Sunday 28 October, 2012

Paul Holmes Interviews Lianne Dalziel

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE and one hour later on TV ONE plus 1.

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Q+A

PAUL HOLMES INTERVIEWS LIANNE DALZIEL


PAUL HOLMES
Well, the Alcohol Law Reform Bill is crawling its way through Parliament. It bans alcohol from dairies. It’ll make it easier for councils to close liquor stores. It pushes wine to the back of supermarkets, and it requires parents to give their consent if a kid is going out and going to have a drink. National says it’s a game changer, but critics call it the No Reform Bill, saying it ignores, amongst other things, how easy it is to get cheap booze. It ignores advertising and the alcohol levels of RTDs. We’ll hear from the government shortly, but first, Labour’s Lianne Dalziel. Now, normally, of course, one would have expected you to be on with Chester Borrows, but the governing party seem to refuse to want to debate.

LIANNE DALZIEL - Labour MP
Yes, and it’s shame. That’s been consistent throughout this whole debate around alcohol. We haven’t had a constructive argument about the sorts of changes that the Parliament really ought to be voting for, rather than the government making these decisions. When we referred it to the Law Commission, we said to the Law Commission, ‘Please write us a bill so we can introduce an evidence-based piece of legislation into Parliament and debate the hard issues. We haven’t dealt with the hard issues.

PAUL All right. That’s what you don’t like about the bill.

LIANNE Yeah.

PAUL So how is it failing, the bill?

LIANNE Well, I introduced a bill back in 2008 which the government adopted, and, to be fair to them, they took it over. They had the first reading. They referred it to a select committee. People made submissions on it. This bill doesn’t do much more than that bill did. But instead of actually just amending that bill and extending it, they actually ditched that bill in favour of this bill which does very little more. And they actually ruined the Law Commission’s reporting timeframe by getting them to report back early so that they couldn’t do a bill. And I think that the people of New Zealand, the 3000 people who submitted to the Law Commission, are actually insulted by this.

PAUL Indeed, the bills seems to have no sense of urgency, does it, about the drinking problems we have in the country. Chester Borrows, however, says for the first time in 80 years, the government has taken the opportunity to constrain very severely the sale and supply of alcohol. He’s right, isn’t he?

LIANNE Well, the bill that I introduced was also severely constraining, but only to a certain extent. We were relying on the Law Commission to do the evidence-based work that we need as a Parliament to exercise one characteristic that I think has been absent from this debate, and that is courage. You actually need politicians to have some courage on this matter and to vote for real change. But people don’t have the courage in Parliament-

PAUL Ok, I understand that, but you’ve got to take people with you, don’t you? I mean, are there genuine-

LIANNE But people are with us. I think that’s what the government has completely misunderstood. People have taken to the streets in their thousands. We’ve had protests here in Auckland, we’ve had protests in Wellington, Christchurch, Hamilton, places where you wouldn’t normally see people taking to the streets, but they’ve said enough is enough. They’re sick of all these liquor licences being given out in our communities.

PAUL And they’re going to restrict those. They’re going to restrict those.

LIANNE Yes, I know, but the government could have had local alcohol plans in place two years ago, but they ditched it.

PAUL Let me just ask you this - are there genuine health worries, or do you represent a long line of Labour wowserism?

LIANNE No, and I think that this is the hard thing - people do end up having the debate. Let’s characterise those that actually want to see benefits accrued to our community instead of the great harm that’s being done by alcohol. We just can’t ignore $5 billion worth of harm. I mean, if you got into an accident and emergency department in a hospital any time on a Saturday night, you will have people affected by alcohol. You’ve got car crashes being caused, you’ve got unplanned pregnancies as a result of very poor judgements being made-

PAUL We all know. You’ve got violent crime. You’ve got-

LIANNE There are countless problems. Foetal Alcohol Syndrome. The list goes on. You cannot ignore the problems and write it off as wowserism.

PAUL Right-oh, Lianne, what would you do? You want to reduce consumption. Is it axiomatic that if you raise the price you will reduce the consumption?

LIANNE There is a lot of evidence around minimum pricing. So there are certain groups of people who are very, very open to the price signal, and they are the younger groups. So we’re talking about people in their 20s and 30s. They will look at the price that they are paying. But it does depend on their personal circumstances. What I’ve been suggesting is that minimum pricing just deals with the dirt-cheap alcohol. Stops that being sold-

PAUL But that is the real problem area, isn’t it, the dirt-cheap alcohol?

LIANNE Well, the real problem is that the supermarkets that have entered into this whole field - they were loss leading until 2009, they’ve got deep discounting practises, they’ve bought up bottle stores, they’re dropping the price of alcohol across the board. For boys, it’s beer; for girls, it’s the RTDs, the lolly water-

PAUL All right, let’s talk about those. Judith Collins, let’s talk about her position first of all. She says, ‘Damn it all. I’ve gone down the middle. This is pragmatic. I’ve gone down the middle. I’m getting it from both sides, therefore I’ve probably done something right.’ And she says about 85% of New Zealanders drink responsibly. Now, the Law Commission said 700,000 New Zealanders have a drink problem. How do they know that?

LIANNE They didn’t say that. What they said was that there was a large number of people who didn’t normally drink irresponsibly but did on occasions. And I think that we cannot continue to ignore the huge cost that our society is paying. You ask the police, you ask the courts, you ask the hospital emergency departments. I mean, the classic story that I was told by an emergency doctor was that there was one night where there was not one single presentation with an alcohol-related problem: Good Friday. Good Friday at Easter - no bars open, no bottle stores open, no one selling any alcohol that day.

PAUL All right. I’ve got to go.

LIANNE The next day, five people were waiting to have their jaws sewn up or wired up as a result of alcohol-related violence. We cannot ignore the problems.

PAUL There is a correlation. I’ve got to wrap it there as this particular point, and you may depart now your seat because Mr Borrows must come in.

LIANNE Thank you.

PAUL Thank you. Lianne Dalziel, Labour’s Justice Spokesperson.

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