Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6047. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call on Part 1 “Preliminary matters”. I guess this is a very important part of the bill the Alcohol Reform Bill because it sets up the substance of what the legislation is designed to achieve. I just want to reflect on the purpose of the legislation for a start and then talk about the object clause which is clause 4. The purpose is to ensure that the legislation itself is “for the benefit of the community as a whole”. I think that that is a really important statement to have in the legislation but unfortunately there are many communities throughout New Zealand who will feel that this law does not go far enough in order to address the many concerns that they have raised. 
In my time in Parliament I have never seen so many communities take to the streets to protest against the issuing of licences as has been the case in the last couple of years. We have seen people in South Auckland we have seen people in Porirua we have seen people in Christchurch and we have seen people in different parts of the country all take a very strong stand when they see another licensed premise open up for business or propose to be open for business. I think that the Liquor Licensing Authority itself when one looks at the decisions that it has been making over the years is actually starting to see and respond to what is quite a serious concern coming from the community. It certainly is driven by the community which is why we are pleased to see the expression “for the benefit of the community as a whole” as one of the principal statements right up there in the purpose clause. 
The purpose clause goes on to say that the purpose is “to put in place a new system of control over the sale and supply of alcohol”. I guess we have moved on in terms of the language; the previous law was around the sale and supply of liquor. Then it talks about the characteristics that are established in subclause (2). This describes the characteristics of the new system as being “reasonable” and states that “its administration helps to achieve the object of this Act.” In a way I could say that actually the characteristics of the new system are not going to be deemed reasonable just by definition or by use of the language in the legislation; it will be how it is actually implemented on the ground. That was a fundamental flaw in the Sale of Liquor Act. It had in fact a very strong purpose statement but that purpose was not reflected in any way shape or form in any of the elements of the legislation. So when you are looking for harm-reduction measures in the legislation as it exists today you will be hard-pressed to find them and that has been one of the challenges that the Liquor Licensing Authority has had to face. 
The other element is “to reform more generally the law relating to the sale supply and consumption of alcohol so that its effect and administration help to achieve the object of this Act.” Again I think that it is very important to reflect that the legislation is only part of the story. It cannot ever be the whole story. I think my husband uses a very good expression which I use from time to time and that is that “Red lights don’t stop trains.” As a former train driver and now a lawyer he certainly has seen the practical implication of that particular expression. What it means is that you can have all of the lights showing red but that is not going to stop the train from crashing through a barrier or stopping in time to prevent disaster from occurring unless those brakes are applied by somebody in time. That is what this bill is actually all about as well. We have got a framework piece of legislation for the legislative framework but it does require the community to take responsibility for the behaviour that we have seen associated with the consumption of alcohol and the damage that it has done to communities. 
I think that the community is facing up to that responsibility and that is why we have seen them take to the streets in droves. That is why we have seen so many people make submissions to the Law Commission report. Three thousand New Zealanders took the time to make submissions on something that really mattered. This is certainly a major change. It is a major change in direction and philosophy and I believe that the community is wanting Parliament to do a lot more than this legislation allows. 
I move on to the object clause. The object of this bill is that “the sale supply and consumption of alcohol should be undertaken safely and responsibly; and the harm caused by the excessive or inappropriate consumption of alcohol should be minimised.” Then it goes on to describe what the harm minimisation is about. I think this is when we start to see the dollars and cents that actually lie with the approach that we might be adopting if we went further than we are doing. The bill states: “any crime damage death disease disorderly behaviour illness or injury directly or indirectly caused or directly or indirectly contributed to by the excessive or inappropriate consumption of alcohol;”. That is every car smash on the street—every car smash leading to death or leading to injury. Think of all of the costs that are put on our ACC system and all of the costs that are put on our health system and then look at the crime. 
I just want to remind the Committee that the previous National Government before the last election held a ministerial meeting on the Drivers of Crime. It held that back in March 2009. It was actually one of the important initiatives that Simon Power and the Hon Dr Pita Sharples put together to try to get some group of people together to think about what were the drivers of crime. Alcohol came up time and time again not so much as a cause but as a driver. It is one of those fuels—kind of like petrol—that is set alight and all of the domestic violence all of the abuse of children and all of these things were tied back in many respects to the damage caused by alcohol. Then you come up with foetal alcohol syndrome and things like that. So you can see the harm that is done. 
