Chadwick Steve: Customs and Excise (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Customs and Excise (Alcoholic Beverages) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:608;Page:5374] 
STEVE CHADWICK (NZ Labour—Rotorua) 
: 
 I am pleased to stand up and speak to this bill and I am appalled at the member on the opposite side of the House. That member is the Opposition spokesperson on health and did she really show any care about the health effects of alcohol drinking across the board in this country? That member repeated the rhetoric of National’s leader who came into the House and treated this issue with mirth and hilarity. He is a former health Minister and I am simply appalled at that attitude. 
I support this bill and I think we need to be very careful. We did not miss the point about the percentage of alcohol by volume that is covered by the bill. As the mother of three young people I have lived through the very difficult challenges posed by young people who are certainly price sensitive in their drinking behaviour. Let me inform the members of the Opposition that I am very aware of the way that children club together in order to buy drinks such as heavy spirits—the heavy spirits covered by this bill such as vodka gin and whisky. They all drink whatever comes before them and they are very price sensitive about it. As a mother I speak from experience on that one. 
I support the Hon Jim Anderton in his approach here in this bill and I am simply appalled at the attitude of the Opposition which has treated this measure with mirth. This excise tax is only one string in the bow of a public health approach to harm minimisation and that is what the Opposition seems to have failed to understand. In that bow of harm minimisation is the string of education and certainly the money taken under this measure will go towards education in the school health curriculum. I thank the Greens for their support for putting more money into drug and alcohol education and I also thank the alcohol industry which has worked with us responsibly to come up with a health and education strategy. The industry has put a lot of work into that for us and I am pleased about that. We are also concerned about advertising on television because we need to watch very carefully to make sure that the advertising does not make alcohol seem so alluring to young people that they decide it is a sexy thing to get drunk. 
I want to discuss the drinking age a little bit. I must point out to the Opposition member Mr Jones that the lowering of the drinking age was not done by this Government. It was done when National was in power. The folly of that decision was that we should not have brought in a change in the drinking age overnight without having a staged implementation—without signposting that that was to be done in 2 years’ time and having upfront drug and alcohol education. That was not done. That is what ought to be done in a public health harm minimisation strategy. 
I also want to refer to the Opposition members who opposed the labelling of alcohol. They showed no care for foetal alcohol syndrome at all. They said labelling was just another cost to the industry and they did not support it. I think that labelling is another intrinsic and important arm of public health education. 
I also want to thank the territorial authorities that get behind us with their liquor bans on the streets because the minimisation of the harm caused by excessive drinking in this country is a community approach that needs to be supported by local government public health education school-based education and what we can do as legislators. The excise tax in this customs bill will give us an extra opportunity in that regard. The Opposition is not surprised that we are here tonight—not at all. We are not rushing this bill through. We will talk this issue through all night long if that is how long it takes. If that is what the Opposition needs in order to understand about public health and harm minimisation approaches then I am prepared to talk the issue through all night long and not to rush this bill through.