon is the margin of error.I think actually the discussion around snack food was quite interesting and again as we dived into that we thought that was actually a reasonable provision to require that snack foods be available at these premises. Again as the member in charge Stuart Smith said this could be a cheese board but it could also just be a packet of chips or some other food. Again that's outlined—what that would look like. Obviously there are some requirements from local authorities about the kind of licensing you might need for the provision of snack foods but again that's not astronomical. And we thought that that was a good compromise where for between $300 and $600 every few years they could be signed off to be serving these snack foods.The provision of water: again I think that was touched on by one of our earlier speakers. Again that was just a tidy-up. If we had gone ahead as the bill was presented when you were actually giving away wine samples you'd have had to provide water but if you were charging for these samples you wouldn't have had to provide water. So that was one we picked up and quickly noted to justice officials and they added that in. I think again that's a very sensible change.We did again have some submitters from other industries like the brewers and distillers but I've got to say that would actually require a different bill and a different debate. Even artisan brewers couldn't give us a definition of what an artisan beer is. That's not something that has got a recognised definition yet or some alignment throughout the industry. I'm hoping that maybe Dr Duncan Webb will be advocating for those artisan brewers and maybe for some of the other distillers and other types of alcohol that were mentioned.Finally probably as no surprise ACT supported this bill in its first reading and sending it to the select committee where as I said I think we've done some good work amongst all the parties on that select committee actually understanding the issues and working with the member in charge and officials to make some improvements. This is obviously going to be at the appropriate time a conscience vote. I think it's now called a personal vote in the Standing Orders and I'm delighted to say I actually hold proxies for all of the ACT MPs to vote in favour of this bill.I do again want to commend the member for his advocacy for this very important industry for actually taking a really great pro-business stance and allowing them to actually highlight to tourists and New Zealanders the wonderful wine products we have and actually I think make things a little bit easier. Again ACT is all about making things a little bit easier for business and removing regulation or having appropriate regulation and I think the sensible changes we are proposing here and what we're putting in place does that. So thank you and I commend this bill to the House."