Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Well I do agree with the member Su'a William Sio in one respect: this is not a wonderful bill. There are plenty of other bills passed by this Parliament put forward by the Government that are wonderful. This is a sensible technical bill that makes basically remedial changes to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act and of course the major change is to allow low-alcohol and non-alcoholic beer wine and mead products to be displayed in a single area of the supermarket. We have this bizarre situation at the moment where these products which people are increasingly turning to as an alternative to traditional alcohol products—particularly beer—have to be displayed not in the single area of the supermarket that Parliament legislated for in the 2012 alcohol and liquor reforms but in basically the fruit juice and fizzy drinks section of the supermarket. We have this absurd situation where people go to the single alcohol section in order to pick up a 12-pack or a bottle of wine expecting to find alternative products that they may wish to drink instead but they cannot find them. So of course what the bill does is essentially clear up that piece of—I guess you would say it was an oversight in the 2012 legislation. Although interestingly the popularity of low-alcohol and non-alcoholic products has really rapidly increased in the last 3 or 4 years. You do see people at parties and social events increasingly choosing those low-alcohol products as a substitute and that is a good thing. We had a bit of a debate at the Justice and Electoral Committee about whether or not these products were substitutive or additive which is a sort of complicated way of asking: do people drink less full-alcohol products or do they just drink more generally? Do they have a few full-alcohol beers and then also drink low-alcohol beers at the same time thus increasing their overall alcohol consumption? There was a view put forward by one of the lobby groups in this space Alcohol Healthwatch that it is actually additive—that people actually end up drinking more. No evidence was actually provided for that as is often the way with Alcohol Healthwatch but that was the view that was put forward. Actually the sales figures and the market research shows that people are actually substituting full-alcohol products for low-alcohol products and certainly that is the anecdotal experience that I see around the place. This is a sensible bill. Su'a William Sio talked about how it does not go far enough and we heard a tired refrain that we often hear from the Labour members about how they are going to tackle our drinking culture and how we need to do more—we need to change default closing hours we need to tackle our drinking culture and things like that. But I just make the simple point which I have made in this House on a few occasions that it is actually important to have a look at facts in this situation. There is a lot of rhetoric about drinking culture in New Zealand. There is a lot of rhetoric and words said about binge drinking in particular. The actual fact is that alcohol consumption in New Zealand is at a 30-year low. The actual fact is that youth drinking is declining and has been for 10 years. The actual fact is that drink-drinking and youth drink-driving are down. The number of young people who say they binge drink or drink to excess is declining and has been for 10 years. So before we get a little bit carried away with the rhetoric about how we need to impose even more Draconian restrictions on alcohol it is helpful to actually start with the facts. Actually that is often not what members opposite do in this House particularly the Labour Party. This is not some wonderful piece of transformative world-changing legislation. The members of the press gallery would like Parliament to consider those pieces of legislation constantly on a 24/7 basis but actually sometimes the work of parliamentarians is making those necessary and technical changes to the law that will make a difference and this bill essentially clears up an oversight in the 2012 legislation. I think it is going to have unanimous support going through the House. It certainly did going through the select committee. I commend the bill to the House.