Flavell Te Ururoa: Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7362. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
Tena koe. Kia ora tatau katoa e te Whare. A ka mihi ra ki a tataui a tatau e wananganeiitenei o ngapire e paana ki te waipiro. 
[ 
Thank you. Greetings to us all the House. I acknowledge us as we address this of the bills here relating to alcohol. 
] 
I am pleased to take a short call on behalf of the Maori Party to raise a couple of issues in this final reading of the alcohol reform legislation. I listened to the member Charles Chauvel and his mention of Doug Sellman. I too want to acknowledge the background work that he did with the Maori Party in providing us with some solid information and statistics which were helpful certainly to the Supplementary Order Papers that I presented to the House as well. 
Up until this point in time we have supported—pretty much—the general passage of this legislation. It has been wide-ranging legislation covering off a fairly substantive change to some legislation to do with alcohol and that has been pleasing because it has opened the door up to the big discussion. We supported it along the way because we believed that we gained some concessions to the Maori Party and also as I say to allow that debate to happen. But we really do believe that we must focus on the long-term outlook the intergenerational shift which will ensure that we reduce alcohol-related harm right across the whanau. 
We advocated for significant investment in the sector targeted at alcohol treatment services. We were pleased that the Government moved in this way with a $10 million announcement. We also supported the proposal for a cross-agency advertising and sponsorship review as recommended by the Law Commission. We are particularly supportive of the Law Commission’s advice that alcohol advertising and sponsorship could be addressed by limiting product information to sort of a plain format pretty much like what the Hon Tariana Turia has done in terms of addressing issues of tobacco and health-related issues with that. 
We are however disappointed that we have not gone far enough. In that regard we say that we have not gone far enough because we have attempted through the Maori Party to look at what we have termed “social hazards”: one to do with alcohol of course and the others to do with tobacco and gambling. The Hon Tariana Turia has certainly looked at the whole issue of tobacco and plain packaging is coming our way I hope in the near future. The gambling legislation in my name is a member’s bill and we are hoping to have some major changes in respect of the legislation on that. And of course here we are talking about the alcohol reforms. 
The question was asked: why is the Maori Party taking a pretty strong stand on what we have termed social hazards? It is pretty much because it recognises that they are having a huge effect on Maori society throughout the country. It is not as if it has just happened; it has been over time. For those who did not know Maori society is one of the few societies where the history prior to the arrival of the settler group was that we were basically free of alcohol. Indeed the term that is used for alcohol now is waipiro which is basically “stinking water”. Although people do get off on a bit of alcohol now and again the effects have been pretty traumatic and manifest themselves in all sorts of ways which have been debated in the Chamber as we have gone through this legislation. 
We are disappointed that the local alcohol plans remain voluntary. The liberalisation of alcohol sales opening up supermarket sales extending opening hours reducing the minimum purchase age to 18 and increased numbers and increased densities of outlets have all pretty much compounded the problem. 
So we tended to put our energies into tabling various amendments which included the following: make the proximity to a school a criterion for determining liquor licences and adding Maori representation to local committees—the local committees to be expanded out by one person to accommodate mana whenua representation. We wanted to limit the visibility of advertising in grocery stores and grocery shops so that the products are not visible in the store but they are able to be sold. We talked about eliminating advertising and sponsorship of alcohol except inside on licensed premises bars etc. We talked about a sinking-lid policy on off-licence retailers and liquor stores within territorial authorities. Basically the replacement of existing stores is the only exception and only if there is not another liquor store within 5 kilometres of that store. We talked about changing trading hours to 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for off-site premises and 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. for on-site premises with a one-way door restriction period between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. and a minimum price per unit of alcohol sold which will be set by the Ministry of Health. This follows a similar model that they proposed in Scotland. 
So those are some of the amendments that we put up. Unfortunately most of them got slammed down and did not go too far despite the fact that there was relatively positive support across the House for some of those general ideas and we had slight variations on those themes. The legislation could have gone a little further and we are voting against it at this third reading because we think we could have done much better. We need to start thinking about the bigger picture of alcohol harm. It is not just about what we drink it is about how we drink it is about who we drink with and we need to take the communities with us. 
In closing one of the recommendations from  
He Tete Kura: Maori Addiction Treatment 1980-2008 
 tells us that there are three specific aspects to how we can work together to reduce and prevent alcohol-related harm. They are to build strengthen and maintain links with whanau hapu iwi and the community and the sector around the country; secondly explicitly foster a collective whanau approach in the Maori addiction treatment sector and workforce; and finally work more as a unified and collective sector to achieve whanau ora for Maori with addiction-related issues and problems. 
If we were able to move in that direction to deal with some of the issues that we clearly have to address in terms of alcohol the Maori Party would have been far more positive about giving support to this legislation. Sure there are some good things in it that address some of the issues that have long been out there but we think we could have done better bearing in mind it is probably going to be a while before we come back to address the issue of alcohol in the future. It would have been an awesome opportunity if Parliament was able to look at some of those amendments that I and other members of the House were able to put up but it was not to be this time. We hope that the debate on record now serves as a good platform for future debate should a further attempt come up in the near future around reforming our alcohol laws. At this point in time we will not be supporting this legislation at its third reading. Thank you.