Roy Heather: General Debate 
Roy Heather: General Debate 
[Volume:671;Page:17768] 
Hon HEATHER ROY (ACT) 
: 
 The Alcohol Reform Bill is currently at the Justice and Electoral Committee. Submissions have been heard on the bill and there is currently a hiatus. The public debate that was very vocal before the bill went to the select committee will soon be resumed as the bill is due to be reported back on 11 May. 
There are many issues with regard to this bill. It does not get the incentives in the right place in my view and I have been speaking about that for quite some time. If we believe for one moment that allocating to a dairy a certain amount of floor space for alcohol will change people’s drinking habits then I think it is time to start at the start and completely rethink what the bill could realistically achieve. I do not think the bill even manages to identify the real issue that we have in New Zealand with alcohol and that issue is of course binge drinking. 
Much of the media focus on the bill before it went to the select committee was on the drinking age. As a result of that much of the public focus has also been on that. Three options are likely to be put before this Parliament and the age issue will as is usual with alcohol issues be a conscience vote. The first option is to leave the age where it is currently at which is 18. I support that particular initiative. If we allow our young people to get married at 18 if we allow them to go off and fight in wars at 18 and if we allow them the great responsibility of voting at 18 then how on earth can we deny them the ability to have a drink at the age of 18? 
Secondly there will be those who want to raise the drinking age to 20. In fact age is a complete red herring in this debate and there are good arguments to have no drinking age at all. The debate will come down to whether the age should be 18 or 20 but we should consider this: there are respectable and responsible drinkers at age 18 and irresponsible drinkers at 18. The same applies at 20: there are responsible and irresponsible drinkers. The same applies at 30 35 60 75 and in fact at 99 where we see people who have difficulties arising from the consumption of alcohol. 
The third option is the split age: 18 years at pubs and 20 years at off-licences. This option really is for those who want to have a bob each way or who cannot make up their minds. Age is a red herring and if we are to focus on the real issue it is time that we looked at binge drinking and the things that will really work. 
I can see only one good thing that has come out of the debate about this bill. That is the Keep it 18 campaign. Student politicians—as we all know from debate on other bills that have recently been before this Parliament and will continue to be for some time yet—are hugely passionate. As we sit here today and have a boisterous debate—usually between the National Party and the Labour Party—we see that the smaller parties in today’s debate have taken a different line from National and Labour in what they have chosen to speak on. The Keep it 18 campaign could actually teach the parliamentarians in Parliament quite some lesson. The Keep it 18 campaign has been very sensible and reasoned. Most important the campaigners have found a consensus something on which they all agree and they have worked very constructively towards a common goal. The Young Nats Young Labour ACT on Campus and the Young Greens have joined forces to push the Keep it 18 campaign. They realise that age is a red herring and they know that responsibility rests with them. They know that things do have to change in terms of binge drinking and they have debated sensibly in this vein. 
There is room in this Parliament and in this nation for consensus politics on some issues. The Keep it 18 campaign has shown us the way that we could move forward on a number of other issues not just on the alcohol issue. We should be discussing in this alcohol debate the impediments that we should put on the consumption of drugs alongside those on the consumption of alcohol. I think the really thorny problem that this Parliament has grappled with for a long time now—for decades—is that of superannuation. There are some issues where parties should agree on common goals on common policies and on how to move forward.