Sitting date: 2 April 2026

Legislative Statement

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (17:10): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

First Reading

Hon NICOLE McKEE (Associate Minister of Justice) (17:11): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I move, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.

The law governing alcohol has drifted over time into something increasingly complex, bureaucratic, and disconnected from the harms it was designed to address. This bill is a necessary correction. It makes the licensing process fairer; cuts red tape for businesses, clubs, and events; and restores some common sense to a system that has lost its way.

The first major change limits who can object to a licence application or renewal. Under this bill, only those who live or work within the same council area, or within 1 kilometre of a proposed premises, will have standing to object. No one is denying that local communities deserve a voice, and this bill does not change that; what it does change is the absurdity of allowing anyone from anywhere in the country, or even overseas, to object to a licence application that they have no genuine stake in. It is the same toxic logic that makes it so hard to build anything in this country under our resource management laws.

I’ve spoken to business owners in Auckland dealing with objections filed from as far away as Invercargill. It costs nothing to object, but defending an application can cost tens of thousands of dollars. One venue spent $45,000 preparing its defence only for the objector to not even bother turning up to the hearing. Objection rights exist because local residents must live with the decision and cannot simply leave. An out-of-town objector always has a choice; the local resident does not. They don’t have to come from that town. The fundamental difference is the basis of this reform. National organisations based all over the country remain free to support locals who wish to engage. The process simply reflects who is actually affected. I thank my ACT Party colleague Dr Parmjeet Parmar for her advocacy on this issue.

The bill also gives licence applicants a right of reply to objections raised against them. This is a matter of basic fairness. It also creates space for practical solutions. A live music venue, for example, could respond to noise concerns by providing evidence of soundproofing, allowing the business to open while addressing the objectors’ legitimate interests.

The bill prevents licence renewals from being declined solely because a local alcohol policy has changed. Businesses that have operated responsibly for years should not face sudden uncertainty when policy settings shift beneath them. District licensing committees would still be able to impose updated conditions, such as revised closing times, but could not refuse renewal outright on that basis alone.

This bill also removes unnecessary rigidity from the way licences operate. Clubs will be able to apply for an on-licence, rather than their only current option of an existing club licence, giving them far better flexibility. Under current law, clubs can only serve members, guests of members, or members of clubs with reciprocal rights. That means they cannot host public fundraisers, birthday parties, funerals, or community events that serve alcohol without applying for a special licence each and every time. These are significant revenue opportunities that are being turned away. No club will be forced to change; this is simply about giving them more choice. I thank Clubs New Zealand for their input and support of this change, which was also well received by their members when I spoke at their annual conference recently.

Restaurants with on-site retail areas will also be able to apply for an off-licence to sell take-home alcohol to customers, such as a bottle of wine at dinner enjoyed with their meal. This reflects how modern hospitality businesses actually operate, rather than forcing artificial separation. I was fortunate recently to visit La Bella Italia, in Petone, where they have campaigned for this common-sense change for years. This has also been backed by local MP the Hon Chris Bishop.

Special licensing decisions will be made under a new risk-based framework to be set out in the regulations. This will simplify and speed up the process, giving event organisers greater certainty about likely outcomes and conditions.

District licensing committees will also be required to consult each other on applications spanning multiple regions. Event organisers running a national series should not have to provide the same information multiple times to different committees. The creative and cultural sectors have been clear that inconsistent decisions create real costs. This reform promotes clarity and consistency.

The bill also establishes a permanent mechanism, via an Order in Council, to allow licensed premises to televise significant international events outside of normal trading hours, removing the need for bespoke legislation every time. Parliament has passed ad hoc laws for this purpose in 2015, 2019, and again in 2023. It was only thanks to the campaigning of my colleague the Hon David Seymour that pubs could open for Rugby World Cup games at the unusual hours that those tournaments were televised here. Each time, the exemption lapsed when the final whistle blew. Well, I’m pleased to finally call full time on that whistle and on this issue.

The bill removes small but telling examples of regulatory overreach. A barber or hairdresser who wants to serve a customer a single drink—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: What about a manicure?

