Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 30 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4998. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I wish to address Part 2 of the Alcohol Reform Bill and I want to begin by talking about the fact that this is the only part of this bill that the Government wanted to have as a conscience vote. I think it is an important matter to debate. I really strongly object to the fact that this one part of the bill has been carved out for a conscience vote because it makes it look like age is the only problem we have with alcohol in this country. Age is not the only problem we have. There is an element of a problem that comes from the decision that was made in 1999 but I want to come back to that later on. 
I think what we have ended up with is the media very much focusing on how MPs are going to vote on the age when there are much more important issues that the media should actually be asking individual members of Parliament about. They should be asking individual members of Parliament what they feel about minimum pricing for super-cheap alcohol. They should be asking them about the closing time for off-licences. They should be asking them about the proximity of schools to off-licences. They should be asking them— 
Louise Upston 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I understood that the debate was around the purchase age and the issues related to the three options that you mentioned at the start of this debate. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Speaking to the point of order I am simply referring to the fact that this is the only part of the bill that the Government has allocated as a conscience vote. It is perfectly appropriate to have a discussion about the nature of the vote that we are about to have in the context of the Committee stage on this part. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: As you well know it is not the Government’s prerogative to decide what is and is not a conscience vote. That will be for the Speaker to decide at that time. The Business Committee has agreed that this is a debate on the age of purchase. Members know that we will have plenty of opportunity in the substantive Committee stage on the bill as a whole to debate those issues. I think it is an important point that we need to establish at this point in the Committee stage today that we spend as much time as we can on the question at hand which is the age of the purchase and sale of alcohol. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Can I just say to the Committee that the Speaker allocates the conscience votes and the member was actually talking about the process around the conscience vote. If the member wishes to use up her 5 minutes’ time doing that she is perfectly entitled to do so. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. This will be very brief but it is really just a request to members. We have a debate that is going to last 2¼ hours and unless there is a very good reason we should not have points of order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Thank you. Can I just say to members that look I said right at the beginning that in the interests of fairness I want to be able to try to give at least every member one shot—5 minutes. So it is up to members how they use it because there may well be a considerable amount of speaking. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: What I was saying was simply this: if anyone in this Committee thinks that by changing the age we have solved the problems that this country has with alcohol then think again because we have not solved the problems at all. The Law Commission gave us a very extensive report. It gave us the evidence this Committee needs in order to have votes on different elements of the law and this is only one element of the law. 
I am supporting the split-age option and if the split-age option is not supported by this Committee by a majority then I will be voting to keep it at age 18. There is a very good reason why I want to do that. It is that I believe it is fundamental that the public of New Zealand does not think for one minute that we have dealt with the really hard issues with the issues that require the courage of people to stand up in this Committee and to speak from the evidence that has been brought to us by the Law Commission. I am afraid that the bill that we have before us as a whole does not quite do that. 
I do not believe that we can sheet home responsibility to the 18 and 19-year-olds of this country to say that they are the cause of the problem that we have today. I just want to remind people that there are issues that we have to take charge of and that we have to take notice of. When we see our emergency departments clogged up weekend in and weekend out by people who are both the perpetrators and the victims of violence; when we have people bumped off our elective surgery lists because we have got alcohol-fuelled crashes happening and ordinary people cannot get their operations as a result; when we have the victims of burglary who cannot get the police to come because they are busy dealing with alcohol-fuelled events in the centres of our towns and in Christchurch that is now the suburbs and no longer the centre of our town; when we see people lying on the side of the road vomiting into the gutter or when we have to clean it up in the street in the morning after; when we find broken bottles as my husband often does when he goes out cycling on a Sunday morning and of course it ruins the tyres; when we see all of those events and when we see our letterboxes kicked over we cannot say that this country does not share the problem that we want to sheet it all home to personal responsibility and that we want to blame the 18 and 19-year-olds of this country. 
The truth is that we cannot blame just them. It is true that pre-loading is a generational thing. It did not happen in our day. It was quite different because we had very regulated hours of trading and of course the pubs closed at 11 o’clock at night in those days. Pre-loading does not happen just with 18 and 19-year-olds but it does expose a problem that occurred I believe in 1999. It was something that I was not aware of at the time. I think we got it wrong in 1999 but I did not know how inadequate the law was in respect of the supply of alcohol. The law does not make it illegal to supply liquor to someone under 18. The current law says that it is an offence to buy alcohol with the intention of supplying it to somebody under the age of 18. It is an entirely flawed piece of legislation. What I believe this Committee needs to do is to split the age and to say that people who are drinking in supervised environments cannot have alcohol served to them if they are intoxicated. Supervised environments are better than unsupervised—