Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): The National Party is not supporting the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Community Participation) Amendment Bill and we don't think that it is a reasonable response to what are real issues in our community. Communities of New Zealand do obviously have the right to have a say in how alcohol is sold in their communities and that is why the processes that are dealt with by this legislation were set up to have local alcohol policies in place where a community can have within reasonable bounds some say over the way that alcohol is dealt with.Now there is an issue that this bill is trying to fix which is that the process for getting local alcohol policies through has not been effective; it's been too slow and too costly and the court processes have been long and drawn out. So I think there is a very good argument for a review of that and an improvement of those processes so that they should be done quickly so that a community through its appropriate channels can put up a local alcohol plan and people can argue about it and test it and then it goes through. But that's not what the bill proposes; the bill proposes to eliminate any appeals to the local alcohol policies.The problem with that is it sort of works on the assumption that all decisions made by a council in this place are always going to be right and that the council will always get it right. I think anybody even vaguely associated with the workings of councils up and down the country would struggle to claim that councils always get it right and that they never make mistakes or they never overreach or that they never do things which are unreasonable or make no sense. In fact that seems to happen with monotonous regularity. So the fundamental assumption of this piece of legislation is flawed and it's ridiculous ultimately to think that councils will always get it right and that there should never be any basis for an appeal. I think that fundamental point is very weak.The second part that concerns us around this bill is that once these local alcohol plans have been through without appeal and adopted the next phase of the system—the district licensing committees (DLC) which decide upon particular instances or particular requests for a liquor licence or indeed a renewal of a liquor licence—can take into account those local alcohol policies. Now the problem with that is that—and this is what many submitters said; they came in and they weren't listened to by the Government members. Well they listened to them but they didn't hear it or change their views in response to the submissions. Many of these people came in saying We've got a store or a cafe or a club that's been operating for decades in a particular place. Every three years we need to renew our licence."What can happen under this legislation is that a new plan could be passed through which says you cannot have a liquor outlet within a kilometre of a school for example—and that effectively takes out just about everywhere in urban New Zealand where there are schools tightly packed all over the place. You'd struggle to find too many places in Epsom where I come from for example which aren't within a kilometre of a school. And because the DLC can take that into account they cannot renew their licence and that particular little business—mum and dad business—could have been operating for 30 years with a perfect record a perfect track record in terms of dealing with the community could be highly regarded and respected in the community but arbitrarily they could be shut down because of a local alcohol plan that has been put through which wasn't appealed and now can be taken into account by the DLC when it comes to renewing their licence.Now that is arbitrary in the extreme and it is unreasonable for any Parliament to pass that. Since this bill has been introduced there have been other pieces of legislation introduced which do similar things and they've always grandfathered them or made it clear that it would not just end a business on the basis of such a change. So we don't think that's a reasonable policy and we don't think it's a reasonable thing to do because ultimately people who have invested in developing a business and a brand in a community if they have been doing the right thing and providing a service that people want and are prepared to pay for and enjoy should not be arbitrarily just waiting and vulnerable to having their business literally closed down by decisions made by the council regardless of how well they've been performing. That's what this legislation does and we can't support it on that basis."