Williams ArenaSALE AND SUPPLY OF ALCOHOL (HARM MINIMISATION) AMENDMENT BILLFirst ReadingDebate resumed from 7 December 2022.ARENA WILLIAMS (Labour—Manurewa): Mr Speaker kia ora. Talofa lava mālō e lelei bula vinaka fakaalofa lahi atu kia orana sat sri akaal salaam and warm South Auckland greetings to you and my colleagues around the House. Labour MPs tonight are voting in accordance with our conscience on this bill and if you'll allow me my time in the House tonight I'll tell you how my conscience and my community has led me to make my decision on how I will be exercising my vote tonight.This is a policy issue that I care about. The regulation of alcohol and the reduction of alcohol harm in communities was something that I worked on before entering Parliament and so it was a surprise to me in May 2021 when I was sitting on the stage in the Banquet Hall with the late Hon Chester Borrows who had worked on this issue during his parliamentary career. Fiona Patten member of the Victorian Legislative Council; Kathy Errington of the Helen Clark Foundation; and members of the New Zealand Drug Foundation were the packed audience of people who do this for a day job—they get up in the morning to help people recover and move on in their lives from addiction.I was right beside the member Chlöe Swarbrick who is in charge of this bill when she announced that she'd be submitting this member's bill into the ballot. I love members' bills; I think they're an important part of New Zealand's parliamentary process and a few weeks before that announcement from my colleague Chlöe I had had a version of this bill drafted that made the amendments to local alcohol policies that I also care about—it hadn't done the second part but that's the way our parliamentary process works with members' bills; you're first in you're best dressed. As member for Manurewa this is an issue that had come up in my community a lot. I did that because as the local MP it's important to my community. That local alcohol policy for Auckland Council isn't in place now and that means alcohol sales in South Auckland are completely under-regulated. It's the wild west; a libertarian paradise because National's Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012 let the alcohol industry indefinitely hold up the regulation that communities like mine were promised in the courts by the alcohol lobby. So I had a version of this bill and partly the drafting instructions had been prepared by barrister Grant Hewison. I want to mihi tonight to him and the Communities Against Alcohol Harm group that he represents as well as other community organisations who have campaigned alongside him particularly the Turehou Māori wardens who are the Māori wardens for South Auckland. They represent Māori communities who have long been left out of the process for making their voice heard at local licensing committees about where alcohol shops can go when they should be allowed to sell alcohol and have consistently had their standing in these forums challenged by lawyers on the other side who did not want to hear them present their evidence. So I mihi to them. I mihi to Grant Hewison—who has been working on this for years—and also to the local boards who have been working with those groups. Māngere Ōtāhuhu Ōtara Panmure and Manurewa local boards have been supporting this work that those community organisations do for many years because they see as locally elected members of both Labour and National persuasions that it does not serve the South Auckland communities they represent when the local alcohol policy—that should be in place at the Auckland Council level—is not there. So speaking to this bill why is this change needed? Well most of the time alcohol is about celebrating and having a good time. But it's no fun when those things that should be fun are hurting us. Things like broken bottles in our streets glass in our parks latenight drinking on street corners that wakes the kids up alcohol ruining people's health and their relationships. We need good rules to rein it in; to make it work for everyone. Even if my colleagues on the other side don't agree with my policy positions look they can respect the hustle of a local MP—and let me tell you I have been out there. I've been to Rowandale Reserve where the mums of the local early childhood education centre right next door have told me that their playground is being ruined by the bottles that clog it every morning because that park is used as a drinking spot for teenagers buying singles at the alcohol store that is right next to the playground. I've been down to Sharland Ave where it's a hang-out spot for people who go to buy a six pack and then walk straight down to the reserve and use that park as a place to drink; smashed bottles mean that the local kids can't use it. Finlayson Avenue Reserve right by the Manurewa Marae is regularly clogged with alcohol rubbish that flows into the Manukau Harbour and during the Auckland floods there was a pile as tall as I am in the stream of alcohol rubbish and other rubbish that had washed down into the harbour right next to our marae which is charged with protecting that awa and standing up to the people of our community. I've been to local licensing hearings as a local representative and had my own challenge to my own standing to be able to represent those people who have come to me and said We want change here". In the Manurewa town centre I opposed a licence for renewal in 2020-21. We negotiated an outcome of that; that was a good negotiated outcome but the bottle store owners there were able to come to the table and actually have conversations around when their opening hours should be. Local alcohol owners in the town centre told me that they wanted rules to regulate the sale and supply and that they were only open until 11 o'clock at night on weekdays because the guy down the road was. You know if we had working local alcohol policies that the Auckland Council was able to implement they would have those rules. They wouldn't have had to have those arduous meetings and they wouldn't have had me in the main street with my placards. Sharland Ave: we also negotiated an outcome. Countdown on Browns Road: we negotiated an outcome there where the opening hours changed—they knocked off an hour of their closing time because the community made themselves heard. Ranfurly Road: in 2022 also a negotiated outcome and resulted in a community clean-up which brought people together. But all of this community action puts a pressure on our local organisers. And it puts pressure on to the Turehou Māori wardens who should be able to be out there with their communities doing positive things not fighting against a system that is stacked against them—standing in cold community halls where they are up against well-paid wellresourced alcohol lawyers ripping them apart; putting them in their place asking them questions which make it very clear that they are not wanted there that their voices are not wanted in those forums. Well I stand here today as their local MP and I say "That's not on". We have to change this process. We have to design a process which empowers our communities and which makes our community representatives feel that they are heard.Now you know my thinking around this bill has not come down to whether this bill or the Government bill fixes those processes better. The Government bill which is in front of the Justice Committee right now does make those procedural fixes and it makes them well—and it's also really useful to have the Government programme behind those changes so we at select committee are able to get the advice that we need to strike that balance correctly because there are trade-offs to be made here. The submissions that have come to committee have asked us to create that balance and to make sure that we are getting it right because we also acknowledge that the alcohol shop owners and our community deserve a voice in that process too that they do not deserve to be burdened by a bureaucratic system. That is the balance that we are able to strike in the Justice Committee when we are hearing the Government bill right now and will continue to do so. And it makes sense to do that as a Government piece of work with the full suite of advisers. But then there is the second part of the bill and I commend Chlöe Swarbrick for bringing it to the House. It is something where the evidence is under dispute. I acknowledge the concerns of my colleagues around the evidence that our community organisations—our community sports organisations in particular—will be affected by the way that sponsorship from alcohol is in their clubs at the moment. I have met personally with my Manurewa sports clubs; I've been in touch with many of my big organisations and for my community I can tell the House that that is not a big problem for my sports clubs. My sports clubs are waka ama our rugby club our football club. They have gotten out of alcohol sponsorship because that's not what they want for the community of South Auckland that they serve. And these are committed community leaders with a heart for their people; that's why they get into sports in the first place and that's why they've moved out of it. But I acknowledge the concerns of my colleagues around the numbers of sports and I know that everyone in this House wants to support those community organisations going forward. But for me given that I want action on this now that Manurewa needs action on this now and that our sports clubs tell me that they want action on this now I will be voting for this bill and I encourage my colleagues to do the same. Kia ora."