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:5439] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 I want to know what Mr Anderton meant as he sat in the Minister’s chair and scoffed at the suggestion that he was not there for the workers. This bill will potentially put at least 200 workers out of a job. These schedules will shut down the only alcohol company in New Zealand that produces and bottles in this country low-alcohol spirits. This bill will shut that company down and 200 workers will be gone. That is the care. 
For those who do have a job and who continue to work I want to pick up on the point that Mr Prebble made in regard to ice cream. I can tell those workers that when they get home from a hard day’s work they can have a little bit of alcoholic ice cream that does not have a big tax on it provided that it is very heavily laced. I read these schedules and perhaps the Minister might like to tell us what the story is here but there is a rate for ice cream containing more than 1.15 percent but not more than 2.5 percent. There is a rate for ice cream containing 2.5 percent by volume but not more than 6 percent. There is a rate for ice cream containing more than 6 percent by volume but not more than 9 percent. 
Darren Hughes 
: What a surprise the member is focusing on ice cream. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: The member across the way there the great white hope for the Labour Party Mr “Dazza” Hughes sits there laughing and guffawing at the prospect that he may soon get out of this Chamber and go back to his little nest somewhere and get a big ice cream out of the fridge because young people his age just love to suck on ice cream and there would be no one who does it better than Mr Hughes. It is a shame that Mr Hughes takes so many lessons from Clayton Cosgrove on how to be a member of Parliament. As I said earlier Clayton Cosgrove has a huge reputation for sending along an apology to people in his electorate before he gets an invitation to visit and Darren Hughes is starting to emulate him. But I want to tell Mr Hughes that there is a rate in schedule 2 for ice cream containing alcohol at a volume of between 9 percent and 14 percent. It then jumps right up to ice cream containing more than 23 percent. So I am assuming that there is no rate in here for 18 percent alcohol by volume of ice cream or 19 20 21 or 22 percent; or 15 or 16 percent for that matter. So there is quite a broad range of alcoholic ice cream that one can import and make in this country that seems to have escaped the pernicious tax being imposed by the Government this evening. 
My colleague Roger Sowry has been in contact with the industry throughout the evening listening to its concerns and he confirms that in fact there is a loophole. It would appear that in the very near future dairies maybe have to become R18 because we will get hordes of alcohol-craving youngsters going into the ice cream shops asking for two and three scoop 18 percent ice creams so they can get their fix because they no longer have access to a low-alcohol product anywhere else. That might seem extreme but then anything this Government in fact does seems extreme according to the main. 
On going through the schedules I find there is another point that I want to ask the Minister to clarify. It relates to the coding in the schedules. Schedule 3 talks about a preferential tariff “CA Free”. What does CA Free mean? We are talking about once again would members believe it edible preparations ice creams and other edible ice whether or not containing cocoa which is a worry. Is this a precursor of a cocoa tax coming shortly? I am not sure. It states in relation to alcohol: “Containing more than 14% vol. but not more than 23% vol. per l al 7 CA Free.” Every other tariff rate in this legislation has a dollar amount alongside it. But what we have here is CA Free. I would like to hear from the Minister what it means.