Swarbrick ChlöeCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): E te Māngai tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I'm glad to take a call on this the final reading of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill which of course I'd like to acknowledge had its genesis in my bill the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Harm Minimisation) Amendment Bill and the community pressure and organising that we undertook to get to this point to force the Government to act.I did also want to respond to some of the points raised by members of the Opposition particularly the ACT Party which I'll get to in a minute. But I want to put it really really clearly on the record and on the Hansard that those out there should be under no illusion whatsoever that the only reason that this legislation is currently passing through the House is because of the community organisation and mobilisation that has occurred.I want to acknowledge members of the House particularly those who have their roots in serving at a local board level like Lydia Sosene and her contribution just before. I want to acknowledge those Māori health organisations who on the ground have been lobbying and working for this for a really long time. I also particularly want to thank Alcohol Healthwatch notably and namely their former boss Dr Nicki Jackson who I worked with over the past several years in trying to progress this kaupapa amongst many many others and the many hands that had their role to play in the Pass the Bill" campaign which culminated in a petition handover of 8000 New Zealanders supporting the passage of my alcohol harm minimisation bill.I also want to shout out to Students for Sensible Drug Policy who I know are watching along at home or at university as the case may be. Students for Sensible Drug Policy and many of those in the drug-harm reduction space have been advocating for interventions just like this for time pretty much immemorial—for evidence-based drug policy.So what is it that we're talking about today? We're talking about how we can go about putting in place interventions to reduce drug harm namely alcohol harm because alcohol is of course a drug albeit a legal drug. It's the drug that New Zealanders like to consume the most of all of the drugs available to us. Approximately 80 percent of adult New Zealanders consume alcohol and a quarter to a fifth of them do so to incredibly harmful ends.The question for those of us in this place should be when confronted with a substance that can cause harm how can we go about creating a regulatory framework to reduce that harm? As I've said in this place many times before—but I'll put it on the record at any opportunity I've got—there is a spectrum of approaches to that regulation that we can take. At one end of the extreme of the spectrum there is criminal prohibition. At the other end of the extreme there is a complete legal unregulated free market. At both ends of those extremes we have the maximisation of harm because whether it is criminal organisations operating in the black market or commercial organisations operating in the legal market you have entities that are incentivised to exploit vulnerable communities to make a quick buck by shifting as much of their product as is possible. The way to reduce that harm is to minimise the profit incentive and to rein it into a space of sensible regulation that looks like dealing with the issues of demand as well those issues of supply.What this bill does primarily is deal with the issues around the local alcohol policies process and actually I would implore members of the Opposition particularly the National Party. Their former Government passed the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 ostensibly with the potential to empower local communities to put in place these local alcohol policies but they at the last minute introduced this ability for special appeals processes.Now this goes to the core point of what the ACT Party member was just putting on the table before saying that somehow what this bill does is get rid of the appeals process. It does not. Special appeals as outlined explicitly in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 as it currently stands are an anomaly amongst any other special appeals that may exist—for example vape shops tobacco outlets pokies or other forms of social harm that exist. This is an anomaly; it is unusual and it exists only in the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. The removal of that special appeals process as actually recommended by the former Health Promotion Agency and a range of other NGOs that have worked in this space does nothing to remove the ability for judicial appeals and judicial review.It is the right of any citizen in this country to appeal and take their case to the courts to say that the legislation is not meeting those standards in the application of law in this country. It does not remove those judicial appeals. It simply removes the added special right of special appeals. I want to make that really really clear.The other point that was raised by the member of the ACT Party is that what we should be dealing with here or rather the way we should approach substances particularly alcohol is through the lens of personal responsibility. Let's just take that to its logical consequence. Why have any laws at all when we're talking about substances and how to go about reducing that harm? If we're talking about how we can create a regulatory framework under the social contract—that is this society and these communities and this country that we all live in—we all accept that there are basic standards that we want to wrap around things that can potentially be harmful and that of course is the point of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 and further the amendments that are being made to this day.Far too frequently I hear personal responsibility being used as a rationale for an abdication of political responsibility and indeed for creating a narrative and whipping up this construct of choice. There is not actually too much in the way of meaningful choice and ability for community participation under the present way that the local alcohol policy process works with the ability for those special appeals to be utilised particularly I might add by our supermarkets which the ACT Party member mentioned overwhelmingly oppose this. Well it just so happens that they are the overwhelming entity that continues to use that special appeals process to steamroll over community willpower being implemented through the local alcohol policy process—like these things are kind of connected and that's where power lies in this country.I also want to point to some of the points alluded to in the ACT Party member's speech around other interventions that may potentially reduce harm. When we're talking about drug harm reduction other opportunities to reduce that harm of course look like for example safe consumption spaces. Here I point to on-licences where there's a duty of care for those who are engaged in the sale and supply to create a space an environment that is supposed to be more conducive to somewhat less harmful consumption of that substance.The point that this bill misses—which obviously the broader campaign that led us to this point after my member's bill the alcohol harm minimisation bill was drawn and kicks to touch and does not deal with—is the issue of glamorisation and normalisation of alcohol in our communities which actually has been identified by the World Health Organization and one of the best buys in terms of reduction of drug harm could be to remove advertising and sponsorship throughout our communities.So I implore the Government to continue with that piece of work. I had a lot a lot of engagement with the former Minister of Justice Kiritapu Allan and I want to acknowledge her for the work she did for getting this bill into shape and initially bringing to the House. This is a legacy piece of work and a really really important one at that. There is still so much more work to do. Finally I just want to address some of the contributions particularly from National Party members around for example how it is the case that currently existing businesses should override our consideration of not only the evidence but of community need and want with regard to reducing harm—community wellbeing. And here they were talking about obviously the sale and supply of alcohol. I'd ask them for some logical consistency on that point because they could apply that logical consistency to for example tobacco or to vaping or to other substances that are currently illicit under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 but which we continue to see substantive proliferation of throughout our communities.The Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand is the only party that can stand in this House and say that we have a consistent approach to all substances that is an evidence-based approach to reduce harm through sensible regulation minimising the profit motive as much as is possible and tackling the reality that right now we continue to spend four times as much money on enforcing criminal prohibition with worse and worse outcomes than we do on a health-based approach and our communities are all the poorer for it.All of that said I'm proud to support this bill today. I want to again acknowledge the grassroots communities that have organised to build a mandate for this and I'm stoked to see that the Government is nicking another piece of our homework. But I'd invite them to go full hog and deal with that issue of cultural norming."