Hon NICOLE McKEE: —currently requires a full-on licence. This is disproportionate for what is, by any reasonable measure, a very low-risk activity. Under this bill, a customer will be allowed one serving of alcohol, limited to once per day. It reduces compliance cost, while maintaining all existing safeguards against serving minors or intoxicated persons. Perhaps the member across the way—Dr Duncan Webb might vote for increasing that amount. It also extends cellar-door provisions beyond wineries, to breweries and distilleries. Currently, wineries are the only alcohol producers who can charge for samples without holding an on-licence. This bill fixes that inconsistency so that innovation in New Zealand’s beverage sector is not stifled by outdated legislative distinctions.

Lastly, the bill cuts red tape by updating the legal requirements around stocking zero-alcohol drinks. We are fixing minor issues not anticipated prior to the popularity of zero-alcohol drinks. At the same time, the bill strengthens clarity where genuine risk actually exists. Rapid alcohol delivery services will have clearer responsibilities to ensure that alcohol is not delivered to under-age or intoxicated persons. Current operators, as far as I’m aware, are already voluntarily meeting the spirit of the law. This reform ensures that standard is locked in and that any future entrant to the market is held to it from day one.

Taken together, these are sensible, moderate reforms. They remove red tape, they modernise the law, and they make the system work better in practice. The messages I’ve received are overwhelmingly positive, from the events, beer, wine, and hospitality sectors, and from Mike Hosking, who I’m told enjoys a good pinot noir.

Since introducing the bill, businesses and media have raised additional sale and supply of alcohol issues with me. Some of these will be addressed through the Ministry for Regulation’s hospitality review; for anything beyond that, I encourage submissions to the select committee. That process exists precisely to surface and scrutinise improvements. To those who have concerns: back the bill to select committee. Give it proper scrutiny and suggest improvements. That is how Parliament is supposed to work. As with all my bills, my door is open to any MP who would like to better understand the changes that are being made.

Alcohol is a legal product. The overwhelming majority of New Zealanders consume it without incident and without imposing costs on others. Where alcohol does cause real harm, violence, disorder, drink-driving, and harm to children, the State has both the right and the duty to act decisively, but restricting the freedom of everyone here because of a minority who behave badly is neither fair nor effective. I commend this bill to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The question is that the motion be agreed to.

CAMILLA BELICH (Labour) (17:21): Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you to the Minister for making the offer of having a briefing on this particular bill, which is certainly one that we will be taking up. The sale of alcohol is a complex matter, and it’s complex because it’s not simply regulating an activity; it’s regulating a drug that has a serious impact on our community.

This bill has many different provisions in it, and some of them, we support, and others, we don’t support. I think one of the key aspects for us is, when Labour was last in Government, we passed amendments to the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act, and these focused on localism. It focused on allowing communities and allowing people to take objections if they felt that additional licences being granted would impact the community that they’re a part of. We put these in place and also empowered the district licensing boards and made sure that there was a greater degree of say that people could have in alcohol licensing. What the Minister is asking us to do today is to reverse those changes so soon after they were put in place—only fully implemented in 2024, as I understand.

That is a very difficult thing for us, because the reason that the Labour Government decided to put those in place was because of important representations that were made to us at that time. That’s not to say that there aren’t positive aspects of this bill. The aspects around clubs and their guests seem sensible. The aspects around wineries—you’ll be aware we’ve had many members’ bills around alcohol; you may recall, I think it was Stuart Smith’s bill. I think my colleague Duncan Webb, at the time, suggested expanding that to breweries, meaderies—that’s a word you don’t often hear. Dr Webb was concerned they would be left out, and the Government has recognised that in this bill and included them, in terms of being able to charge for samples.

Additionally, the points that were made around special events—the Labour Party has often supported special licences for special events in order that they may be fully utilised and appreciated when they are held. We don’t object to that, but the fact of taking away much of the ability to object to alcohol being in your community is difficult for us. At this stage, it’s something that we don’t agree to.

The other thing I wanted to just flag that what we want to look into further at the select committee is the placement of zero-alcohol drinks. Now, zero-alcohol drinks—I totally understand that this was not something that was a big part of New Zealand life for a while. I enjoy a zero-alcohol beer myself; I think they’re a great product, and they have undoubtedly led to fewer people consuming alcohol in New Zealand. I think, because they are often branded in the same branding as full-strength alcohol—for example, a Heineken zero beside a soft drink, with no restrictions and treated as if it was a soft drink—there may be some problematic aspects of that.

