Hide Rodney: Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hide Rodney: Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
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RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 It is up to the ACT party again to stand up and ruin the party we are having here tonight because we will be opposing the Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill. I certainly consider the abuse of alcohol to be one of the most serious problems that we face in terms of behaviour. Interestingly it is far more serious than the abuse of illicit drugs. Members should think of all the outrage over cannabis yet there is no doubt that alcohol abuse kills far more people causes far more personal despair and upset and indeed does more social damage than for example cannabis. Alcohol abuse is in our culture and members do not have to go very far from this place to see it. Indeed I think there is some irony in members of Parliament lecturing New Zealanders about the abuse of alcohol and about how it should be prevented. 
Let us get back to the fundamental issue: we have a problem with the abuse of alcohol and the social consequences of that abuse. I do not believe there is a member in this House who believes that this bill will make one jot of difference; I do not believe there is one. But we are all standing up here to vote for it because we want to be seen to be doing something about a serious problem. I think members of this House have travelled to countries that absolutely restrict the sale of alcohol. I am thinking of the former Soviet Union where alcohol was State-controlled and very very hard to get. No one would have seen drunkenness there unless he or she had been to Moscow in the bad old days. 
People can go across to countries like France and Italy and get alcohol in every street at all hours of the day at every outlet known to man and we do not see any drunkenness. What is the difference? It is not the number of outlets or whether a social impact assessment has been done; it is actually the attitude of people to alcohol and indeed their respect for themselves and for others. The number of outlets and the mechanisms we go through for that number of outlets makes no difference. 
I will give members another example from right here in New Zealand. We can jump up and down all we like about cannabis and we can pass all the laws we like to oppose it but that will not stop people using or abusing cannabis. In fact we find that cannabis can be easily obtained in most of our jails. So how can we pass laws to stop people abusing alcohol? We had Prohibition and we had terribly restrictive laws with 6 o’clock closing. Are people telling us that back then we did not have alcohol abuse? Of course we had alcohol abuse. The problem is within us. The problem is within our attitude to alcohol. The problem is that we are bringing up our young people to look forward to a Friday night where they can get “wasted”. That is the difficulty that we have—the idea that the best thing that people have to look forward to is getting wasted. 
We cannot pass a law to change that behaviour by saying we should restrict the number of off-licences or on-licences or we should restrict particular drugs. We need to be addressing the social problems and the underlying attitudes that people particularly young people have. We are just creating another complicated process with more boxes to tick and more arguments to be had over whether a particular person can sell alcohol in a particular place. We will have a thing called a social impact analysis. Consultants will be employed to do a social impact analysis and say that yes the social impacts are positive and others will be employed to say that no it is negative. We will have a bunch of people trying to work out what the truth of it is because there is no objective measure by which one can do a social impact analysis. 
The ACT party opposes this bill because it will not make a jot of difference. I commend George Hawkins. He is a very good local MP. He probably has more respect on this side of the Chamber than he has in his own caucus and the measure of the man is such that he has support for this bill. But I am afraid that that will make no difference. The ACT party opposes pretend laws that are designed to have no effect other than a political one.