Power Simon: Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill — First Reading 
Power Simon: Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:652;Page:1796] 
Hon SIMON POWER (Minister of Justice) 
: 
 I move  
That the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill be now read a first time. 
 At the appropriate time I intend to move that the bill be referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee for consideration. 
Firstly I wish to acknowledge the previous Associate Minister of Justice the Hon Lianne Dalziel for the work she did for the last Government in preparing this legislation. It is now timely to advance it. 
Alcohol is a challenging issue for any Government because any attempt to ameliorate the negative impact of alcohol abuse must be balanced against the freedom of the majority of the adult population to drink responsibly. Those who cast their minds back to the so-called sherry tax of 2003 will recognise that liquor reforms must be targeted and relevant if they are to help fix the problem without punishing the innocent. 
However the problems caused by excessive drinking are undeniable. In the area of criminal justice alone it is estimated that approximately 60 percent of offenders were under the influence of alcohol at the time they committed their crimes. Police estimate that 50 to 70 percent of their work is associated with alcohol including disorder assault criminal damage family violence drink-driving taking drunk people home or detaining them for detoxification. This bill attempts to address the problems associated with the availability of alcohol youth binge drinking and alcohol advertising through amendments to the Sale of Liquor Act 1989 the Summary Offences Act 1981 and the Land Transport Act 1998. 
A key provision of this legislation relates to the availability of alcohol in our communities. The number and range of outlets selling alcohol is much larger than what was envisaged by Parliament when it passed the Sale of Liquor Act 1989. Since 1990 the number of on-licences has more than tripled and the number of off-licences has similarly tripled. In response to public drunkenness and alcohol-related offending communities from Mount Roskill to Riccarton are protesting against the marked increase in liquor outlets in recent years. In this regard I wish to acknowledge the work of the Hon George Hawkins in bringing to the House a local bill that would enable his constituents in Manurewa to object to any application for a liquor licence on the basis that if granted it would have an adverse social impact. 
The Government’s bill addresses all communities’ demands for more say in local liquor licensing decisions. At present there is nothing to stop a local council from creating an alcohol management plan but that plan will not have a formal status in liquor licensing decisions. This bill will enable local councils to create local alcohol plans that must be given effect to in liquor licensing decisions. Local alcohol plans will be able to set restrictions on the number of outlets in an area on the proximity of outlets to other community buildings like schools and on hours of operation. In short local alcohol plans will give communities greater control over where and when alcohol is sold. 
This bill will also clarify Parliament’s original intentions for the types of premises that are eligible for an off-licence and the alcoholic beverages they can sell. In 1999 Parliament voted against allowing dairies to sell wine and beer which may come as a surprise to those who have seen a number of shops that would normally be regarded as dairies selling alcohol. This bill will commence the argument to ensure that except in very limited circumstances grocery-selling stores will not be able to obtain a liquor licence unless they have a floor area of at least 150 square metres. Whether 150 square metres is the best benchmark will no doubt be the subject of careful scrutiny at the select committee and I encourage full and open debate on that issue. 
The bill will also ensure that grocery stores and supermarkets continue to be restricted to selling beer wine cider and mead. This is designed to avoid situations where spirits are sold by setting up a store within a store or an immediately adjacent liquor store that sells a full range of alcohol. Again I expect that the select committee will pay close attention to what constitutes an immediately adjacent store for the purposes of this restriction and I welcome submissions and debate on this point. 
I cannot overstate the importance of the second set of provisions in the bill—the provisions that address the harm arising from youth drinking. A recent study from Christchurch found that children as young as 4 were trying alcohol and that the onset of drinking rises very steeply from the age of 12. Harm to minors is most significant when alcohol consumption is unsupervised and most consumption is. The bill changes the current approach to the social supply of alcohol to minors by making it an offence for adults to supply liquor to minors without the consent of their parent or guardian. A small but significant number of liquor outlets continue to sell alcohol to minors so the bill will increase the penalty for managers who do that. The bill will also restrict the legal defences available to a person who sells liquor to a minor by repealing the defence that a seller had a reasonable belief that the minor was aged 18 or older. This means that the only available defence will be that the seller viewed appropriate identification. 
I have already mentioned the impact that alcohol use can have on offending but obviously it can have a broader social cost. Inexperienced drivers are particularly at risk of alcohol related-crashes so the bill amends the Land Transport Act 1998 to reduce to zero the allowable blood-alcohol content for drivers under 20 who do not have a full licence. In recognition of the need to address problem drinking as early as possible the bill will also allow police to refer a minor to an alcohol intervention programme as an alternative to paying an infringement fee for certain offences under the Sale of Liquor Act. 
Finally the bill incorporates recommendations arising from the review of regulation of alcohol advertising. That review found a small but significant association between the level of exposure to alcohol advertising and alcohol consumption. The bill proposes to insert a new part into the Sale of Liquor Act that provides for a system of enforced self-regulation by setting out the principles of the proposed system the roles of the body responsible for administering the self-regulatory system and the new offence. These provisions require very close scrutiny by the select committee. 
 This bill tackles what can be done immediately to help limit the harm caused by alcohol. My intention is that it will be complemented by the Law Commission’s first-principles review of the entire regulatory framework for the sale and supply of liquor. I have asked the commission to speed up that work so it is now planning to produce a discussion paper by the end of July with a final report due by the end of June 2010. Of course both that review and this bill deal only with the laws that govern the sale and supply of liquor. There are quite rightly limited laws in other areas. That is a product of our culture the way we drink and it will change only gradually over time. But that does not mean we should not try. I commend this bill to the House.