Borrows Chester: Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Borrows Chester: Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
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CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 The Sale of Liquor (Objections to Applications) Amendment Bill had its genesis in good sound common sense. It is an attempt to overturn a jandal-slapping sort of sale of liquor bill from a previous decade. The fact is that the sale of liquor has been the subject of dog’s breakfasts of legislation for many many decades as people have sought to liberalise and somehow change New Zealand’s drinking culture and turn it into something it is not. Members who were involved in politics years ago will remember the votes that tried to turn the New Zealand drinking culture into something sort of cultural. 
Paul Quinn 
: The French. 
CHESTER BORROWS 
: Apparently we all needed to be drinking like the French. We know that the French drink all day at various times. They start at a young age and they carry on until they fall over. No one seemed to remember that they have a high rate of alcoholism in their country. But we sought to move the drinking culture within New Zealand away from something that was confined by hours age legislation and occasion and turn it into something where anything goes. Our drinking culture certainly needed to be changed but boy some dumb stuff was done. 
Now people are seeking to march the sale of liquor legislation back about 30 years forgetting that 30 years ago one was not allowed to have liquor in the vicinity of a dance hall for instance. That meant there would be about 50 guys standing around the boot of an old Vauxhall with a couple of crates in it sharing 10 flagons. In those days it was a totally different world from the one we find ourselves in today and now thankfully the member George Hawkins has quite rightly brought before the House a bill that says it is time we had a bit of balance. 
Previous Parliaments wandered off down the track of liberalising everything. We took the age down to 18 and we took off any constraints on new products like the ready-to-drinks that were spoken about. We tend to give some credence to people who make their money out of the liquor industry and we listen to their lobbying. 
We decided that a supermarket was something that sold alcohol and we did not think that every corner dairy would also seek to sell alcohol. We thought that a supermarket that was acres and acres in size was better and more careful than any other vendor of alcohol. What quickly happened was that those big supermarket chains moved as fast as they could to sell as much alcohol as they could as cheaply as they could at any hour of the day that they could. They did a really good job of it to the effect that today 70 percent of all alcohol consumed in this country is sold by supermarkets to people who may or may not enjoy too many drops. 
The point is that as far as the retail side of it is concerned supermarkets are probably the most compliant of any alcohol retail outlet. It is much harder to buy alcohol from the supermarket when one is drunk or underage than it is to buy it from anywhere else but that does not mean we do not have a problem with supermarkets selling alcohol and the new legislation that is coming before the House will restrict that. 
The ready-to-drink concoctions that have become so popular with people especially young people wanting to get into drinking alcohol are being marketed to young people as alcohol that does not even taste like alcohol. They sell it by the pallet-load and it has alcohol per volume of somewhere between 4 percent and 20 percent. The proposed legislation will reduce the alcohol per volume to no more than 5 percent and that is a good thing. 
Obviously the House is looking quite strongly at the split-age option whereby people over the age of 18 can buy alcohol in hotels and on licensed premises but people must be 20 years of age to buy alcohol at an off-licence. The purpose of that of course is to raise the de facto drinking age which at the moment is somewhere around the early to mid teens. We need very much to do something about that. 
The thrust behind the Hon George Hawkins’ bill is about giving local people the ability to impact on local decisions as to who can sell alcohol within their communities. We have ridiculous situations where dairies opposite secondary schools are selling alcohol at $1 per can or $1 per ready-to-drink. 
An 18-year-old student can wander across the road at lunchtime and legitimately buy alcohol in lots of one or two because that is the way the vendor is prepared to sell it. Vendors are not allowed to sell cigarettes in ones and twos but they can sell cans of alcohol in ones and twos and some of them are up to 20 percent proof. Students can drink that alcohol in the school grounds as part of lunch—or maybe it is lunch—and then head back to the classroom for a snooze before heading home after school and picking up a bit of alcohol to knock off when they get there. It is absolutely ridiculous. 
The gap in the current legislation means that no good-minded citizen is able to object to a new consent being granted on the basis that there are already enough liquor outlets in the community or on the basis of their proximity to schools or other venues around the community. That is fundamentally wrong. Mr Hawkins’ bill seeks to change that and allow local people to have some input. 
We know that there will be a national alcohol plan and that district councils will be encouraged to have district alcohol plans and part of that planning process will be consultation with communities. Any application for consent—not just for new premises but also the reinstatement of an existing consent—will be up for members of the public to object to on a whole range of sensible bases and good on them. 
I thank the member for bringing the issue before the House. I believe that in many ways it has been a catalyst for the Law Commission and parties on both sides of the House to look at the issue and to give back to the communities the ability to object to local consents which are the very mechanisms people are using to have a negative effect on our children and our communities. Thank you.