Henderson EmilyDr EMILY HENDERSON (Labour—Whangārei): Kia ora e te Māngai o te Whare. I want to open my contribution to this debate by congratulating the Minister for doing something that has been long sought by many in our community over many many years. Ever since the Act itself was passed in 2012 it has been a matter of great disappointment to many of our communities around New Zealand because what they watched was a bill that was supposed to put the power to determine how many and where the alcohol outlets should be where it should be which is in the hands of the community. That bill was not capable of achieving its aim because it was stymied and it was able to be stymied by the use of the legal process in a way that was impossible to combat for community organisations. This bill by removing the power to appeal cuts that red tape cuts that long delay and enables councils to get on with the job of doing what their communities want them to do in controlling liquor outlets and reducing the pernicious influence of alcohol in our community. So just to give you a sense 12 years after the Act was enacted two-thirds of Kiwis still do not have local alcohol policies. And that's not for want of trying: 86 percent of attempts at local alcohol policies were appealed by supermarkets and 73 percent by bottle stores. We only have 5 percent of Kiwis who are actually covered by a local alcohol policy and that is despite 12 years of community attempts.When my colleagues and the previous speakers spoke about those 420 citizens and organisations who came before us to talk many of them were local activists and local advocates who had been volunteering and donating their time to try to get through the alcohol policies that they as a community wanted—it's about community voice—but had been unable to do so. It was greatly useful to us on the committee that we not only had those voices both from the liquor outlets and the hospitality industry and the organisations that wished to open outlets but we had those grassroots community organisations. We had also the benefit of a great experience in amongst our Labour colleagues and I do want to call out my colleagues Arena Williams and Lemauga Lydia Sosene who have immense practical and long-term experience in trying to negotiate good sensible alcohol policies within their local communities.So the first thing of the three major things this bill does is to remove that ability to use the normal appeal process to the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority. But—and this seems to have somewhat slipped the attention of some of our members of the committee on the National side—it does not remove the ability for these matters to be judicially reviewed because it retains the judicial review. Now a judicial review is a tougher type of appeal process. What you're looking at is not the strength of the decision but of the processes and the legality of the processes that were gone through to get there. So what it is about is the fairness of the decision-making process. It is a really rigorous process. It takes place in the High Court only and I can tell you as an ex-lawyer and having run judicial reviews it's tough work and it is highly scrutinised. So should councils get it wrong or people feel that councils have got it wrong there will be this extraordinary thing that they can do: the judicial review. But in other circumstances we are going to prevent the tying up in the courts the Bleak House type scenario the Jarndyce and Jarndyce situation of over-expensive litigation that prevents communities having their way in their own rohe.The second thing it does is make it easier for communities to speak. So it enables community participation as has been said. It opens up those who can participate and who can make submissions. Now just to make it clear because the suggestion has been someone from Invercargill might come to Tāmaki and make a submission—they can make a submission perhaps but it is up to the district licensing committees (DLC) as to how much weight they put on the submission from someone from Invercargill. So you know it is not that someone from Invercargill will be dictating process in Tāmaki although I have to say it is clear from the submissions that the DLCs themselves do need to pay greater attention to the links of mana whenua and frankly greater attention to tikanga in making their decisions. The third thing we have done is to make hearings more accessible because anyone who has been through a court process knows that it is legalistic difficult and intimidating. And we heard that again and again from the community grassroots activists who have been doing this work. We had for example Vanushi Walters who spoke about the submitter Sarah who brought the example of the cross-examination. And I do briefly want to touch on this because cross-examination is something I know a fair bit about. It is often regarded and it was regarded by a number of our submitters and a number of people during the process as a wonderful process that is absolutely vital to justice and should never be removed. The truth is we have so much research that says cross-examination is pretty much the worst form of questioning you can get. It is complicated usually antagonistic it is very scary and even the most robust adults—and I'm talking people who are say judges themselves who have come under cross-examination or expert witnesses—talk about just how impossible and how tied up and confused they become under cross-examination. It is not a necessary process and I'm very happy as someone who has spent a lifetime working on justice reform to see it go in this context.So on that note this is a fabulous fabulous thing that is putting the power in our community where it should be: back in that same community. I commend it to the House.