Alcohol law reform – an important election issue

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Now that the Rugby World Cup is underway, the liquor barons will be busy with their promotions and assuring there's an ample supply of liquor to lubricate the festivities.

New Zealand may be the official RWC host but, with our infamous drinking culture, can we really claim to practise 'host responsibility'?

Across the nation Kiwis and visitors alike now have the perfect excuse – a win, a loss or just the fact of being there – to drink up large. Police, ambulance officers, hospital staff and ultimately communities and families will be left to deal with the consequences.

Those consequences – the violence, injuries and destruction so eloquently outlined in the Law Commission’s Report on alcohol harm – have been exercising the minds of members of the Justice and Electoral Committee considering the Alcohol Reform Bill. It was hoped they would have finished their deliberations much earlier, but 9000 submissions has meant their report has only recently come back to Parliament.

With Parliament rising soon for the election, it is now almost certainly too late for the Bill to make it into law this year. If the Bill is shelved until after the election, any law changes that do occur won’t happen until well into next year and then we’ll have to wait a further year for most changes to be implemented.

However, concerned New Zealanders can still make alcohol law reform an election issue by asking vote-chasing politicians how far they’d go to toughen liberal laws that allow the alcohol industry to blatantly market its products with scant regard for social consequences.

This is the first time in several decades the public has had a real chance to tell the pollies what they really think and, if the 9000 submissions to the Bill are anything to go by, communities are heartily sick of the costs and carnage caused by alcohol.

The Government has already shown it lacks the mettle to tackle the alcohol industry head on. In its present form the Bill ignores almost all of the recommendations made by the Law Commission that would really make a difference – particularly those relating to increasing the price of alcohol and phasing out alcohol advertising and sponsorship.

Ordinary Kiwis living with bottle stores on every street corner, violence and destruction in their neighbourhoods and discarded bottles and cans littering their playgrounds and parks have a right to feel aggrieved. These things affect the very fabric of their lives and they should have the right to hold their politicians to account – not only in the formal environment of a select committee but in community halls, factories, Grey Power meetings and various stops on the election campaign circuit.

Every day we wait for reform, the toll of alcohol harm accrues and, whilst it may seem treasonable to focus on the RWC, there is no doubt this festive boost to our already high alcohol consumption will have a raft of unwelcome consequences for communities nationwide.

Not a lot to celebrate from where I am sitting, so what does your MP plan to do about it?