Naylor Jono: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNaylor Jono: Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Extended licensing hours during Rugby World Cup) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 August 2015. Volume:708;Page:6191. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JONO NAYLOR (National): Just by way of clarification it is my understanding that National will be casting a party vote on this matter. Firstly I was heartened by the speech by Mr Henare over there who decided that he wanted to bring a little levity into the debate. The only thing that I thought he missed though was to thank the ladies in the kitchen for putting on the spread. Then we would have had the complete rugby speech. I know that it is a little sexist but the last time that I heard that speech was back in the 1980s when rightly or wrongly that was an acceptable thing to say—though of course now we would be thanking the people in the kitchen for putting on the spread.I want to focus if I may not so much on the nuts and bolts of this bill but on the why—as to why it is that we are doing this today. Why is it that we are passing this legislation? Of course it is because of New Zealanders’ passion for sport—in particular the game of rugby football. If anybody was ever to doubt how passionate people in New Zealand are about this sport and about the All Blacks as a team they would need only to wander around town the morning after an All Blacks loss to understand just how important this is to the people of New Zealand. Not that it happens very often but it has on occasions happened that the All Blacks have lost. I even remember on one occasion going into a church service on a Sunday morning when you would expect people to be lively and full of enthusiasm as they normally would be on a Sunday morning and the mood was still somewhat dampened from the night before—on those rare occasions of an All Blacks loss. We also see just how excited people get when there is a great result and people are wandering around town. Shopkeepers will tell you that they sell more on a Monday after an All Blacks win and all that kind of thing.In fact it even gets so serious when New Zealanders are watching the rugby that I can distinctly remember during the 2011 Rugby World Cup final being at some friends’ house and half-time came around. Although our tradition was to sit down and have dessert at lunchtime—sorry dessert at lunchtime is always good—have dessert in the middle of the game no one was in the mood to eat at half-time during the last Rugby World Cup. Such was the I guess raw tension in the room that people felt anxiety about what might occur.So New Zealanders are absolutely keen; they are absolutely passionate about seeing their All Blacks team perform. As it has come to pass over time in New Zealand’s history the idea of just gathering around a TV set in anybody’s home to watch the game is something that not everybody can avail themselves of because of course with the advent of pay TV—not everybody has pay TV and so not everybody has the opportunity to sit down in front of their 16-inch screen as we did back when I was younger—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: A long time ago.JONO NAYLOR: It was a long time ago that we were sitting around a 16-inch screen but I can tell you that it did happen. Not everybody has the access and the ability to be able to do that and so it is something that we need to move forward on.I heard in the first reading somebody from the Labour Party—I cannot remember exactly who it was—suggesting that it was the Government’s responsibility to ensure that all of the rugby games would go on free-to-air TV and that that was the way we would fix this. I guess the difficulty with that is that although it is a nice idea ultimately it is the taxpayer who is going to have to pay for it. Although New Zealandersare on the whole very passionate about rugby I guess it would not necessarily be fair on those people who do not want to watch it to have to pay for it. I do not think that we would get that sort of legislation through in the time frame that we are able to get this legislation through now.Of course the alternative for people who want to watch these games—if they have got friends with Sky that is great; they can go there perhaps and watch them—if they do not have Sky is to go to a public place to watch them. That for some people is a preferred way of doing it. And for some people it will be the only way that they are able to watch Rugby World Cup games live during this current Rugby World Cup.There are occasions too when people are out of town. I know that when New Zealand played Argentina in the first game for the first time in the Investec Rugby Championship we were in Queenstown. What did we do? We went down to the local pub. We took the kids down there for breakfast or lunch or whatever it was at that time of day and we all sat around and watched the game. It was a great opportunity and it was easy to do. I know of some people too for whom that is the only way that they can watch gamesat the moment. They are not big drinkers but they will go they will sit down and they will have a lemonade or a hot chocolate or whatever it is in a licensed premises and watch the game. The difficulty is that there are not many other places that are not licensed where you can watch rugby games in a public setting.That is what I guess moves us to the point of needing to adjust these liquor laws. I think that if there were a whole lot of freely available fanzones or otherwise where people could go and watch the games for free and not have to go to a licensed premises that would be somewhere where people would go. But that is not something that is easy to put together at 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the morning in the same way that it was when the games were hosted here. And so making those places available to people is I think the most pragmatic solution to ensure that New Zealanders can go and watch those games.There are these moments that people want to enjoy. A lot of people can tell you where they were at the Rugby World Cup 2014 and actually I can recall going back to 1983—it was not a rugby game—Meka Whaitiri: It was 2011.JONO NAYLOR: The Rugby World Cup 2011 thank you. People might remember that one as well. I can recall watching a cricket game of all things while on holiday with my parentsin 1983. We were at Mount Cook. My dad took me into the pub at Mount Cook. I was only 17. I do not know whether it was legal at the time but anyway we went and watched New Zealand chase down 297 runs—Richard Hadlee Jeremy Coney in full flight. It was a fantastic game and one that will stick in my brain for ever. Interestingly enough everybody in the bar stopped to watch the game except for the two German tourists who were sitting in the corner wondering what was going on. Actually it got to the point that the barman was serving drinksonly between overs because he wanted to watch the game. Those are the sorts of memories that people can have when we have legislation like this that allows them to go to these places to watch games.It was a really critical thing that we needed to do in weighing up all of this excitement about the rugby—all of this excitement about people being able to go and watch games—trying to weigh that up as other speakers have said and trying to reconcile that with the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act and the principles behind that in terms of harm minimisation. It is something that the committee took very seriously and gave really serious consideration to. It is not something that was taken lightly at all and it was something that as I say we put a lot of energy into.I guess that on balance we have got to look at this and we have got to say that we cannot work off the presumption that just because somebody is going to a licensed premises at 4 o’clock in the morning to watch a game of rugby they are necessarily going to be engaged in excessive alcohol intake—that they are necessarily going to have bad behaviour. We cannot just assume that everybody is going to be drinking at all because clearly some people will want to go simply to watch the game.Bearing in mind that the provisions of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act do work around harm minimisation we have looked where we can to stick to the spirit of that Act—or as my colleague on the other side of the House David Parker would refer to it is the vibe of the Act that we want to incorporate. We want to make sure that we are not encouraging people to act beyond what is responsible or otherwise.So we have put in place some things to mitigate if you like against particularly the disturbance of neighbours in the area so there is going to be as Mr Mitchell said no ability for bar owners to discard their empty bottles in the middle of the night. We have got to keep the noise down by not having amplified music or use of the outdoor courtyard areas because we want to make sure that these series of events are in fact friendly to communities.I am looking forward to discussing this further when we get to the third reading of the bill later on this evening but I am pretty sure that this is going to be a good bill for New Zealand. It is going to ensure that we can actually enjoy our national game and I certainly hope that it is going to result in a very good outcome as well. Thank you.