SpeechIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): We have heard some great speeches from the Government haven't we but in all they've lasted for 10 minutes of the last hour and a half. They must be absolutely convinced that this is the right way to go about it or they'd have spoken for longer. Anyway sorry Madam Speaker I'll get back to the bill. Anyone would imagine having been involved in local government local alcohol plans applications for licence and applying for licence to dispense or sell alcohol or having watched every second vacant store in their community turn up as a bottle store—one could imagine that you'd want to change the law and you'd want to do something about it. And I dispute the comments from the other side of the House that the National Party are opposed to local communities making decisions for local communities. We're absolutely not. What we're opposed to is the manner in which they're going about it in this bill and I'll explain myself as we go along. Having been a part of this process myself for quite a bit of my life far too much of my life actually and having seen the challenges that communities have with every plan that council makes—and you've got to remember that every plan that council makes originates in this place here. We cause all these plans to be made; the councils don't. We cause the costs on ratepayers; the councils don't. All of this stuff comes and originates in the Parliament and so the problem that they're trying to resolve in this bill doesn't solely relate to alcohol; it relates to every single piece of planning that a council does. With every piece of planning a council does you end up to quote Eugenie Sage—and fortunately for us not all lawyers wear suits; there are other sorts of lawyers as well but she doesn't seem to think so. There are always going to be lawyers involved in legal discussions in the planning that councils do irrespective of where it comes from and how it works. So the challenge for communities and for us is to find a more equitable way for councils to arrange all of their planning activities because in almost every aspect you find whether it's property development or whether it's poker machines—and I'll get on to that in a minute—but whatever it is the difficulty is always with the community because the community are always the volunteers who are leading discussion on behalf of their community against some form of business interest or professional interest or even local interest who are better funded than they are. That's just inevitably going to happen. So the problem here isn't fixing the alcohol law or the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012; the problem here is to find a way that councils can equitably put plans in place and involve their community in making those decisions without the community having to spend an inordinate amount of money getting there. I want to just touch on the challenges that we found for example with the licensing of poker machines in local communities. What effectively happens is you have advocates for and against the poker machine locations—and this is exactly what we're trying to do with the alcohol bill here. You then have a whole lot of poker machine operators and they could well be the alcohol store operators who are advocating on their behalf in retaining the number of poker machines. So when a council puts a cap on the number of poker machines they effectively create cartels because effectively you've got a group of people who have got control of those poker machines and the tighter you make it the more money those people make. Simple as that. The point I'm going to make is that making legislation and regulation to drop consumption and use of things doesn't work. I'll go to the cigarette industry right now to quote that. When I was young you could buy a pack of cigarettes for 50c; they now cost $37 for the same packet of cigarettes. And do you know who buys them? The people who can't afford them generally not the people who can. The people who can't afford them are the people who buy cigarettes. And so we're doing the same in that industry: we restrict the number of outlets for cigarettes; it doesn't make any difference to the people who buy them because they'll still go to the outlet that sells them. The difference is that they'll have to travel to get them. So my point is that the only thing that I think has created a huge opportunity in respect of the tobacco industry is education and the fact that we're now able to I guess quantify the harm they do as well as stop people from smoking. My argument is the same thing would apply to alcohol.Having said all that I just want to go back to a point that was raised earlier in respect of the way this legislation is structured. Because if you have a local alcohol plan and if you change the law in the manner this bill is proposing to do so you'll end up with the potential for a perfectly legitimate business—you could look at something like the Hokowhitu Village wines and spirits who have been there for probably 50-odd years or 45 years in Hokowhitu Village in Palmerston North. They could easily find that as part of the local alcohol plan they suddenly are not a legitimate part of that plan. That business that's operated for years and years could suddenly find that the next time they reapply for their licence they've lost their licence simply because the local alcohol plan contains content that precludes them from operating in that manner. I want to just go to something else that was raised in the course of this and I'm reading it quite modern now. [Member reads from mobile phone] I've never done this in the House before but I want to read a little piece out of a district alcohol plan and it's talking—Andrew Bayly: You're a quite techno grandfather.IAN McKELVIE: Yes I know. It talks about who can object to an application for an alcohol licence: A person may object to the grant of a licence only if he or she has a greater interest in the application [for it] than the public generally. You would be considered to have a greater interest if you lived close to the proposed premises operated a business or organisation close to the premises or had some other close connection with the proposed premises." When you read that it's quite clear that the current licensing system allows an equitable group of people to contest that licence. I don't see any reason why someone who lives in Taumarunui for example should be able to oppose a licence for someone who lives in Ōhākune which is 100 kilometres away. So this this bill in my view is just replicating what is already legitimate in the law. I go back to the point I raised earlier about the fact that almost all council plans from the annual plan to whatever plan we've got have inequity in them that the Government are trying to fix. And this particular bill in respect of alcohol which they've also tried to fix in recent days in respect of other issues—it needs to be generally reviewed and the whole collective way we go about these plans and giving communities voices in them needs to be changed. So having said all that we basically oppose the bill for some of the reasons I've outlined. I think it was said earlier by one of the Government members that they hope they can put it in order so that we might support it at the second reading. Well I hope they can too but they certainly won't be able to if it's got the content that's in it at the moment. Thank you Madam Speaker."