Hide Rodney: Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Hide Rodney: Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12343] 
RODNEY HIDE (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party rises to oppose this legislation and asks the House some basic questions about its attitude towards liquor licensing the consumption of liquor and the sale of liquor. Would we not have thought in this day and age that we in this House would well understand the dangers of a monopoly? Why is it that we are entrenching in this bill monopoly licensing trusts for the sale of liquor in New Zealand? Is it not time we recognised that monopolies are bad? They do not look after the customers or the community and they do not provide a good service. Why do we carry on with the myth that a licensing trust elected and with a monopoly somehow protects people from the debilitating effects of excessive alcohol consumption? Are we in this House going along with the pretence that by having a licensing trust and a monopoly we are dealing with a serious problem? I do not think that any member in this House who votes for this bill believes that monopoly licensing trusts are the answer to any problem. In fact I would be very interested to hear a member in this House stand up and say that a monopoly and a licensing trust fixes the problem of X—and I would like to know what X is. How is it that in some areas we can get away without having a monopoly but in other areas we have to have them? Of course it is just raw politics pure and simple—no principle no philosophy and to hell with the consequences and effects of not doing the right thing. 
There is another problem this bill alludes to: our crazy rules and I say again our attitude towards the purchase and consumption of alcohol—as if banning the sale of wine or allowing the sale of wine from wine shops at Easter will solve any problem real or imagined. What is going on in our parliamentary colleagues’ minds if they think that hitherto not allowing wineries to sell wine on Easter Sunday has served a good purpose? We commend the move to allow that sale because at the end of the day it is up to the person who is buying the wine to make the decision to buy it and the person selling the wine to sell it. But does this exemption not underscore a problem we have with the minutiae and the detail we get into when we start looking at—the phrase of the bill—the sale of liquor. 
Here is another problem. How smart is it to prevent Chinese supermarkets from selling cooking wine and to have the time of the House taken up with the subject of whether a Chinese supermarket or a minimart can sell cooking wine? I look across at the Labour Party and ask its members whether they think a good purpose is served by preventing Chinese minimarts from selling cooking wine? Not one person’s hand has gone up. Then we have those members saying: “Oh it’s technically very hard to define what is cooking wine and what is not cooking wine.” but is that not the problem? 
Here we are in Parliament trying to divine these minute rules. What problem is our sale of liquor law trying to address? I listened to the Hon Rick Barker when he introduced the bill. He told me what the bill was about and I appreciated that. He said there were some moves forward and I appreciate those. But I did not hear once from him an explanation of what the amendments to the Sale of Liquor Act are to do and how successful they will be—not one. So what we have is a crazy set of rules that has grown like Topsy and there is no inspection by this Minister or this Government of its underlying rationale. 
Can we not trust people with some freedom? Can we not trust people with some responsibility? Can we not let the Chinese supermarket sell Chinese cooking wine? I have not seen the boy racers who so exercise the minds of members of this House out there sucking on cooking wine before going off on a drag race. 
John Carter 
: They’re pretty oily. 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Well I do not know about that member’s electorate but that is not so in my observation. Again what is the problem we are attempting to address? 
Let me go to another concern—[ 
Interruption 
] It is always good to have Jill Pettis interject on a speech because whenever she gets up to speak we discover she has nothing to say. But when anyone else in this House gets up to speak we discover she has a lot to say. So I suggest to that member Jill Pettis that she do her work stand up and give a speech on the bill rather than sit on the side and interject. 
There is concern over the prescribed qualifications for general managers. What a lot of nonsense that is! It means more costs more requirements and more bureaucracy and the Minister never got up in this House to explain the problem he is attempting to address. It is just more expense. Here we have a Minister who is led by the nose by his officials to come up with more rules and more regulations. 
Do members know what we heard at the Commerce Committee? We heard the view that those regulations and requirements were put to this Parliament to favour one group of trainers over everyone else. I go back to the point made right at the start that that is to retain the monopoly. So why has this Minister allowed himself and this House to be used by a legislative process to give advantage to some trainers and to disadvantage others. Listen to this—this is unbelievable. I am reading from the commentary on the bill: “Concern that existing trainers and training programmes could be penalised by requirements that trainers be NZQA accredited will also be considered in the course of developing the regulations.” 
When that work has not been done does that not tell us this bill is wrong? Yet we are to take the Government on its word that yes it will do this and yes they will take on board those concerns. The ACT party is against this bill and will be putting forward some amendments to help this Parliament and to help New Zealand fix it.