Moroney Sue: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Moroney Sue: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 06 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7280. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE MORONEY (Labour) 
: 
 It is indeed a pleasure to finally get a chance to take a call on the Alcohol Reform Bill and to debate Part 6. I have two amendments on Supplementary Order Paper 114 that I have proposed. I intend to take this call to speak to one of those and I hope to get an opportunity to speak to the second of those later on. 
The first of them is an amendment to require nutritional information on the labelling of alcohol products. This was an issue that was not necessarily canvassed very strongly when the Law Commission prepared its very comprehensive report on the issue but it was an issue that was raised by a number of submitters. I think it is a great shame that the Government not only has ignored the Law Commission’s report in its complexity and its thoroughness but also has chosen to ignore the very many important submitters who came in on this issue. There were somewhere between 20 and 30 individuals and organisations that made submissions to the Justice and Electoral Committee saying: “Look if we can get nutritional information on alcohol products then that will be a significant deterrent to particularly young women actually in their choices about what they decide to do around binge drinking.” 
We know that we have a growing problem in this country with binge drinking and it is growing amongst young women. So why would the Government not take a common-sense approach to this and actually put nutritional information on the labelling so that those young women those young New Zealanders all of us in fact could make some informed decisions about what we are taking into our body? It is about informed decision-making and because information is power why would the Government not take this very common-sense approach in this bill? It is yet another example of how the Government wants to look like it is addressing this issue comprehensively but of course this process is exposing just how it is trying to get away with the bare minimum—the bare minimum possible—to try to convince the community that it is doing something about this terrible problem in our community. 
I want to make reference to just a couple of the submissions that came forward. One of them was from the National Advisory Group on Tertiary Student Drinking. It believed that introducing a rotating set of bold and graphic warnings on alcohol containers which also had information about nutritional guidelines on them would make a significant difference to the body of people whom they represent being tertiary students. 
We also had a number of submitters raise with the committee the Food Safety Australia New Zealand Ministerial Council report so an official report has actually made a recommendation specifically that energy content be displayed on the labels of all alcoholic beverages consistent with the requirements for other food products. This is exactly what my amendment asks this Parliament to do. It asks this Parliament to back up a recommendation from the Food Safety Australia New Zealand Ministerial Council report on this very issue. 
I find it quite disturbing that a range of submitters not just “Jane and Joe Public” off the street but also some large organisations—actually many of them representing women that were concerned about violence against women and this issue of how binge drinking does affect our community in a very sad and pervasive way—could find this information and present it to this Parliament about the recommendations from that ministerial council report but this Government seems prepared to ignore it. 
I want to urge this Government to put politics aside to put politics aside as I did when I voted for Tim Macindoe’s amendment—Tim Macindoe a National MP—to raise the purchase age to 20. I put politics aside for the sake of my community. I put it aside for the sake of my community. I am urging that Government to now put politics aside and start voting for Labour Party amendments that will make a stronger law. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get it right and the Government is playing politics by party voting on a conscience issue which it has not done before. That Government is not prepared—