I think that’s something that we need to look at at the select committee. We need to make sure that at the same time as we are acknowledging the existing of zero-alcohol beverages and wanting to move with the times in incorporating those into our liquor laws, we don’t end up in a situation where we’re inadvertently promoting—to people like children who will be in the supermarket wanting to buy a soft drink—the normalcy around consuming beer or other types of alcohol. These are serious issues, and that’s why there are significant regulations on alcohol and on the provision and sale of alcohol. I think this is something we will look to improve at the select committee. I look forward to the briefing from the Minister on this issue, but we do have serious concerns around bills like this that seek to liberalise alcohol provision and do, in our view, seek to take away the rights of members of the community to object to the provision of alcohol within their community.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Kahurangi Carter—just in time. Just in time.

KAHURANGI CARTER (Green) (17:26): Thank you Madam Speaker—Thursday afternoon—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Aw—it always happens on a Thursday. You’re not the first; you won’t be the last.

KAHURANGI CARTER: I appreciate it. There is a drug in this country that is the leading cause of death and morbidity—not just in Aotearoa but around the world. It costs an estimated $9.1 billion annually in drug-related harm, and this drug features significantly in emergency service callouts, many times where violence and aggression are involved. This drug is, of course, alcohol.

Now, we know that prohibition doesn’t work—it never has—but it is a crying shame that of all the alcohol-related harm laws that we need, this is what the Government is choosing to focus on. Out of everything that is needed to be done to reduce alcohol-related harm in our communities, this is a missed opportunity. The Minister has been crystal clear that this bill’s aim is about reducing “regulatory burden” and not about reducing harm. In 2023, it is estimated that alcohol-related harm cost New Zealand $9.1 billion. Harms include crime, misuse and addiction, non-communicable diseases like cancer, pancreatitis, diabetes, cardiovascular and liver disease, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder; a loss of productivity, ACC costs, and unemployment. Overall, this bill will increase the availability of alcohol in our communities, including at off-licences, which cause the most alcohol-related harm. We should be reducing harm from alcohol, not promoting it to obtain economic growth, which is stated is also the point of this law.

In June 2025, the Christchurch City Council agreed on a new set of rules for how alcohol can be sold and supplied across the community called the Local Alcohol Policy—which we all know as the LAP. It took the hard work of Christchurch communities, who, throughout this process, consistently told councillors that the wider community wanted sensible local alcohol policy. The key aim of this hard-fought-for LAP, which came from the community, was to address harm caused by alcohol in our Christchurch communities. The result of the LAP is a focus on making alcohol less available at certain times, particularly in areas where it is more likely that there will be an increase in harm in the community. After spending so much time, energy, and money on the LAP, this bill leaves the future of the LAP uncertain.

We’ve heard from the Alcohol Healthwatch over many, many years that we need to have sensible alcohol harm reduction laws. What successive Governments have failed to do—and been too scared to do—and what communities and public health experts, the ones who are on the front lines, have been calling politicians to do for decades, is for an overhaul of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act. The Law Commission told this House in 2010, as they told us about the Misuse of Drugs Act in 2012, “When are we, as a Government, willing to do the logical and consistent thing and regulate alcohol for drug harm reduction?” The Green Party have always and will always support sensible, evidence-based drug harm minimisation and this place, Parliament, needs to have the courage to do that. Thank you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.

TIM COSTLEY (National—Ōtaki) (17:31): Yes, maybe we’ll just try and cheer up. It’s Easter tomorrow.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know, I’ve got the egg—look. [Holds up an easter egg]

TIM COSTLEY: People are even going to be allowed to drink, apparently. Look, I think there are some sensible things as I read this bill. Letting people have a chardonnay at the hairdresser—that’s not terrible. Letting some of the great distilleries in my region like The Bond Store and Imagination have both and on- and off-licence at the same time, and charge for samples; restaurants can have that as well—that makes sense to me.

