Barker Rick: Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Barker Rick: Sale of Liquor Amendment Bill (No 2) — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:12348] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Associate Minister of Justice) 
: 
 There are several things that I would like to draw to members’ attention. The first is a Supplementary Order Paper in my name that seeks to deal with the sale of Chinese rice wine or cooking condiments. It has been accepted for quite some time that these types of wines are undrinkable. They have not attracted excise duty because in customs terms they are denatured which means that they have had substantial amounts of salt added to them that therefore renders them undrinkable. Because they are undrinkable they are not excisable and because they are not excisable people did not think that they were covered by the Sale of Liquor Act. However investigations by some others have determined that they are covered by the Sale of Liquor Act. They are not a medicine and cannot be considered a medicine so the Sale of Liquor Act has to deal with them. 
In Supplementary Order Paper 198 I propose that these condiments can be sold as part of an off-licence under section 37(3) and that they can be sold in the likes of supermarkets. This is a similar amendment to that which Pansy Wong also foreshadowed and therefore we are talking along similar lines. I recommend my Supplementary Order Paper to members. 
The second amendment in the name of Pansy Wong seeks to extend the sale of these condiments to a broader range of shops. This falls foul of a second problem for us concerning the  
Lopdell 
v 
 Deli Holdings Ltd 
 decision. I recommend to the Committee that we oppose this amendment. There is some confusion in the Sale of Liquor Act about people having the ability to sell liquor. In the past people have been granted liquor licences when their principal business is food but their shops are not supermarkets. This is an issue and the court has ruled that where the principal business is food and the place is not a supermarket people cannot sell liquor. There are some complex issues at the back of this that I do not want to go into at this stage but I signal to members that it is my intention to come back some time later with a bill that will deal with those issues. I do not wish to deal with them today. Because the second amendment in Pansy Wong’s name goes into this area I propose that we vote against it. 
There is another amendment in the name of Brian Connell. He is seeking to knock out the provision that will deal with controlled purchase operations. I have heard that the basis of the amendment is the ACT party’s view that this is entrapment. But in my view the ACT party does not quite appreciate that Parliament has already passed legislation that has a similar arrangement in it—the smoking legislation. For a long time police have sent people who are underage into liquor establishments to see whether liquor would be sold to them as a means of testing whether the law is being complied with. 
Similar things have been happening with regard to smoking but in the case of smoking it is provided for in legislation. When one of these cases came before the court it was argued that by the police using—without the authority of the law—someone underage they were aiding and abetting the breaking of the law. The court said that that was wrong. This change in the law seeks to give police the ability to have a controlled purchase operation to ensure that people are selling liquor correctly to those who are aged 18 years and over. Let us be clear that if people vote for Brian Connell’s amendment they will take from the police a very powerful tool for enforcing Parliament’s wish. I say to members unequivocally that I am totally opposed to Brian Connell’s amendment and I support the bill as it stands. 
There are a couple of other issues. The first is that there are two other minor amendments that seek to change some of the dates on which these provisions come into effect. One will be the date on which the bill receives the royal assent changed to 1 April principally to enable the provision that will allow wineries to sell their own wine on Easter Sunday from this Easter. I think that that is a good idea. This amendment will give effect to that. 
The other amendment in the name of Mr Catchpole is to delete “15 percent” and reduce it to “7.5 percent”. I recommend to members that we vote against that amendment for two reasons. Firstly the current competition poll is set at 15 percent and I see no logic to have one poll at 7.5 percent and the other at 15 percent. Secondly in the very next new section 219F there is another threshold whereby the number of electors requesting a poll has to pass 15 percent and it is remaining unaltered. If we change one threshold to 7.5 percent as recommended by Mr Catchpole and have all the other thresholds at 15 percent we will simply create anomalies in the legislation for no useful purpose. 
I have one last point to make in relation to the comments made by Mr Hide. He has a couple of amendments that basically set out to de-license licensing trusts. Mr Hide has argued that Parliament should not make decisions about these that this should be simply a matter of principle and that we should let the market decide. On this side of the Chamber—and I recommend this to the Chamber as well—we believe that the public should decide. Licensing trusts are set up by a public ballot and the provisions make it very easy for the public to exercise a ballot for trusts to either maintain their monopoly licence or to lose it. On two occasions the Waitakere Licensing Trust has gone to a ballot and the people of Waitakere have made their decision. They want a licensing trust to be in the area and for it to have exclusive rights. A similar thing has happened in Invercargill. My view and the Government’s view—and I hope the rest of the Committee’s view—is that if the public want a licensing trust to have monopoly rights then the public should decide. Mr Hide and the ACT party should not tell the public what they can and cannot have. That is the Government’s view on that. Labour supports the legislation as it stands.