Williams Poto: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Rugby World Cup 2015 Extended Trading Hours) Amendment Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6219. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Firstly I want to acknowledge David Seymour and congratulate him on this bill—your first member’s bill Mr Seymour. Secondly I want to acknowledge the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee and I want to acknowledge the work that was done by people behind the scenes to do the best that they could to bring this bill to the House. I know there was a lot of discussion at the meeting—it was a great collaborative process—however the bill that has come to the House is slightly different from the one that was recommended and I think that is a shame because it did address many concerns that those of us around the House have had and have discussed here this evening.I also want to talk about matters of licensing and matters of this nature—the ability to have a conscience vote. I want to thank our whips team for allowing a process to occur where members were able to cast a personal vote because I do not support this bill and I wanted the opportunity to express my reasons for doing so and for justifying why I am not supporting this bill. I could not in all good conscience being a former victim advocate for the family violence sector stand up here and support a piece of legislation that allows access to alcohol in the way that this bill does. I want to advise that my contribution will be around the relationship between alcohol alcoholharm and family and domestic violence and the perfect storm that is formed when we put something like a national sports extravaganza as the Rugby World Cup will be into the mix.I want to just supply some statistics in the debate and to advise people that I know that these statistics are not unknown to many of us but there are over 101000 family violence investigations by the police each year. Having run a women’s refuge in the past and having had access to each and every one of what were known then as the POL 400—the police investigations—I know that in half of those investigations by the police when you get the police summaries they have what members who were previously police will know is a notation of 1K which indicates the presence of alcoholin a family violence situation. So we are talking about at least 50000 incidents of family violence that are directly connected to the misuse of alcohol.Women’s Refuge—from the statistics of the National Collective of Independent Women’s Refuges—takes nearly 80000 calls a year from women mostly who are impacted by family violence. We add to this the impact on the children in our families. Child Youth and Family receives nearly 150000 reports of concern each year and about one-third of those require further action. I want to talk about our children in this debate. The chief social worker Paul Nixon talks about the unholy trinity that impacts the safety of our kids. The unholy trinity is mental health family violence and alcohol and substance abuse. Add to that that we know that anyone who is involved in a significant family violence situation at home is obviously also impacted by sexual violence as well.Let us add all of this together—the fact that we have this huge prevalence of family violence—to the fact that we put alcohol in the mix. I was also really concerned to hear the member from the other side of the House say that binge drinking is not harmful in this country. I wanted to say actually—in fact I did shout it across the House at the time—that the statistics from the Health Promotion Agency in New Zealand are very clear that one in five drinkers in the past year has had hazardous drinking patterns and that 26 percent of men who were drinkers in the past year are more likely to have had hazardous drinking patterns than women. Among past-year drinkers hazardous drinking was most common amongst men and women aged 18 to 24 years and men aged between 18 and 34 years had a particularly high rate of hazardous drinking at over 40 percent. So there is no doubt in my mind that we do have an issue with alcohol. We have an issue withalcohol which then becomes an issue in the home with family violence with 50000 at least of family violence investigations in New Zealand involving alcohol.Alcoholis a contributing factor.Then we have to add to that the fact that when New Zealand plays well all is well in the home but when New Zealand does not play well all is not well in the home. Jono Naylor mentioned that after a loss that the New Zealand rugby team had had at one of the previous Rugby World Cups there was sense of depression in the country; and I agree there was. However I was working at the time for a single-parents organisation called Birthright and I recall engaging with women in particular who had in the family home as direct result of their partner’s team not winning that particular rugby game an increase in family violence. So I cannot stand here and support this bill knowing that allowing premises to open for longer and permitting them to sell alcoholfor much longer periods of time in the morning is not conducive to family harmony.The other thing I cannot reconcile with is the fact that members in this House have been talking about children going to licensed premises in the morning and it being OK for them to be part of the normalisation of alcoholin our families. It is not OK. It is not OK to think that it is fine to take your kids into situations like that. Why have we not actually thought about those clubs and those sports venues that would be able to open and show these games to all and sundry and not sell alcohol? Why are we not supporting that to happen? What we are supporting here is businesses to profit from the misery of families and I cannot put that point strongly enough. I am along with my colleague Meka Whaitiri one of the only voices here to speak against this bill—and I totally tautoko the stance of the Green Party on this.The last thing I want to say is that this matter should be about conscience and we should not be saying to members of the House that their values do not count in this debate. It has really distressed me to hear that because our values do count and I will continue to support the women the children and the men who are impacted by family violence in this country. I will not support this bill and I am really disappointed that this process has been so truncated that many of these concerns could not be raised in the appropriate way. Kia ora and thank you.