Hague Kevin: Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Sale and Supply of Alcohol Bill Local Government (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill Summary Offences (Alcohol Reform) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 11 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7356. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I want to begin by quoting the Law Commission from the foreword of its report  
Alcohol in our Lives: Curbing the Harm 
. It says: “The principle under which we have approached this review is that New Zealanders live in a free and democratic society. They are subject only to such limitation in their freedom as can be justified in such a society. They have liberty to behave as they choose as long as their actions respect the rights of others and are not contrary to the law. Public policy decisions that are made to restrict activity have to be justified by strong arguments that it is in the public interest that individuals and corporations do not exercise their freedom in particular ways. We believe the recommendations in this report meet that test.” 
At the heart of the debate we have been holding in this House over months and indeed years is a disagreement about where the limits to individual liberty should lie. In general this House has moved to limit personal liberty where it has threatened harm or cost to society itself; where it threatens harm to others particularly without their consent; and where harm is threatened to the individuals themselves. For example we insist on seatbelts in cars not so much because of the cost of health care that society would incur but because of the risk of injury to the wearer. We limit personal liberty in all of those circumstances. 
The Law Commission’s report goes on to document considerable harm caused by alcohol consumption to those who drink it the people they interact with and the wider society including those who have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong. One in three New Zealand drinkers for example report being harmed by their own drinking in the past year alone. At least a third of all recorded offences that the police deal with are committed by someone who has been consuming alcohol. Over a thousand deaths a year are related to alcohol along with untold illness and injury. And most of this harm is sustained by those communities that are already marginalised by poverty racism and other factors. Alcohol magnifies and compounds that harm. 
I am not a wowser. I do not believe in prohibition. I enjoy a few drinks and I would say that I derive some benefit from them. But those benefits that are derived by those of us who do enjoy a few drinks must be weighed against the very considerable harms that are done to our society by alcohol. There is plenty of evidence to support most of the Law Commission’s recommendations. There has been one particularly powerful report  
Alcohol: No Ordinary Commodity: Research and Public Policy 
 by Babor and others on behalf of the World Health Organization in 2003 where experts ranked possible interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm based on reliable evidence. I will not run through all of the actions that they rank but the most effective actions that Governments can take are a suite of actions that are grouped as regulation of physical ability—so where alcohol can be purchased when it can be purchased and so on—increasing alcohol taxes and lowering blood-alcohol limits for driving. 
There is also very strong evidence around advertising and sponsorship yet our Government has essentially chosen to take very little or no action in precisely these areas that would have most effect on reducing alcohol-related harm. It has also chosen to take little or no action in the areas that the Law Commission has recommended and prioritised. Instead the Government has focused on preserving maximal individual liberty totally without evidence of effectiveness. So focused has it been on this one area that in most cases it has not been willing to even try to influence the individual choices that New Zealand citizens make. Alcohol under this set of bills will in most cases continue to be available more or less anywhere any time. Consumers will still be bathed in alcohol marketing wherever they go. Alcohol will continue to be available cheaper than milk. We will continue to allow much more drinking before driving than most countries. There will not even be any information on alcohol labels—so much for the market theory—and penalties for selling alcohol to those who are under age will remain pathetically weak. The approach taken by the Government is more like a game show based on exposing competitors to extreme temptation than a serious attempt at healthy public policy. I wonder who the survivors will be. 
Some of the elements of the Government’s response have no evidence at all to support them. In the Babor review there was no evidence that voluntary codes of practice for bars had any effect at all yet that is precisely the approach that the Government now favours around ready-to-drinks. Others of the Government’s responses show a stubborn refusal to learn from the experience of other countries in a form of New Zealand exceptionalism. Here for example are the countries that already have blood-alcohol limits of 0.5 milligrams per millilitre or less: Australia Austria Belgium the Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Iceland Israel Italy Japan the Netherlands Norway Poland Portugal the Slovak Republic South Korea Spain Sweden Switzerland and Turkey. But no we will stand with the Americans. Where they go we go. 
Interestingly the approach that the Government has adopted is more or less exactly what the Hospitality Association lobbied for and other parts of the alcohol industry thought they might be able to get away with. That match of Government policy to industry demands is becoming disturbingly familiar. We see it in the Government’s interactions with the food industry with the Aussie banks with the roading lobby with the big carbon polluters and so on. So ironically under the guise of individual liberty the Government has actually ceded control of our economy society and environment more and more to major commercial interests at the expense of human ones and at the expense of the collective good. 
The Green Party stands instead for an economy set up to deliver on our collective social and environmental goals. We stand for a society in which we all look after each other. We stand for a society that is prepared to limit individual liberty and constrain corporate interests in order to protect itself and each one of us from harm and cost. The relationship that New Zealand society has with alcohol is a sick one. The harm associated with that dysfunction is massive and the mandate exists from the New Zealand public for substantial change. The Law Commission has given what history suggests will turn out to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity to limit that harm. We remain frustrated and disappointed that the Government has chosen not to take up that opportunity. We will vote for this legislation because it is a step in the right direction but it is a baby step when a giant stride was needed.