Tanczos Nandor: Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) — First Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:10190] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
Contrary to the good advice offered by my colleague Dail Jones the Greens will be supporting the Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2). I do not intend to take up a great deal of the House’s time this evening because I think the bill is a fairly inoffensive bill but I just want to address quickly some of the issues that have been raised. 
The first thing is the option for a licensing trust to reconstitute itself as a community trust. The Greens support that provision. We think it allows more of a focus on charitable and philanthropic aims and we think that is a good thing. We are aware of the concerns raised by Dail Jones but let this House remember that such a change will be made by a democratic decision. The bill clearly states that the reconstitution can be initiated in two ways: by resolution of the licensing trust members followed by public notice with the opportunity for electors to call for a poll on the issue; or by 15 percent or more of a licensing trust’s electors requesting the trust to hold a binding poll. So it will actually be a democratic decision and a decision made by the community and we think that gives some safeguard. 
The bill does make other reforms to licensing trusts and we think these are useful. It requires trusts to disclose remuneration paid to trustees and senior managers and that is essential for transparency and accountability. It also requires trusts to hold annual meetings to account to electors for the effectiveness of their performance and we think that is a sensible and much-needed change. 
There are a couple of other things I would like to quickly touch on. The bill permits wineries to sell their own wine on Easter Sunday and both Pansy Wong and Dail Jones have made quite a lot of reference to that. Dail Jones suggested it was part of a drive to form a more secular society. I do not accept that argument. Prior to the 1999 amendments wineries were able to sell their own wine on Easter Sunday. There does not seem to have been a policy intention to change that; it seems to have been an omission in those amendments. So we think it is sensible and is just putting back in place the previous arrangement. 
There is provision for the staggered introduction of the requirement that general managers of licensed premises hold a prescribed qualification. We understand that that is in response to submissions on the previous Supplementary Order Paper. It is good to see legislation being responsive to the concerns of those directly affected by those decisions. 
The last thing I will touch on before I finish is the exemption to the offence of minors purchasing liquor. Persons who are under 18 years may purchase liquor at licensed premises at the request of a member of the police acting in the course of his or her duty. As Dail Jones correctly said that provision clearly is to allow sting operations to take place. There are already such provisions in tobacco legislation. There are concerns about entrapment and I think we need to look at those carefully. The select committee should pay attention to that. 
But at the same time New Zealand First is one party in this House that makes a point of talking about the problems of under-age drinking youth drunkenness and such things. Clearly if we are going to address the question of under-age drinking there has to be an ability to police the age-limit. In fact since the lowering of the age-limit on alcohol consumption we have seen an increase both in the age at which people start drinking—more people are starting young—and in how much young people drink in a session. I think we are all concerned about those things. The question is what we do we do about it. We have heard the typical knee-jerk reaction that we must put the age-limit back up. Well to Green Party members it seems that before we amend the legislation again the first thing we should do is actually properly police the age-limit we have. We believe that if we properly policed the age-limit of 18 years we could begin actually to address those problems. 
If we are going to police the age-limit there has to be some way for the police to test whether places are selling to under-age people. We do not see any way other than this provision that we can come at this problem. So we support this provision but we are interested to see what the select committee makes of it and what kinds of concerns are expressed in the public submissions. 
I welcomed the point of order from Hon Rick Barker earlier to say that the report-back date was extended somewhat to make sure there is provision to allow the select committee to hear oral submissions if there is such a call from submitters. We welcome that because the select committee is an important part of the democratic process and we think we should go out of our way to make sure it is able to fulfil its job. 
The Green Party is supporting this Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2). We look forward to seeing where it goes from here.