Naylor Jono: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6210. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): It is a great pleasure to rise to take another call on this bill so quickly after we have had the second reading. Some of the members who are here will remember that before we went to the dinner break I talked about the importance of why we should have this legislation. I talked about the importance of the games and I talked about the importance of sport in New Zealand and people’s ability to be able to watch it. I do not want to rehash all the same stories that I told in my last speech because I am sure that people do not want to hear about my cricket-watching escapade of 1983 so I will try to focus a little bit more on the bill. I know that Jo Hayes wants to hear the story. I will have to tell her later but that is all right.Given the truncated process that we have had to follow in order to meet the time lines associated with the Rugby World Cup looming so quickly I believe that it is important in the absence of the Committee stage and in the absence of perhaps a longer period for submissions that we ensure that we cover the bases well tonight and that we go through the bill very well in its third reading. What I want to start with though is really outlining some of the key issues that the Justice and Electoral Committee faced as a select committee as we went through this process. There was certainly a good level of debate and I have to say that it was probably one of the most enjoyable experiences that I have had in a select committee since being in Parliament in terms of people basically working constructively to try to find a way through and to find a sensible outcome for what is probably going to be a reasonably important event—well hopefully an extremely important event—for New Zealand in a few weeks’ time. It was a very constructive select committee process where we explored the various upsides and downsides of having this kind of legislation. I guess obviously the fact that we are all voting for this bill in so many numbers this evening indicates that we have arrived at a point where we think we have achieved the right balance and that we are going to get a good piece of legislation that is going to serve the people of New Zealand well.I just want to stress again though that this bill is not about enabling people to drink. This is a bill that is about enabling people to take part in what is an important event in a sporting sense but also in terms of being a community event. So that is what this is. Unfortunately there are not too many premises that are not licensed that are available for people to watch this kind of thing in a public setting and so that is why we are addressing this through a licensed premises piece of legislation to enable people to go along and quietly enjoy the games. There will be some shouting I am sure particularly if we score a few tries but the point of this legislation is not to cut across the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act; no one is intending to do that. I do not necessarily think that we are compromising the principles of the Act by allowing places that are licensed to be able to be open for a short space of time to allow people to enjoy this event for a very specific period of time and for a very specific series of games and then move on.I guess the first thing that came up really was dealing with what is wrong with the special licence process. Mr Robertson in his contribution just before mine said that obviously there was concern about some of the variations in conditions that we have been seeing across the countrywhen people are applying for special licences with there being a sense of variation around the countryside. I think it is really critical that we get some sense of uniformity across the country. Some people do not deem it a special event unless people are wearing costumes; others do not deem it a special event unless it is a ticketed event. The difficulty is that when I think of the special conditions or the special licence provisions within the existing Act I think that they do not necessarily deal with the idea of a mass thing that is happening right across the countryside and is going to affect multiple licensed outlets.Mr Mitchell in his speech in the second reading talked about an event that he had organised which had 17000 people at it. I think that if someone were going to organise an event that had 17000 people at that one event at that one place we would all say that it was pretty easy—well it is not easy because he told us that it took 35 pages to apply for the special licence. But it is pretty direct and it is pretty noticeable what you have to do in order to get that special licence. Actually what we are going to get is a district licensing committee that deals with that one licence. But potentially what we would have is every licensed premises within a territorial local authority area applying for a special licence. Frankly I think that that is overly bureaucratic. They all would have to pay an extra fee for it. They all would have to do a whole lot of extra paperwork. We would probably find that the local council would have to put on extra staff to deal with this influx of special licence applications. So if by putting together a reasonably simple piece of legislation we can ensure that there is a sense of uniformity and a sense of basic provisions as to what needs to be put in place for people to televise these games that seems eminently sensible to me.I guess then the question is: why would we make it an amendment bill rather than an Act in its own right? Of course when we were weighing up the important principles that we needed to incorporate into this bill what we wanted to ensure was that we did not make it more permissive for people than the current legislation in the general sense. So instead of actually trying to incorporate into this piece of legislation all of those facets of licences it seemed much easier much simpler and much more straightforward to sort of bolt this on to the current legislation rather than importing into the bill a whole lot of bits from the original Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. So for simple streamlining purposes we wanted to do that. It means that the police and district licensing inspectors will essentially be policing the same kinds of conditions as well as these extra ones that we have put in. They will be able to ensure that people are trading safely are trading within the law and are trading within the boundaries that we as a society think are appropriate. So that is the purpose if you like of ensuring that this moves forward. It is straightforward and it is simple and easy to understand. People who have licences know how the Act works. They will find this amendment in it and will find out what they need to do. It is simple. They are not having to go and look for a special piece of legislation.I think the other important thing—and other speakers have touched on this but I do want to pick up on it—is that not everybody who currently holds a liquor licence will automatically get an extension to their hours for the purposes of the Rugby World Cup. We talked about this at great length in the select committee and I think there was pretty much universal agreement that if somebody has breached their conditions or has had their hours curtailed in the last 12 months because they have been behaving in a way that is contrary to their licence or more to the point contrary to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act—i.e. serving a minor serving somebody who was intoxicated or otherwise—they should not get one of these special licences. We felt that it is not appropriate to reward somebody who in the last 12 months has shown a lack of responsibility in the way that they operate their premises and so what we wanted to do was ensure that those people are not then able with carte blanche to just have an open-ended licence and move forward. So that is one thing that I think it is really important to note—that not everybody is going to get a special licence.When it comes to the idea of trading hours again this caused some complexity because of course the games do not necessarily run back to back. One game does not start as soon as the other one finishes. There might be some time in between games so there was a bit of a conversation about our needing to work out what was the most appropriate way to deal with games that would be spaced slightly apart. So what we said is that given it is probably going to be difficult for people to close down and open up again we have got no issue with there being a gapof less than 2 hours. Absolutely licence holders are going to have to close down and reopen if there is a gap of more than 2 hours between the games that they are screening. But if there is a gap of less than 2 hoursit would seem a little bit ludicrous to make them shut down given that they are allowed to be open or serve drinks for half an hour after the game and have everyone out within an hour and then they are allowed to open up again an hour beforehand.Having looked through the agenda of the games we thought about what the right sort of balance would be and we said that essentially if there are more than 2 hours between games then they will need to shut down and open again. I think that addresses some of the concerns of people who are concerned that people might arrive at a bar at 11 o’clock at night and stay there until 9 o’clock in the morning. I agree that this was not necessarily completely in tune with what we were trying to achieve. That may well happen in terms of some of the games but what we are trying to do is minimise harmwhere we can.I think that we have done some really good work over the last couple of weeks. It is a challenging idea to put together a piece of legislation this quickly. I commend the work that the select committee has done and I commend this bill to the House.