Goff Phil: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 30 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:5012. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 I intend in this part of the Alcohol Reform Bill to vote to lift the purchase age from an off-licence to 20 and to maintain the purchase age in an on-licence at 18 and I will go into the reasons why I am differentiating between the two. But what I want to say is that this bill gives us really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to address a problem that every member of this House understands is one of the biggest social and economic problems facing our country. You know you can throw the statistics around. The Alcohol Advisory Council talks about $5 billion to $6 billion a year. The Ministry of Health talks about 1000 unnecessary deaths each year being caused by alcohol. What other abuse of a product would we tolerate happening in our society with that sort of cost? 
I want to talk about the human cost too. In part I draw on the report that we have from the Law Commission. We set up that report under a Labour Government because we wanted an evidence-based approach to dealing with the problem of alcohol abuse and addiction. I ask what the point is of setting up a report if you do not intend to follow the recommendations that it makes. In voting to lift the purchase age I am very conscious of the dangers of doing that. The real danger of doing that is that we can be very sanctimonious and say: “Hey we’ve dealt with the problem here. We’ve stopped those bad young people abusing alcohol and everything will be all right.” Everybody in this Chamber knows as well that alcohol abuse is not the sole preserve of the young. And everybody in this Chamber knows that when it comes to role modelling our generation have been very bad role models for those who are following through. 
I am influenced by the evidence-based approach of the Law Commission. I am equally influenced by the experience of witnessing my generation and how we abused alcohol and then of having kids who are now—thank God—safely in their mid-20s and of watching the abuse of alcohol in their generation. I am not prepared as a member of Parliament to tolerate any longer the level of harm and damage that is being done to our society when we have the opportunity to address that. 
A few months back I took up an invitation of an incredibly angry and frustrated doctor at the accident and emergency department at Auckland City Hospital. He asked me to go up on a Saturday night to get there about 10 and stay until about 5 in the morning and I would see what hospital staff had to deal with every day. I have got to tell you that while I was up there I saw that on a third of the admission forms that I looked at there were these large letters on the top “ETOH” which means it is an ethanol or alcohol-related illness or injury. I have to say that disproportionately they were young people who were coming in. We are witnessing the damage that is happening. We know the damage that is done to young people’s minds. I listened to my colleague Megan Woods and I am sympathetic to some of her points. Yes the brain continues to develop up to age 20— 
Hon Members 
: 25. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —to 25—but the truth is unless we do something to stop younger people in the lower echelons getting access to alcohol now they are going to be damaged and the cost is going to be permanent. I know and my kids know from experience that when they were 15 and 16 they got their 18-year-old mates to buy alcohol and to give it to them if they could not get it out of their parents. Well they went to their parents’ liquor cabinet tipped out the gin filled it up with water and we discovered that some months later. You know it is funny in one sense but I saw some things with those kids there putting their lives at risk putting themselves at risk of violence and of sexual violation which I do not want to see happening. 
Lifting the age is not the only solution. If we think that is the only thing we are going to do we are wasting our time in this House. We have to change the culture. But it is a place to start and when the Law Commission says definitively to us and I want to read out the section that “one of the interventions with the greatest evidence of effectiveness is increasing the minimum purchase or drinking age.” I am bound to pay attention to what it has told us on the basis of the extensive and analytical work that it has done. This is a start. It is not the only thing we need to do.