Stewart Barbara: Alcohol Advisory Council Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Stewart Barbara: Alcohol Advisory Council Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:645;Page:14560] 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to support the referral of the Alcohol Advisory Council Amendment Bill to the select committee. It is a relatively short but technical bill and it is very timely to update and simplify the mechanisms for setting the levy because it is over 30 years since this was done. 
The Alcohol Advisory Council (ALAC) was established in 1976 by an Act of Parliament following the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Sale of Liquor. The commission recommended establishing a permanent council whose aim was to encourage responsible use and minimise the misuse of alcohol. There is still a long way to go; ALAC is a very important body. 
We were very pleased to see that the levy setting was going to be simplified. We in New Zealand First believe that this new procedure is more suited for the 21st century and we believe that the public will be keen to have a say on this bill and it is very important that they do so. No doubt there will be wide-ranging discussion at the select committee. A regime that is simple to calculate is important and that it should be aligned to the approach used by the Customs Service seems to be very sensible as the Customs Service actually collects this levy. We are also interested to see that this legislation was important to establish a mechanism for Cabinet to approve the final levy amount as happens with the problem-gambling levy. Again this seems very logical. 
The explanatory note of the bill emphasises that this levy needs to be future-proofed against new types of alcoholic products and drinks. In New Zealand First we wonder how many new types of alcoholic products we actually need particularly as alcopops unfortunately have changed the way our teenagers consume alcohol. It will be interesting to see what other developments there may be. We can count on the fact unfortunately that there will be other developments. New Zealand has changed since the original law was passed in 1976. The levy already encompasses beer grape wines spirits fruit wine and no doubt liqueurs even though they are not specifically listed in the bill. It is a fairly comprehensive list and I would have thought it would cover all the alcohol produced and imported for sale in New Zealand. 
ALAC plays a very important role in education research and advertising and I was very interested to check out the ALAC website and read its vision statement supporting the moderate use of alcohol and the minimising of harm. I again considered that we still have a very long way to go. The website shows the total amount of the levy payable for the year ending 30 June 2008. It is $12.5 million. The levy rates themselves are very clear on the website and I was very interested to see the rates set for the year ending 30 June 2008: beer 1.39c per litre; unfortified wine 5.02c per litre; fortified wine 8c per litre; and spirits 44.59c per litre which is quite considerable. 
We in New Zealand First consider that we still have a long way to go to achieve moderate and responsible use of alcohol despite the campaigns that have been running—very successful campaigns I might add. The latest campaign “It’s not the drinking. It’s how we’re drinking.” really does make people look at what they are doing to their lives. The fact that so many days are lost from people’s lives is quite disturbing. 
I was very surprised that it was so difficult to find information on foetal alcohol syndrome on the website. I had really thought that the minimising of harm would extend to the prevention of birth defects. We know that foetal alcohol syndrome is the biggest cause of non-genetic mental handicap in the Western World and it is the only one that is totally 100 percent preventable. It is a sad fact that foetal alcohol syndrome is often undiagnosed. Problems in children intensify as they move into adulthood and this is when we see many of them involved with the criminal justice system. 
New Zealand First supports the referral of this bill to the select committee. We look forward to the discussion there and we are aware that there is a lot of work to be done in this particular area.