Hague Kevin: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6082. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Indeed picking up from my good friend Iain Lees-Galloway we do wish to move faster so the Green Party will be voting in favour in fact of Mr Lees-Galloway’s Supplementary Order Paper 91 but also those from David Clark and Te Ururoa Flavell because we believe that each and every one of those is better than what stands in the Alcohol Reform Bill currently. Probably our preference of the three would be Mr Flavell’s Supplementary Order Paper 81 because it is the one that is closest in fact to the recommendation of the Law Commission. 
Right now I have living nearby my place on the West Coast a young French guy in his 20s. He comes to our place to watch the rugby and one of the things that has astonished him about New Zealand is that when he looks at the rugby on our screens he sees alcohol sponsorship of our teams and he sees alcohol advertising on TV. In fact in France the country he is from in 1991 all television advertising of alcohol was prohibited and all alcohol sponsorship of sporting and cultural events was prohibited. That is one of the reasons why he has been absolutely astonished by what he has seen. 
You know at that same time 1991 New Zealand actually embarked on a similar kind of measure. It was in 1990 that New Zealand took a step in relation to tobacco advertising and sponsorship using exactly the same rationale that had been used in France in respect of alcohol to prohibit advertising and sponsorship by the tobacco industry. We did so for various reasons. We wanted to reduce consumption of tobacco products and all of the harm associated with those. We wanted to reduce the normalisation of tobacco consumption. And indeed these have been the effects of that extremely successful policy that we implemented at that time: we have reduced the harm we have reduced the normalisation and that has in turn created the environment for us to continue to go further in our ongoing campaign to minimise the harm associated with tobacco consumption. Tobacco companies have been prevented from making the implied claims about positive attributes of their products and of those who consume them. I am sure that all members are familiar with the old-style tobacco advertising which basically associates consumption of tobacco products with being a happy relaxed successful and sexy member of society. These are precisely the claims that are made by the alcohol industry about its products and about the consumers of its products. 
Interestingly in 1990 we instituted this restriction on advertising and sponsorship for tobacco but in 1992 we effectively removed all of the controls on advertising and sponsorship of alcohol. This weird dichotomy in the way that New Zealand Parliaments have approached these two products that are both legally consumed yet each associated with an extraordinary degree of harm continues to perplex everyday New Zealanders but also members of this House looking for consistency in the approach that we take to such products. Right now every 9 minutes on prime-time television viewers are exposed to alcohol advertising—every 9 minutes. Ninety percent of children and young people aged between 5 and 17 are exposed to television advertising on at least a weekly basis—90 percent. That is the ubiquity of the advertising and sponsorship from the alcohol industry. 
I mentioned in an earlier contribution in this Committee stage a health promotion theory that says that if we want to actually improve people’s health then the things that we need to do are to empower communities to take control of their life circumstances but also to create supportive environments around those communities. With the advertising and sponsorship from the alcohol industry that is currently permitted that environment is one in which our communities are pretty much surrounded by and bathed in the blue light from the television tube advertising these products. That is the environment that we create. We create an environment that we know in fact will lead to harm and will normalise the excessive consumption of alcohol products. 
It is that normalisation of alcohol consumption that we need to tackle and any of these Supplementary Order Papers would do that better than the current bill. But it is also important to point out that increased consumption is associated with this advertising and sponsorship. The industry would not do it if it did not lead to more people consuming more alcohol. The industry spends literally hundreds of millions of dollars each year on advertising and sponsorship which means that the net profit associated with that spend is even greater which means that the sales of the products are even greater still. 
The Law Commission said that it should all go and that is what we support. Eighty-six percent of the submissions to the commission supported that goal of a total prohibition and in the 2010 Health Sponsorship Council survey of public opinion 77 percent of respondents were either in favour of a total ban or were agnostic towards it—neutral about it. That is a pretty outstanding majority for that total prohibition. So the reasons for not doing it simply do not apply. I recognise the transition point that Iain Lees-Galloway makes but I say let us do the same thing that we did around tobacco. Let us create a fund to fund that transition for those community organisations that rely on that sponsorship. Let us do what the Law Commission said and instead of the first stage of the commission’s three-stage programme let us implement all three of those stages. That is I think probably all I have time for in this call but if the opportunity arises I will take a further call to make some further points.