The Labour caucus took a very hard decision. We decided that actually the ministerial meeting on the Drivers of Crime was so important that we would offer to work collaboratively with the Government on those drivers of crime particularly focusing on children aged nought to 12 in order to get a cross-party agreement on how that might be addressed. We decided not to look for elections with the rules changing every time there is a change of Government but to actually get a collaborative response around children aged nought to 12. What a difference that would have made. We would have been 3 years down the track on that by now if the Government had responded in a slightly better way than what we received. Simon Power wrote back to me on 16 November and said: “Following decisions made by Cabinet and the National caucus I would like to propose a policy matter upon which initial cooperation could commence: that being the sale and supply of alcohol. I consider that this is an appropriate starting point in light of your previous role in bringing the sale and supply of liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill before the House and the need to ensure that the legislative framework is coherent and enduring. This in no way precludes further cooperation on other policy issues relating to the drivers of crime if working together on the alcohol issue proves to be mutually agreeable.” 
 Well I have to say that it has not been mutually agreeable because there has not been an engagement over what this legislation should contain. That engagement actually stopped after that letter was received. When the Law Commission reported back the one advantage that I obtained was that I was enabled to have an embargoed copy of the report so that I could read it over the weekend before it was publicly announced. But apart from that the Government did not consult with us about the fact that it was going to vote out the bill that I had introduced the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill—vote it out get rid of it—and then introduce its own bill which does almost nothing more than what we already had in the legislation. To anyone who is going to get up in this Chamber and say that local communities are looking for their local alcohol plans—well those plans are 2 years overdue because the Government voted out the bill that would have delivered them 2 years ago in December 2010. In 2010 the Government made the decision not to proceed with the Sale and Supply of Liquor and Liquor Enforcement Bill. 
As we go through the different parts of this bill we are going to establish that in fact there is almost nothing additional in this bill the Alcohol Reform Bill compared with what was in that bill and there was no reason why the Government could not have made slight amendments to that bill and it would have been passed by now. It would have been passed before the last election and every single community in New Zealand would have been able to go to their local council and ask for their local alcohol plan provisions to be given effect to. We know that there are councils throughout New Zealand that want to get on with the job but they have been delayed by this Government’s decision to change the name of the legislation and put it in its own name having for some reason absolutely beyond my comprehension decided not to proceed with the legislation that had already gone to the Justice and Electoral Committee had already had submissions on it and had already received significant support from one end of the country to the other. It did seem a complete waste of everyone’s time to require them to go back through that process again. In fact because of the proximity of that legislation going through the select committee and the Law Commission actually looking at the whole issue there were not as many submissions on that bill because people were in general agreement with it. 
The huge advantage of that piece of legislation was that it would have enabled us to deal with the blood-alcohol content issue which of course is not being dealt with in the context of this bill but which will be dealt with by way of a Supplementary Order Paper when we get to a new part being moved by my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway. I think it is a real shame that the Government has chosen to take this approach when I had a very promising letter dated 16 November 2009 with Simon Power being really very interested in working collaboratively with us and then I find that actually collaboration does not mean anything when it comes to alcohol. 
I do not believe that this House has really taken on board the object of this bill until we get to the later parts of the legislation. We keep coming back to the object of the bill. Is it going to minimise the harm caused by excessive or inappropriate consumption of alcohol? Are we going to see a reduction in crime? Are we going to see a reduction in “damage death disease disorderly behaviour illness or injury directly or indirectly caused or directly or indirectly contributed to by the excessive or inappropriate consumption of alcohol; and any harm to society generally or the community directly or indirectly caused or directly or indirectly contributed to by any crime damage death disease disorderly behaviour illness or injury” of that kind previously described? 
That to me is the essence of the debate that we have to have in this House. It is what the people of New Zealand are asking us to have: an honest open debate. We have to show courage in this House and we have to be prepared to make hard decisions about what would make a difference in terms of the availability in terms of the very low price and in terms of the issues that are not being dealt with in this bill. The public are asking why they are not being dealt with when this is the object of the bill. If we truly come back to the object in Part 1 of this bill every single time that we deal with a different part of this bill we will find that it is not going to live up to the expectation that the people of New Zealand are asking us to represent. I am surprised that the only issue that members have wanted to exercise some independence on is the question of age when we know that age is the least important of the five separate issues that we have been challenged to seriously look at by those who have expertise in this field. 
So I believe that as we go through this debate we will have the opportunity to debate the important matters but only because people have had the courage to put up Supplementary Order Papers in their own names and to take on board the attacks that will come from the industry particularly from the grocery and retail sector and also the large breweries. Even the Hospitality Association does not think this bill goes far enough and that to me says it all. There are many people out there who are relying on Parliament to get this right. We did not get it right in 1989. We certainly did not get it right in 1999. Let 2012 be different.