Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Alcohol Reform Bill — Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 23 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6100. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I do want to take another call because there have been a number of comments made that I wish to respond to but I also want to pick up where I left off in respect of the public health message that we want to have here. I was making the point that in some jurisdictions there have been cases taken where big tobacco have argued that they have the right to advertise under the Bill of Rights freedom of expression because advertising a legal product is a matter of freedom of speech. Well I reject that because I think there are times when freedoms have to be subservient to the greater public good and the public good is what health promotion is all about. I used the example of the manufacturers of a perfectly legal product which is baby bottles. Baby bottle manufacturers and their suppliers have taken a deliberate decision not to advertise their products on television not because their product is illegal but because their product undermines the public health message which is to promote breastfeeding. That is the only reason they do not advertise on television. It is not something they have to do; it is something they choose to do because they are behaving in a responsible way. I believe that with regard to all organisations that are involved in the sale and supply of a product that causes significant cost to the country let alone the human cost on top of the financial cost there is a responsibility to take a responsible attitude towards it. 
I have made the point that this is something that the public of New Zealand want but I think we should remember a few things about the alcohol industry. One is that it spends millions of dollars annually on alcohol advertising. I just want to quote from a couple of the submissions to the Law Commission report: “The ads promote alcohol consumption and associate drinking with having fun partying confidence success sophistication and desirability. The ads normalise drinking and sustain our current drinking culture.” and “[The aggressive marketing] of alcohol is a huge driver of the heavy drinking culture with its clever and sometimes witty advertising creating a false impression and seek[ing] to promote the sale of alcohol whilst totally ignoring the dangers of this drug … the advertising of alcohol should be severely reduced in NZ and it should not be allowed without a warning regarding the dangers.” 
Those examples go on but here is the response from the producers the retailers the broadcasters and the people involved in regulation: “The purpose of liquor advertising is to influence brand choice not to increase per occasion or total consumption.” We just saw a young man miss out on a trip to the UK that he had won as a result of the multiple entries into a competition that he applied for on the basis that the more often he applied for it the better his chances were of being drawn. Hey guess what? He was drawn but they would not give him the prize. Actually I agree with them for not giving him the prize. They should have actually been quite up front from the start and said “If you have been convicted of an alcohol-related offence then you are not the sort of person that we are going to give this trip to.” because of course it involved buying alcohol. To advertise a prize on the basis that the more you buy the more likely you are to get a prize—I mean how is that a responsible campaign? How is that just about brand consumption? 
In the report the producers the retailers the broadcasters and the people involved in regulation said: “This is no different to the advertising of say shampoo”—well yes alcohol and shampoo; I can see an immediate similarity—“where the objective of the advertising is not to encourage people to wash their hair more often but rather to choose one brand over another …”. They said: “We have no commercial interest in marketing our products to people who are not legally able to buy them—ie people under 18 years old.” Well I just want to use an alcohol advertising slogan to respond to that and say “Yeah right!”. I mean if you look at the ads on TV they are marketing to a younger culture all the time. That is what the ads are about. They are supposedly ads that are minimising the risks that alcohol is involved in. Actually I was just thinking of the—