Twyford Phil: Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill — First Reading 
Twyford Phil: Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill — First Reading 
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PHIL TWYFORD (Labour) 
: 
 My colleagues have set out pretty clearly Labour’s position on the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Bill—that we will support it being referred to the Government Administration Committee. But we think a number of issues in the bill deserve debate and analysis in the select committee and also deserve public debate I think. I will go into some of those. 
But first I want to say what an incredibly exciting event this will be for New Zealand and not just because of the considerable potential economic benefit for the country as a result of the tournament. I do not know whether members saw an interview on the news the other night with Bishop Desmond Tutu. He was interviewed by a British journalist as he was walking away from a soccer game in South Africa that was part of the Football World Cup. The journalist asked him what he thought of the fact that South Africa was spending millions of dollars on that tournament when it was suffering the most appalling poverty an HIV/Aids epidemic and so on. Bishop Tutu in his inimitable way said that it was not about the economic benefits and that it was not about the money; it was about an experience that made people realise they were part of something that was bigger and better. It was about the indefinable sort of thing that lifts us out of our daily lives. 
I think the Rugby World Cup will be an amazing fiesta of football and an opportunity for us to play host as people have said to 70000—some estimates are even up to 85000—international visitors. It really is a hugely exciting opportunity. The prospect of this event and its sheer scale—the biggest event of this kind that New Zealand has ever hosted and perhaps ever will—raise some very interesting policy challenges for the Government that I want to talk about. It is set out in the explanatory note of the bill and in the regulatory impact statement that the purpose of the bill is to provide a time-limited parallel consenting authority to ensure that Rugby World Cup - related activities—the construction of certain buildings and certain areas where people will gather liquor licensing road closures all the sorts of things that may need to happen all the festivities—can be carried out smoothly. That temporary consenting authority is needed to ensure that all those things that are necessary for a successful event are not allowed to fall foul of current arrangements and current regulatory processes which are mostly carried out by territorial local authorities. I think Labour accepts that that case has been made and that the bill is an exercise in risk management. There is too much at stake for the country for us to allow regulatory mechanisms to let down the planning and organisation that will go into this event. 
My colleague Grant Robertson outlined some of the thinking that went into this process that is covered in the regulatory impact statement and the discussion of possible alternatives. The regulatory impact statement states that the bill needs to be flexible enough to respond to unforeseen consenting requirements to do with the Rugby World Cup but it needs to avoid undermining the integrity of the underlying regime—that is the Sale of Liquor Act the Resource Management Act and so on—for activities that are not urgent that are not unforeseen or that are unrelated to the staging of the Rugby World Cup. Mr Robertson discussed a couple of the alternatives that were considered before the preferred option was settled on. 
I will direct most of my comments to the question of liquor licensing because it is one of the key provisions in the bill. It is an area that I think should be subject to open and vigorous public debate because some really sensitive trade-offs are to be made between the success of the event and minimisation of harm and minimisation of a negative impact on the neighbourhoods and communities where supporters and fans of the Rugby World Cup will gather. Under the bill special liquor licences can be given out for the period from 9 September until 31 October. These licences will replace existing licences over that period and will allow the bars to extend their size and their hours of operation. They also allow that authority to set certain limits around the type of alcohol the size of drinks sold and so on. 
I note that the Legislation Design Committee when it reviewed the early draft of this legislation noted that the setting up of the special liquor licensing authority was inconsistent with the findings of the Law Commission’s report which was called  
Alcohol in Our Lives: Curbing the Harm 
. The Ministry of Economic Development subsequently commented that that was irrelevant because the Law Commission’s report was not yet Government policy. I want to explore that for a moment. I believe that there is developing consensus in this country about the need for us to tackle the culture of binge drinking and the social harm that is caused by the way we drink. I believe that agreement is forming that the easy availability of liquor in our communities due to the very liberal licensing regime which allows in some places 24-hour alcohol purchasing and very very late closing hours is linked to a lot of the social harm we see. We should not I think trivialise or minimise the importance of the Law Commission’s report. It was 2 years of work there were 3000 submissions and the overwhelming majority of those submissions were for a tightening of the laws around access to liquor and that included tighter opening hours. 
It is significant that the police initially opposed the provisions in this bill. They said that the Sale of Liquor Act was perfectly capable of dealing with what was needed. If I am not wrong the time frames in the Sale of Liquor Act are identical or very similar to the time frames in this bill. One of the main parts of this bill states that it is not about changing the criteria for consenting; it is about changing the time frames just to expedite the process. Actually in relation to liquor licensing this bill has the potential to significantly change not just the time frames but the actual outcomes in terms of liquor licensing. The scenario is that for the purposes of putting on the best possible event and providing hospitality our norms and rules around liquor licensing will be thrown to the winds and for the period of the Rugby World Cup we will see a much more liberalised regime which could result in significant public harm. I think that is something the select committee will have to address. 
What is the risk? The risk I think is that a much more liberal approach for the purposes of the Rugby World Cup could lead to a slackening of the rules around serving minors and the consequences if the operators of venues break those rules. Similarly that could be the case if the rules are slackened in respect of serving intoxicated people and the use of promotions and happy hours. If rogue operators are operating currently with highly restricted licences will they under this regime be able to get a special Rugby World Cup licence that will loosen those restrictions? I think all these things should be the subject of public debate. The question is to what extent we are prepared to open the door to much more liberalised liquor laws for a defined period in a way that is out of step with the way community sentiment is going. 
Finally I would say that the balance has to be struck very carefully. We saw the Minister for the Rugby World Cup side with Heineken the sponsor over the debate around plastic versus cans and I hope that is not repeated.