But I think the thing everyone’s thinking about now, less than Easter and whether or not the alcohol laws are changing; they’re thinking about the Wootton Cup. Now, I know this is big. I know I’ve got people on the edge of their seat, but the Wootten Cup is obviously on 18 April—we all know that. This is where the Kapiti Boating Club take on the Waikanae Boating Club—I’m a member of the Kapiti Boating Club; I don’t have a boat and I don’t go fishing, but, still—they’re taking each other on. Now, those members could have a drink at their own club and wouldn’t have to get any special licences, but when they go to register at the Kapiti Boating Club on Friday they need to pay $330 for an extra one and then the same the next night when they have the after-match at Waikanae. This bill is all about simplifying those, and I commend it to the House.

ANDY FOSTER (NZ First) (17:32): That was quick, Madam Speaker. I rise behalf of New Zealand First to speak on this bill. This bill is common sense and we like common-sense legislation. Look, I do agree with one thing that the Green Party have said, and that is that I do think it is time for us to have a good look at the Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act across the board. What we’ve seen in this House, even in the time that I’ve been here, is multiple tinkering with the legislation, but it actually needs a good look overall. At the moment, the way in which it works—it’s complex, it’s uncertain, it’s expensive, and it’s bureaucratic.

I, for my sins, was a district licensing commissioner for one term as a councillor. It was interesting. It was a very bureaucratic process. What we saw—there were three particular things that I can recall—were crusades by some of the agencies. You know, whether it’s the Police—the Police in particular, in some cases—or the district licensing commissioners or the public health authorities trying to shut down elements of the industry. It didn’t matter how well the businesses were run, but they were still going to have a crack at them, to try and get less alcohol being sold—doesn’t matter by who.

The second thing was the difficulty in getting a local alcohol policy through the process, because on one hand, you had those agencies; on the other hand, you had the supermarkets and the on-licences. You were on a hiding for nothing because one or the other of them would appeal whatever decision you made.

But the third one I just wanted to raise is that some of the rules in there—and they are set by Government because Government’s so untrusting—were really, really arbitrary. There was one particular situation that I can recall where we had to say to a business that, because the largest item that they sold by turnover was Snapper—that is the Wellington public transport card—and it was slightly, slightly bigger—fractionally bigger—than the amount of food that they sold, we couldn’t give them a liquor licence. They had a choice between either giving up the ability to sell public transport cards or not getting a liquor licence. That is the way that this House had written the legislation. It wasn’t the way that the council was trying to run it; it was the way that this House had written the legislation. There are some things which are in that law which are bizarre and need to be fixed.

But what is in this bill? I think this bill makes some really good improvements and I just wanted to pick up a couple of them. The idea of ensuring that objections come from people who are actually affected by a liquor licence, or potentially affected by a liquor licence application, rather than live at the other end of the country, seems to make a whole lot of sense to me. The ability for the applicant to be able to effectively respond to those people who are accusing them of something, to reply to the objectors—again, makes a lot of sense to me as well. The idea, as Tim Costley said, of being able to have a civilised drink—whether it’s a chardonnay or pinot or whatever it might be—while you’re getting your hair cut seems to be a nice and civilised approach to the way in which we deal with alcohol and enjoy alcohol.

One that I did want to touch on, though, is the ability for a club to hold an on-licence. I don’t know quite what’s going on with your yachting clubs there, Tim Costley, but in the sports that I’ve tended to play—so, for example, football—you have the ability to have a reciprocal arrangement. You don’t have to do anything about it. It’s because you play at an away club that you’re able to go and have a drink there; they play at your club, they’re able to have a drink there because you’re part of the same competition. That’s a recognised approach. But one thing that clubs cannot do is sell alcohol to people who are not members of those clubs. At the club where I was chairman of for many years, we helped make the building work better, to have more people using a building—which is a good thing—to provide a service to the public, and also to help to pay for the operation of the club rooms, we sub-leased it to a cafe. The only problem was that the cafe could not sell alcohol, and one of the things which would have been of benefit would have been the cafe’s ability to be able to sell to members of the public who were enjoying a meal there. They couldn’t do that at the moment, so this, I think, will be a very positive initiative to support them.

