Smith DamienDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Thank you very much. The draw for this tournament was held on 14 December 2020 at the Palais Brongniart in Paris and the actual match schedule itself was released on Friday 26 February 2023—48 matches in total. ACT went to work and by 18 March the day after St Patrick's Day this year we presented the Government with this bill. All they had to do was put 2023" on the title and get it into select committee.Now this is a bill that just needed to be fast-tracked and now we have a matter of days before the police and publicans have to bring this together at an implementation level. Passing this under urgency is completely ridiculous. This should have been sorted the day ACT brought its bill in and it either shows a contempt for the process in this House or it shows a contempt for the hospitality industry in New Zealand—and I would wager that that's not a priority for this Government. ACT has always supported publicans bars and anybody who's got a lounge where from a rugby club you can go and just enjoy yourselves and be free to do what you want.Now the chairperson of the Justice Committee called for submissions and there weren't too many of them and that sort of reinforces my point. But the bill does amend the liquor licence Act and I can see already the agenda is coming through where it's all about 2024 now and rejigging the alcohol bills. So the fun police will be coming out in force for that one and they will be interfering once again.Now the licence for trading hours is pretty aggressive and the extensions to the bill in terms of trading hours will show that you go in you'll have a fast event and you'll be chucked out on to the street at all hours. It sort of defies what hospitality is about. But the games will be played in a different time zone and many will be broadcast outside traditional trading hours and that is the way it is.Now there is a role for the Parliament in this. As I'm heading towards retirement I thought that myself and Sir Ian McKelvie designate who could put on the Fred Dagg show could come over with David Clark who could cycle on his bike around the Champs-Élysées and the Pyrenees and we could do a live broadcast from there and represent the nation and Parliament in a fair fashion and really entertain the people back home in a live broadcast feed. But that way not to pass. I would promise not to take two planes to Paris because we only need to travel on a commercial airline and it will be 10 times less expensive than going to—and we can go via China as well to Europe. So therefore I would not need two planes; I would only need one and maybe two seats for my partner and I.The bill itself is pretty tight now. The committee has done a good job of actually putting a fence around this. I have concerns about the implementation between the police force and the publicans and I would hate to see anybody punished who didn't display this properly or who had to take the commercial decision that because either Ireland or the All Blacks were knocked out they didn't want to show any more games or they were playing this on spec with regards to what they could show and what they couldn't. Because a Sky licence is very expensive on a commercial basis and to maximise the value of that people have to make real commercial decisions. Therein lies another problem: the Government doesn't understand what real commercial decisions actually mean at a local micro level. Implementing permanent legislation for this type of event it makes sense over the long term. But you know we've got to embrace the fact that we trust publicans; we trust people who actually have to perform a duty of care for their citizens when they go and entertain them with alcohol whether it's a sports event or whether it's something else. You know we need to get to this basic level of trust where business can rebuild itself after what's been a horrendous COVID scenario what's been a horrendous time with inflation. To get a dollar out of somebody's pocket for a pint of beer given the fact that it's going up so much in terms of duties is a hard task. Even with this legislation they'll be challenged to actually make money out of this situation.So we recommend and support this legislation. We think the document now is in a state where after a few questions at the committee of the whole House session we should get there. ACT does support this and has always supported the industry to have this benefit which should have been done in a much timelier fashion. We must must get sensible about lawmaking under urgency because this is just ridiculous. Thank you."