Bishop Chris: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBishop Chris: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6186. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRIS BISHOP (National): It is a pleasure to take a call on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill. I want to start my contribution to the House tonight by congratulating the member in charge of this bill David Seymour. I think that David is building a well-deserved reputation in this House as a solid and conscientious MP who is perhaps—[Interruption]—putting aside some of the issues from his party from the past—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order! I am going to require the chief Opposition whip to withdraw that comment.Chris Hipkins: I withdraw.CHRIS BISHOP: Thank you. I did not actually hear what he said and neither did David but anyway I am sure Mr Seymour appreciates that withdrawal. I also want to put on the record the good way in which the Justice and Electoral Committee worked on this bill during the slightly—slightly more than slightly—truncated process in which the committee dealt with this bill and the fact that it was well chaired by my colleague Jacqui Dean. I think it is fair to say—and even some members who may be voting against the bill tonight in the second and third readings will acknowledge this—that the committee worked in a collegial and consultative and deliberative way.I particularly want to pay tribute to the hard work that Clayton Mitchell from New Zealand First did on the bill. Clayton’s experience as someone who has been a licensee and has run a number of establishments in his home town proved very useful when working through some of the more technical and practical issues. I think he made a very useful contribution. Also Jacinda Ardern from the Labour Party with her experience of Auckland Central her neck of the woods was able to provide some practical examples of how the bill might work in practice and how licensees might take advantage or not take advantage of some particular aspects of the bill.The public policy problem that really confronted us on the select committee is that we want licensed premises—bars and clubs—to be able to stay open during the Rugby World Cup to show the Rugby World Cup games. It is worth just stepping through the logic as to how we got to this point. The public policy issue is that we want the bars to be open. And why is that? It is because people enjoy watching rugby particularly Rugby World Cup games with other people with like-minded friends and family and with other rugby fans.As I said during the bill’s first reading there is some sort of element of collective endeavour about willing the All Blacks on or willing the Springboks on if you are a South African. You know you get together with people who are all All Blacks fans or if you are a Springbok fan you get together with other Springbok fans and it is slightly irrational but there is a sense that if you all get together and wish as much as you can that they will win then it will happen. Whether or not that is true—it is certainly not true—there is something noble about doing that almost I would say.David Seymour: There’s no proof it doesn’t work.CHRIS BISHOP: As Mr Seymour pointed out there is no proof it does not work—that is true—and we want that to be able to happen. A lot of people do not have Sky TV and a lot of people even if they do have Sky TV may want to go down to a bar and watch it. But the problem that confronted us is that the games in the Rugby World Cup fall—some of them; particularly the ones that people want to watch—outside standard licensing hours so that is really why the bill has come to Parliament.Some people say: “Well there’s a special licence process. Licensees should go through that. They should apply for a special licence.” That is all well and good except for the fact that we heard as a committee—and certainly this has been out there in the public debate—that the process for the application for special licenses is a reasonably cumbersome one and that there were some onerous requirements being placed on people who were thinking about applying or had already applied. There were things like you had to have a guest speaker there had to be dress-ups—there had to be a series of things that perhaps would take it into the realm of a special event. Really is it fair enough to say you have to have a guest speaker in order to open the bar to show an All Blacks game? I would argue and it is certainly the view of the Government that you should not have to.There was a suggestion made that we could limit this piece of legislation to a clarificatory piece of legislation just to make Parliament’s intent clear—that just showing a Rugby World Cup game would be a special event for the purposes of the Act. But that is not the path that we have decided to go down. Instead what we have got is clarificatory legislation I think of a different ilk and legislation that is actually an amendment to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act which I will come to in a moment.So what this bill does is make it easier to open bars and licensed premises to show Rugby World Cup games so that it is easier for New Zealanders who wish to avail themselves of that opportunity to do that. The bill preserves the situation if a bar owner or a licensee has already applied for an existing special licence. What will become section 45G of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act allows people who have availed themselves of that opportunity to continue down that route if you like. They are allowed to continue to use that purpose of the special licence they have already provided or indeed they can choose the route that we are providing for in this legislation.The select committee has made a number of amendments to the bill that make it more workable and make it more sensible but the other thing I want to do in my contribution is just to pick up on one of the points that Peeni Henare made. He repeated the assertion—the wrong assertion—that we have a binge drinking culture in New Zealand particularly amongst young people. This is widely understood to be a fact but it is actually a myth and I want to put on the record some actual facts around alcohol consumption in New Zealand society.Firstly the World Health Organization in 2014 did a global status report on the use of alcohol in societies. Actually what that report shows is that by international standards New Zealanders actually drink a moderate amount. We are 96th in the world for alcohol consumption. We drink about 13.7 pure litres of alcohol per capita. That places us 96th in the world. It is slightly less than the United Kingdom; it is slightly more than France. So actually we are internationally average drinkers.What about binge drinking? Well by international standards New Zealanders are very low binge-drinkers. Our prevalence rate of binge drinking is 5.6 percent. That is half that of Australia—Poto Williams: Not according to the Health Promotion Agency.CHRIS BISHOP: I am quoting the World Health Organization. That is half of Australia’s it is a quarter of Canada’s and it is one-sixth of the United Kingdom’s binge drinking prevalence rate. So is the assertion that we are a nation of binge-drinkers correct? No.What about the assertion that our young people in particular are binge-drinkers? Well the best data on binge drinking amongst young people comes from the Auckland University study that was published in 2012. This is a longitudinal study that has been updated in 2001 in 2007 and in 2012. It is actually quite remarkable. Here are some facts about young people and drinking. The proportion of young people who drink has dropped 25 percent in the last 5 years—that is from 2007 to 2012. It is one-third of the rate in 2000. What about the number of people who are regular drinkers? That dropped 9 percent between 2007 and 2012. The number of people who are regular drinkers is half what it was in 2000—this is amongst young people.What about the people who are young binge-drinkers? What about the number of people who say that they binge drank in the last month? Between 2007 and 2012 the number of young people in New Zealand who say that they binge drank in the last month has dropped by 18 percent. Again the rate has halved since 1990. People often say that liberalisation of our liquor laws was a disaster—that the 1989 reforms were a disaster and led to a binge drinking culture. That is not true. They say that it led to young people getting drunk more and more. Again the facts actually belie that.The number of young people drinking is declining the number of young people binge drinking is declining the number of young people who drink regularly is declining and actually the alcohol-related harm that comes from young people drinking is going down as well. These are the facts. They come from the World Health Organization and the best data that we have from Auckland University.Alcohol liberalisation in New Zealand has worked and I just close my speech and my contribution to this debate with those remarks because too often in this society young people are defamed by people who seek to ascribe characteristics and behaviour to them that are simply not borne out by the facts and simply not borne out by the reality. Young people are drinking less they are binge drinking less and harm from young people drinking is going down. With that I commend this bill to the House.