Lees-Galloway Iain: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6075. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 When Parliament debated the purchase age for alcohol I voted for change. I voted for the split age. When that failed I then changed my vote to support a purchase age of 18 but I really wanted to see us change to a split age. I thought there was a lot of merit in the split age proposal. However members may recall that I said during that debate that we were placing far too much emphasis and far too much focus on age as the sole source of redemption for Parliament when it comes to trying to address alcohol harm. The Government has done a very good job of singling out that issue and framing the debate around alcohol reform as a debate about age. I congratulate the Government on the framing the messaging and the marketing that it has done around that because it has been a superb effort on its part to distract the debate and the public from the weakness and the timidity of other parts of this so-called Alcohol Reform Bill. 
Although I voted for change when we had the opportunity to vote on the age I will not be supporting Hone Harawira’s Supplementary Order Paper 121 which seeks a 5-year review of the purchase age of alcohol because I think we have had that debate and it is done. It may be a good principle to review all legislation every 5 years. That may be a good principle. I know that other members have discussed that as being something that we ought to do. If that is a good principle then we should apply it to all legislation. It may be that we need to review this legislation specifically after 5 years. Indeed I think that once we have a stronger and more visionary Government than we have at the moment alcohol law will be reviewed by a future Government. It may be appropriate to apply that 5-year review to all of the changes that are being made or are being proposed and may fail during this debate. 
 But to single out this single issue of age I think continues that framing of this debate around alcohol harm as being one about age. I think it would be unfortunate for us to continue along in that vein because this is not solely about age which is the whole point of the debate we are having this afternoon. This is not just about age. It is about advertising it is about drink-driving it is about the supply of alcohol it is about parental responsibility and it is about the price of alcohol—it is about all sorts of factors. Age is not the only one and it should not be top of the list. It certainly is an issue that we could have addressed and we could have done something but we chose not to and if we chose not to and we are not going to review any other parts of the legislation then I do not see why we should review this particular part of the legislation. 
I was concerned at Denis O’Rourke’s comment that this is one of the best Supplementary Order Papers one of the best amendments we will consider today. It is not. It is absolutely not one of the best amendments we will consider today. There are many more meaningful purposeful evidence-based amendments that we will consider—[ 
Interruption 
]—I may have a couple in there but there are others as well that are not in my name that I will be looking forward to supporting and debating. Age is not the most important issue but that is the message the public is getting—that age is the most important issue—and we need to move on from that. We need to move on from that and that is why we cannot support this amendment and we cannot put up with comments like that about this being the most important Supplementary Order Paper. We need to actually focus on the other things that members are proposing in this legislation that will actually do something about our alcohol harm problem that we have in New Zealand. 
So although I think we are going to need to review this legislation and although I think a 5-year statutory review of the Alcohol Reform Bill might be a good way forward I cannot support singling out the issue of age any further.