Dalziel Lianne: Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill — First Reading 
Dalziel Lianne: Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1801] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 As I was the Minister who introduced the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate on its first reading. 
The main features of this bill put the power of controlling the availability of liquor where it belongs—in the hands of local communities and in the hands of parents. The bill allows liquor licensing bodies to take social impact into account when making licensing decisions. It gives local communities standing to object to the granting of licences. Currently they have to show a greater interest than the public generally. The bill gives real teeth to local alcohol plans by requiring the licensing bodies not merely to take them into account but rather to give effect to those local alcohol plans. It comes the closest this country has ever been to having a drinking-age provision by making it an offence to supply liquor to a minor without parental consent. There are provisions that deal with a misunderstanding that the licensing bodies had over Parliament’s intention in respect of the exception that allows supermarkets and grocery stores to sell liquor and for that liquor to be limited solely to wine beer mead and cider. 
I proposed to Cabinet that we seek to address this issue by putting in place a size threshold to reinforce the decision of Parliament in 1999 that dairies would not be allowed to sell liquor. It has been very disappointing to see licences granted to premises that Parliament never intended to be allowed to sell liquor. It is equally pleasing though now to see that the Liquor Licensing Authority has itself drawn the line in the sand where Parliament intended it to be drawn diminishing as it does the need to use size as a proxy for this definition. I never regarded that definition as being particularly satisfactory. Size is an unfortunate proxy to be used in this context and I am sure that as a result of the Liquor Licensing Authority decisions in future there will not be the granting of licences to dairies in this country. The Justice and Electoral Committee should consider this matter very very carefully when considering the content of the bill and hopefully in its report back it will have some sensible comment to make on that matter. 
I will comment on another trend in liquor licensing decisions because it will impact on how this bill is considered. I have been following the Liquor Licensing Authority’s decisions recently. This is largely as a result of some work that I did with a community group involved in opposing an application for an off-licence in Halswell in Christchurch. I know that other communities have started to take a real stand by putting in combined opposition to liquor licensing applications and having that stand recorded in a very public way. The objection in this case though stemmed from the fact that the owner of the licence was also the owner of the supermarket. The supermarket was essentially next door to the proposed premises for the bottle store which was a matter of metres from the hotel bottle store which faced into exactly the same car-park. The members of the community said enough was enough. They counted the number of licences that had been issued in Halswell and they felt that a bottle store that actually faced on to the same car-park as the hotel bottle store was a ridiculous proposition to put to their community. It was not needed. Unfortunately because of the limited scope of the criteria listed in the legislation the Liquor Licensing Authority really had no option but to approve the licence. However the Liquor Licensing Authority did reduce the hours that the applicant had applied for. The applicant had originally applied for 11 a.m. until 11 p.m. and that was knocked back to an 8 p.m. closing. I thought it was very good that the Liquor Licensing Authority took that position and it has adopted that position consistently for first-time licences since it has reconsidered its approach in these matters. 
The other thing that happened as a result of the community taking up this issue was an approach that has now been put in writing in respect of the impact of loss leading. I will read directly from the decision itself: “We believe that the retail initiative known as loss leading—that is advertising and selling goods at less than cost in order not only to attract customers to the store but in the process sell more products—needs to be looked at more seriously by licensees. If a licensee uses liquor to loss lead then he or she is stimulating and not meeting demand. Where liquor is involved it is not good enough for a licensee to say as they do”—and as they did in this case I might add because I sat and listened to the hearing—”that they have to continue with this business practice because of competition. Most licensees understand that they are dealing with a drug and that they have a duty under the Act to help promote the reduction of liquor abuse. In our experience loss leading helps to promote the abuse of liquor and future examples of loss leading by an off-licensee will be treated as an indication of lack of suitability”. I hope that the supermarkets in this country sit up and take notice of that warning from the Liquor Licensing Authority. 
I am disappointed that the decision has not received as much media attention as I thought it deserved. It is a major statement of a new position and it is one that is welcomed by those of us who believe that the worst decision made by this Parliament was the decision in 1999 to allow beer to be sold in supermarkets. This exposed liquor to the norms of the retail industry which treats liquor like all the other items on its shelves. That is why members of the hospitality industry—quite a different industry and one more akin to the sale of liquor—tell me that they can buy beer more cheaply from their local supermarket than they can from their wholesale distributor. The vote for beer to be sold in supermarkets in 1999 was carried by 58 votes to 53 votes. It is appalling that such a major decision which has had a huge impact on the accessibility of alcohol in this country was passed by such a narrow and ill-informed vote. There were people on both sides of this House who voted for that resolution. I certainly did not. 
 My reaction to what happened on that vote has been to criticise the conscience vote but the bottom line is that only a few MPs get to sit on a select committee and hear the evidence. That is why these sorts of matters should be subject to the kind of analysis that the Law Commission will be undertaking. I know that people think that yes it is fine that the Minister has asked the Law Commission to speed up the report back. But I do not want the speeding up of the report back to be at the expense of quality research and analysis because that is what this Parliament needs in order to exercise what continues to be a conscience vote. 
I hope that members of the House do not see this bill as an opportunity to move ad hoc amendments. The legislation has suffered for long enough from that approach. My message is to deal with the issues that have been raised in this bill then await the Law Commission report to allow sound judgment to be applied to the next substantive proposals to provide a legal framework that contributes to the reduction of liquor abuse. 
I want to end by talking about the purchase age. I am sick of the media referring to there being a drinking age. This country has never ever had a drinking age in our laws; we have a purchase age. There is nothing in the law at the moment that stops anyone from supplying liquor to an under-18-year-old as long as the liquor was not bought with that intention in mind. This bill fixes that issue by requiring parental consent. But the real question is whether we should have a debate about the purchase age. I think that we should but given the very many exceptions that used to exist to allow on-licences to sell to 18-year-olds we should perhaps also debate the difference between on-licence sales and off-licence sales; between supervised drinking where the alcohol is drunk on the premises and licensees face consequences for breaches of their obligations versus unsupervised drinking where the licensee faces no consequences for what happens when the liquor leaves the premises. I personally think that would be a very worthwhile debate which is why in my view the Law Commission review of the legislation is so important. I believe that it would be a huge mistake to invite submissions on matters not contained in the bill because MPs and submitters alike may be trapped into thinking there are simplistic responses to these issues. There are not.