O'Rourke Denis: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
O'Rourke Denis: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6147. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First believes in local democracy and in fully empowered local government unlike the current Government. We say that local alcohol policies must be compulsory and that is the subject I wish to address in this speech. New clause 75 would provide that territorial local authorities develop local alcohol policies for their districts and would require that the development process for a draft has first of all consultation with police inspectors and medical officers of health. It would also require the draft policy developed in this way to go through the special consultative procedure set out in the Local Government Act so that the public can have their say too. New Zealand First believes that it is extremely important that public buy-in should be provided for because if the public does not support the regime for alcohol in their district then it is going to be compromised and that is very bad. 
It is also very important that a local alcohol policy and Government legislation should enable local attitudes to be reflected and local needs to be met because there are many and various districts and cities in this country which have widely different requirements and people with quite different attitudes and they should be reflected. There should be provision for that. These policies must under the bill as presented take into account a range of considerations such as a district plan with which the local alcohol policy would obviously have to be consistent; the number of liquor licences in the district; the opening hours and locations; also local alcohol by-laws; and most important I think tourism considerations and public health considerations. For those reasons it is therefore important that all territorial local authorities should have a local alcohol policy so that the residents of the district can have a real and substantial input into local alcohol policy-making. For that reason the local alcohol policies must be mandatory. It must be mandatory for each and every territorial authority in this country to have such a policy. I cannot understand the logic behind simply empowering local authorities to do so. That lets some of them off the hook and none of them should be let off the hook. It is an important matter for local communities and local authorities. Each and every one of them must have one and this legislation should make it mandatory. And it would not create any great imposition upon them to do so. It is fundamental to the welfare of their communities. It would not require a huge amount of money; they do a lot of this stuff already. So why not make it mandatory? I cannot see any reason why not. 
There are many competing interests in alcohol policy-making and a balance between commercial interests community interests public health and policing concerns will vary from one district to another and that balance must be achieved on a local basis which can happen only if there are mandatory requirements for these things to happen. Some districts have significant holiday locations such as Mount Maunganui Wanaka and Queenstown where there are special considerations because of the sheer scale of visitors to those places to celebrate occasions such as New Year’s Eve. 
The Government it seems to me has apparently bowed to commercial interests in not making the adoption of local alcohol policies compulsory. Community concerns are therefore I think being sidelined in favour of commercial interests because of this and the balance that I spoke of will not be achievable unless the requirement is mandatory for these policies to be produced. 
I would like in closing to refer to Supplementary Order Paper 80 in the name of Kevin Hague which replaces in clause 75(1) the word “may” with “must” and that is all it takes to do what I am asking for. In fact if Mr Hague had not put this Supplementary Order Paper in then New Zealand First would certainly have done so. He also proposes a number of consequential amendments to that but I would like to particularly refer to one of the other amendments he proposes in respect of clause 84(2) to delete paragraph (c) which relates to abandoning a policy that has already been developed. It seems to me to be utterly unbelievable that legislation should actually empower that to happen. Similarly in clause 86A there would be a power to discontinue the development of a policy. To me that is a breach of trust between the local authority and the community that it represents. How can the local authority go through all of these consultative procedures and then simply decide to give up midstream? As I said I think that is a breach of trust and is a most inappropriate provision that should be deleted as Mr Hague has proposed. 
Similarly in clause 91 we see another area in which a similar deletion is required. Mr Hague has proposed to replace subclause (1) with: “A territorial authority may by using the special consultative procedure revoke its local alcohol policy and adopt another in its place.” which excludes the possibility of simply revoking and not providing another one in its place. So it is very important that those provisions be adopted as well for all the reasons I have said. 
In conclusion New Zealand First believes very much in local democracy and that every local council must use that principle of local democracy to have a local alcohol policy that is fully consultative reflecting local needs and reflecting local attitudes. I would commend to the Committee the adoption of Mr Hague’s Supplementary Order Paper 80 to carry out those particular objectives which we think are so important.