Wall Louisa: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wall Louisa: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6143. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Chair. Thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. My Supplementary Order Paper 107 really wants to put children at the heart of policy. My community of Manurewa has over 30 off-licence liquor outlets but within the context of the greater Manukau—and it is great that I have followed on from my colleague Su’a William Sio—we have 494 liquor licences. We have 181 off-licence facilities. Unfortunately for our community we fit a lot of the profile that my colleague Kevin Hague was talking about. In terms of the demography of my electorate we have 14 decile 1 schools we have nine decile 2 schools and we have four decile 3 schools. So of the 29 schools in my electorate 27 are either decile 1 decile 2 or decile 3. That really is at the heart of my Supplementary Order Paper which is about enabling communities to self-regulate but from a clean slate. 
The reason my Supplementary Order Paper came to be was that just before Christmas the Myers Road superette applied for a liquor licence. The Myers Road superette lies between two schools Manurewa East School and Greenmeadows Intermediate School. The communities were so enraged by the fact that there was an application for a liquor licence that they leafleted all the homes in the suburb which is part of the Manurewa electorate and we had 400 submissions from members of that community opposing that liquor application. I want to take this opportunity to commend the leadership of Phil Palfrey the principal of Manurewa East Cathy Chalmers the principal of Greenmeadows Intermediate School and also Colleen Brown a member of the Manurewa Local Board who holds the portfolio of alcohol. 
For us it was an opportunity to mobilise the community which actually did not need much motivation to get mobilised in terms of writing a submission. They had 20 days. I guess the process for us was won because when the application was made there was a try to subvert the opportunity for our Manurewa community to have a say in the issuing of that licence for that superette to sell alcohol. 
The experience of our community has been that communities can make a difference and that communities want to ensure that our children grow up in an environment where they can grow and develop in a positive way. So the Supplementary Order Paper about banning off-licence premises within 1 kilometre of a school is very much a recognition that our schools are our learning nurturing centres for our children and that the immediate environment around our schools needs to be protected. 
Where did the 1 kilometre limit come from? Actually I wanted it to be a bit further—3 kilometres would have been good—but the reality is that children who live within a kilometre of school actually walk to school. My contention—and I am sure the contention of the House—is that alcohol is a product that should be consumed by adults only. There is no place in the life of a child for alcohol and what really concerns me is that our children who do walk to school and stop at the local superette on their way to school are going to be confronted with alcohol in their environment normalised. We are going to have kids who are going to be buying fruit pies probably too and lollies but alcohol is going to become and has become a normal part of children’s lives. 
I think that we should seriously think about starting from a clean slate. What my Supplementary Order Paper will ensure is that the current licences will continue to the point that they need to be renewed but within a context of the local alcohol policies being created which is very much about the community regulating off-licence liquor outlets. I cannot see any reason why this House would not endorse and support the idea of our children growing up in environments where alcohol is not a normal part of that environment for our children. 
I do want to highlight some research because the Supplementary Order Paper was very much a response to the local community. I am sure my colleague Cam Calder who is also based in Manurewa will talk about our Manurewa Youth Council and the fact that the Manurewa Youth Council has endorsed my Supplementary Order Paper. Also for our Manurewa Youth Council alcohol has been identified as a pollutant. It is a toxic substance that is an incredibly pervasive commodity in our communities. It is responsible for a lot of family violence. It is responsible for a lot of damage to property. It is responsible for a lot of negative consequences and so for our Manurewa Youth Council—and I would like to commend Simeon Brown and his team—we have to provide our communities with the tools so that they can regulate alcohol and off-licence premises out of our communities. 
What I wanted to highlight was a report entitled  
The Impacts of Liquor Outlets in Manukau City 
. One of the primary researchers for this piece of research which was funded by the Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand—now by the Health Promotion Agency—was Dr Michael Cameron who is an economist. There was a team of them. There was a social scientist Dr Bill Cochrane and Dr Craig Gordon from the Health Promotion Agency along with Dr Michael Livingstone from the Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre in Melbourne. Essentially what they found was that there is a density of liquor outlets in communities in South Auckland and that is because our communities are seen to demand alcohol. For whatever reason there are stresses in our community that enable the retailers to set up because there is a demand in our community. 
Su’a William Sio 
: They’re targeted. 
LOUISA WALL 
: They are targeted—you are absolutely right. I guess there is a chicken and egg argument about whether the density of outlets then kind of ensure that that demand is ongoing which is part of the issue about ensuring that our children are protected. We cannot normalise alcohol in communities that already have high levels of family violence as I talked about before. 
One of the critical things that I want to highlight from this piece of research was some research about a media review. There had been 438 articles identified by Dr Cameron and his group and from the stories they were able to focus on liquor outlets and the density of liquor outlets is a huge problem. Three main themes emerged from the research they did. There is a dominant view from the community and from the media that there are too many liquor outlets. There are various concerns about the distribution of outlets—that they were clustered in areas of deprivation that such clustering promotes price competition and longer opening hours and that both of those things increase the consumption of alcohol. The third point they wanted to highlight was that locating outlets near schools is particularly problematic. So there is evidence from the research that Michael Cameron and the University of Waikato team have conducted that says that actually our children need to be protected from alcohol. 
I also wanted to highlight the child-friendly cities framework which is a framework for action. It is really about guaranteeing the rights of our children and young people. Our children should be protected from exploitation and abuse. Child-friendly cities aim to improve the lives of children and we really do need to recognise the rights that young people have to grow up in an environment that is not densely populated with liquor outlets. Normalising liquor outlets in communities like the ones I represent the ones my colleague Su’a William Sio represents and in fact the one that you represent Mr Chair makes it very difficult for us to transform the lives of young people who are already growing up in socially and economically deprived families. 
So to compound the life opportunities of young people who are already growing in a context of material deprivation and to put liquor outlets into that context is I think an ethical issue for this House. As legislators one of the things we should do is do no harm and from what I can see our liberalisation of alcohol laws historically has done huge harm.