Look, the last couple of things that I want to say is the idea of extending trading hours during significant televised events—it would be great to be able to get this legislation through by the time the World Cup is on, but I suspect that is probably a little bit too quick. The amendments relating to special licences make complete sense because that is just cost and bureaucracy. The idea of producer tasting rooms: picking up Stuart Smith’s legislation around wineries and cellar doors, but being able to extend that to other forms—you know, beer, wine, mead, etc. I did ask the Associate Minister of Justice there whether cideries were included in that, and we do need to actually check out whether they are included or not because they should be. The final thing is just to say it was nice to hear about certain restaurants being permitted to hold an off-licence, and the endorsement of La Bella Italia and the wonderful service they provide. I look forward to this legislation continuing and I commend it to the House.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Vanessa Weenink—I knew someone else would do it this afternoon!

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: She didn’t even seek the call!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I know, I know. No, I’ve done it for one side; I’m going to do it for the other.

Dr Vanessa Weenink: Thank you, Madam Speaker. That’s very kind of you.

DEPUTY SPEAKER: But I’m not going to do it for anyone else. Duncan Webb jumped up three times before to make sure he was on time. Dr Vanessa Weenink.

Dr VANESSA WEENINK (National—Banks Peninsula) (17:38): Thank you, Madam Speaker. I commend the bill to the House.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Madam Speaker.

Georgie Dansey: Madam Speaker—Duncan, it’s my turn!

DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’ll give the call to Georgie Dansey and you two can fight it out later.

GEORGIE DANSEY (Labour) (17:38): It’s good to take a call on the first reading of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill. I’m sorry to put a dampener on the day, but the Government did bring this bill at 5.30 on a Thursday before Easter, so we do need to talk about the serious nature of it. It’s impossible to discuss this bill without discussing alcohol harm and the impact it has on our communities. I stand to oppose this bill.

In essence, this bill is a windback of current alcohol harm prevention legislation at a time when alcohol harm is so prevalent in our society, we should be strengthening our alcohol harm laws, not deregulating them. Alcohol harm remains one of the most significant and longstanding public health challenges in Aotearoa and it shows up in so many ways that we are all familiar with. It shows up in our emergency departments, especially during peak drinking hours, pressure on our mental health and addiction services, family violence call-outs, road trauma statistics, lost productivity, interrupted education, and fractured relationships.

Alcohol harm affects not only those that drink but their whānau, communities, and neighbourhoods. It has a ripple effect that is far-reaching and long-lasting. Most importantly, alcohol harm does not fall evenly across society, we know that it is concentrated in communities already facing multiple pressures, including economic hardship, lower access to services, and historical inequalities. This reality tells us something really crucial, which is that harm is not simply a personal choice; it is deeply connected to environment, availability, affordability, and power. The issue with this bill is that it is an incremental step towards deregulation of alcohol laws. Previous speakers have talked about it being a small change, but every small change results in more harm, and the more small changes we have, the more harm that is created. When alcohol is cheap, heavily promoted, densely available, and poorly regulated, harm increases. When communities have little say over these factors, harm is entrenched.

Last week, I had the privilege to attend a Communities Against Alcohol Harm (CAAH) conference in Hamilton. CAAH plays a really critical role in supporting people to engage with alcohol-licensing processes in communities. And it’s really clear, from listening to the experts at that conference, how much alcohol harm really affects Hamilton and the wider Waikato, and how much this bill will add to that harm.

The annual cost of alcohol-related harm in 2024 was $9.1 billion—on a health system which is already under so much pressure. Our health system just cannot afford to loosen anymore regulations around alcohol, which is what this bill is doing. This bill seeks to unwind the good work that previous legislation has done to protect people.

One of the tools the last Labour Government put in place was an amendment bill on community participation, which increased that community participation, and this bill is a step to unwinding it. Previous speakers have talked about how community input is not going away, it’s just being restricted—but we need to look at this lens from a Te Tiriti perspective, allowing hapū and iwi to contribute.

One of the examples that I heard from a speaker at the conference I attended was if you have a shared-care parenting situation and the school is in the middle of those two houses and one parent lives within that 1 kilometre and one parent lives outside, the second parent cannot have a say on whether there’s an alcohol shop put within the radius of their child’s school, and that’s not OK. We need to be able to ensure community input is in-depth and goes beyond a 1-kilometre radius.

Look, the main issue with this bill is that reducing regulation and reducing community voice from decision making causes more alcohol harm in our community. Labour opposes this bill and hopes to see significant changes in the committee stage.

