Chauvel Charles: Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7360. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I would like to begin by acknowledging the work that has gone into the Alcohol Law Reform Bill which we are debating today: the work that was done by the Law Commission in its excellent report on the state of alcohol law reform in New Zealand; the work that was done by the officials from the Ministry of Justice some of whom I see are present in the gallery today who gave excellent advice to the Justice and Electoral Committee as we conducted our deliberations heard submissions and received advice in the 49th Parliament; and also the work of Lianne Dalziel. When she was Associate Minister of Justice she introduced a good and comprehensive set of alcohol law reforms that were unfortunately withdrawn by the former Minister the Hon Simon Power. They were essentially confined to the legislative dustbin. That is a real shame because 2 or 3 years ago Parliament could have passed comprehensive alcohol law reform if that had not been the history of this matter. 
 Instead we saw new legislation tabled. It was to have been passed in the previous Parliament but it was not. That Parliament ran out of time as it did with so many of the other measures that were being advanced by the former Minister of Justice and so it is not until now the end of the first year of the next triennium that this Parliament has finally gotten round to addressing the issue of alcohol law reform. That is a shame because there will have been further unnecessary alcohol-related deaths and illnesses suffered in New Zealand as a result of that delay and that must weigh on our consciences. 
There were I think some useful observations made in the Minister’s speech and in some of the speeches made by Government members about the good innovations that are contained in this bill and they are undeniable. It is quite clear that if this bill passes through Parliament we will have in general a better regime for regulating the sale and purchase of alcohol in New Zealand compared with that which exists now. There are some good logical technical changes which I commend to the House and which certainly lead me to be inclined to support the legislation. But as other speakers have noted that unfortunately is not the yardstick by which this measure is going to be judged. It is not going to be judged by those sensible technical improvements. It is going to be judged by all the lost opportunities which we as a Parliament have passed up to really try to make a dent in the problematic parts of New Zealand’s binge drinking culture which is a problem that is acknowledged right across the House. 
I want to remind the House of some of those lost opportunities by way of speaking to some of the Supplementary Order Papers that were voted down in the Committee of the whole House. There was a very very good suggestion from my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway who spoke earlier in this debate which would have put some restrictions on the advertising of alcohol. It would have ensured that the exposure of young people to alcohol advertising was reduced by ending billboard and poster advertising within 300 metres of schools creating a 9 p.m. watershed for alcohol advertising on television and restricting alcohol advertising in cinemas to those films with an R18 rating. There would have also been under his amendment a committee of officials set up to plan and implement the introduction of greater restrictions on all forms of alcohol promotion in accordance with the Law Commission’s report. It is a great tragedy that that Supplementary Order Paper 91 did not pass into law because it would have meant a better bill. 
Similarly David Clark suggested an amendment that would have increased the restrictions on the advertising of alcohol on television in order to prevent the relentless presentation of the product in the attractive light in which it is currently portrayed which as we all know from the evidence tends to increase consumption. Again all the evidence before the select committee was that tackling advertising in a sensible way would really help to get the message across that alcohol is not a normal product and that it does have hazards if it is not consumed appropriately and responsibly and yet we failed as a Parliament to progress that amendment. 
There was another amendment which I supported from my colleague Louisa Wall which would have ensured that off-licence premises could not be located within a 1-kilometre radius of an early childhood centre or a primary intermediate or secondary school. I acknowledge that that amendment had some issues around workability but— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Sure did—sure did. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: I cannot forget Mr Williamson the evidence that I heard at the select committee from schools in low-decile areas that are having to deal with the fact that their kids— 
Mike Sabin 
: Local alcohol plans take care of that. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: Their kids walk past liquor stores every day on the way to school. This is a “normal” product. The advertising is out on the street on sandwich boards. Those kids in those areas are exposed to these advertising messages right from the beginning and the evidence is that the normalisation of alcohol in that way is going to be detrimental to many of those children. 
There were some other very good amendments. The restriction on the trading hours of off-licences proposal which Andrew Little put up on his Supplementary Order Paper 110 is one that I think it is a shame we missed the opportunity to progress. One that I think really did deserve better treatment from the House than it got was Lianne Dalziel’s suggestion that we empower the Minister with the ability to set a minimum price regime for alcoholic products. Contrary to all the propaganda and all the misinformation that were put out about that proposal all it would have done was insert a clause in the legislation giving the Minister a power. She could have taken advice from the officials. It could have been a sliding scale type of arrangement that would have affected only alcoholic products that were truly identified as problematic. Again the evidence we heard in the select committee was that that is cheap wine in supermarkets. That is what people use to pre-load before they go out on the town and buy from on-licences. It is an area where we have to get more serious and where very little will be done by this legislation to make a change. 
One of the members on the Government benches interjected earlier that local alcohol policies would go a long way to solve one of the problems that I was speaking about earlier—and they will where they exist—but one of the things that I think best typifies the lost opportunities in this legislation is our failure to have made local alcohol policies a comprehensive requirement of local government regions because again at the select committee what we were told is that the areas of greatest deprivation are often the areas where it is hardest to get civic involvement in local government so that people will push for stronger regulation of the availability of advertising in their communities. In other words the places where you most need a local alcohol policy will probably be the last places to get them if they get them at all because we have made it a matter for the discretion of the local authority rather than saying to the local authority: “Look you need to have one of these for the well-being of your community and here are the sorts of things you might want to put in it.” The other problem is that we have very much restricted the matters that local government bodies can deal with in local alcohol policies. They are not able to take a health promotion approach. They are simply restricted to the old regulatory philosophy about the availability of alcohol and again that is a lost opportunity in this legislation. 
There were a number of other very good Supplementary Order Papers. I think the failure of those Supplementary Order Papers to progress simply because they were moved by the Opposition and because the Government members were whipped on every issue in this bill—other than the age issue—is one of the reasons why in the media and in the public there is this very justifiable sense of a lost opportunity with this legislation. 
I want to conclude by praising the work that has been done throughout this debate by Alcohol Action New Zealand. Professor Doug Sellman the Director of the National Addiction Centre Professor Geoffrey Robinson the chief medical officer in Wellington and Professor Jennie Connor the head of the department of preventive and social medicine at Otago University have issued a statement today. I want to read the last paragraph of that statement in conclusion: “history will judge those MPs who wilfully planned and led the wasted opportunity to do something to help the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders being harmed by weak alcohol laws. Their failure is seen in the bill due to be passed in Parliament today—of particular note: Key Dunne Borrows Joyce Collins and Power.”