SUZE REDMAYNE (National—Rangitīkei) (17:43): This bill makes the licensing process fairer, makes it easier to host events, and gets rid of a whole lot of red tape—red tape that gets in the way of everything, from hairdressers to events. I commend this bill to the House.

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central) (17:43): Kia ora, Madam Speaker. The last speaker’s contribution—Suze Redmayne, who’s looking great because she’s probably been to the hairdresser where she can now have a glass of wine. That’s the triviality of it, right? It just strikes me as extraordinary that we’ve got an amendment here before the House so that you can have a glass of wine at your hairdresser’s. And it shows the irrationality of some of these changes, because, as I mentioned to the Associate Minister of Justice, what about if you’re having a manicure? Can you have one when you’re having a massage? Here we’ve got a little carve-out for hairdressers so you can have a glass of wine at the hairdresser’s, and that’s the kind of triviality that this Government—but alcohol, as Georgie Dansey so articulately put, is an important issue.

One thing that strikes me as really strange is that if we look at substance abuse across the board, we’ve got health dealing with smoking, police dealing with other drugs, and justice dealing with alcohol. There’s no integrated policies around, essentially, substance abuse, so here we are talking about alcohol harm in a justice space, where it’s a conversation where we’re talking past each other.

What I do want to say is that across also those substances which cause harm, the most important thing is community voice and community say. One of the very intentional things that this legislation does is it undermines the ability of a community to have meaningful input into how and where alcohol is supplied in its neighbourhoods. We see, essentially, local alcohol plans being undermined by a gold-plated grandparenting system, whereas if a local alcohol plan is put in place, it doesn’t change any licence which has already been issued. We know that licences can last and be renewed time and time again, so it makes the local alcohol plan largely meaningless.

We also heard that objectors must live within a kilometre of the licensed premises. No matter where else their community is, whether their church is next door to or their kindergarten is across the road of the licensed premises, it relates to where they live—and it must be an arbitrary 1 kilometre. Of course, if you’re an advocacy group, that’s going to cut you out of the conversation, and we rely on civil society groups to give voice to wider concerns, particularly in communities which are not particularly articulate.

Then there’s the other point, and there is an analogy here with smoking, and that is the zero-alcohol beers being able to be displayed alongside other products and not in the alcohol-only area. Now, you can’t sell Pall Mall branded candy or Benson & Hedges branded clothing.

Simon Court: Why not?

Hon Dr DUNCAN WEBB: Well, the reason is very clear: because brand is what selling products is about. And if we’re going to get to zero smoking, we don’t want to promote those brands. If we have alcohol brands, beer brands, sitting there at the checkout, for example, what we are doing is giving a classic marketing opportunity to something that we want to limit. We are going to have our children pointing to the candy which is sitting next to a Heineken, and they’ll think, “Oh, I wonder what that is. That looks flash. I’ll try that next time.” There is a real issue there, because we accept that alcohol is harmful and we need to limit its sale and its consumption, particularly by young people. But by allowing branded beer products which are branded almost identically to alcoholic products, you are, essentially, by subterfuge, promoting alcohol to the whole community, including young people. I think there’s a very important conversation to be had about that change.

There are some trivial bits in here, but there are also some really important things. The limitation on community voice is probably at the heart of it and the most dangerous thing, but also those wider availability points are important as well. Once again, another bill that will probably go to the Justice Committee—I don’t know what the other committees do—I look forward to having a look at it.

Dr HAMISH CAMPBELL (National—Ilam) (17:48): I rise in support of the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill in this first reading. We have a heard a lot about alcohol harm. Yes, it is a drug; it does cause harm. But what actually has been missed by a lot of the speakers is parts of this bill are tightening up the alcohol availability, including clarifying responsibilities for rapid delivery services, which will reduce the risk of delivery to intoxicated and under-age people. It is making common-sense changes to our law; therefore I commend it to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Ayes 68

New Zealand National 49; ACT New Zealand 11; New Zealand First 8.

Noes 55

New Zealand Labour 34; Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand 15; Te Pāti Māori 5; Ferris.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a first time.

Referral to Select Committee

DEPUTY SPEAKER (17:50): The question is, That the Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

© Scoop Media