Jack Tame: This time politicians can't hide from the booze debate

Chloe Swarbrick's booze bill was pulled from the biscuit tin. Photo / Dean Purcell

It's perhaps my favourite thing about New Zealand politics. Just about as Kiwi as you can possibly get. Whenever it's time to select an MP's member bill for debate before our Parliament, we don't pick it out of some golden, jewel-encrusted box or have it delivered by regal horsemen from an impenetrable Swiss safe.

We pick it from the biscuit tin. The biscuit tin. A 30-year-old, blue-and-white biscuit tin with a label, "Members' Bills," sellotaped on the front.

It's as though our democracy is a game of charades.

The funny thing about the biscuit tin – aside from it being a biscuit tin – is that it seems to have a habit of throwing forward particularly interesting bills. That's where Louisa Wall's marriage equality bill originated. And this week it happened again. Chloe Swarbrick's booze bill was pulled from the biscuit tin.

I'm not someone who prickles at a good time, but I think our collective approach to alcohol is one of the biggest hypocrisies in New Zealand society. We won't legalise cannabis, and we'll live in a state of near-constant panic over the damage caused by methamphetamine, but we do almost nothing meaningful when it comes to alcohol harm.

And it's hardly like we don't have the evidence of the harm, and advice on what we should be doing differently. One of the only recommendations from the Mental Health Inquiry that hasn't yet been acted on is this:

26. Take a stricter regulatory approach to the sale and supply of alcohol, informed by the recommendations from the 2010 Law Commission review, the 2014 Ministerial Forum on Alcohol Advertising and Sponsorship and the 2014 Ministry of Justice report on alcohol pricing.

That 2014 Ministerial Forum was chaired by former Kiwis coach Sir Graeme Lowe, hardly someone who needs to be schooled on the role that sport plays in our society.

Chloe Swarbrick's bill would act on his recommendations and restrict alcohol advertising and sponsorship in sports. It would also give local communities far greater power to decide how many liquor outlets can operate in their neighbourhood.

There will be some people who think it's inconsistent for Swarbrick to crack down on booze when she was a public advocate for legalising cannabis. They miss the point. She isn't advocating to ban alcohol. She doesn't want prohibition. She wants to take a few little steps in order to reduce alcohol harm.

Chloe Swarbrick wants to take a few little steps in order to reduce alcohol harm. Photo / Getty Images

Alcohol arguably causes the most harm of any drug in New Zealand. Not weed. Not even P. Alcohol. I doubt Chloe Swarbrick's bill will make it into law in its current form, but at the very least our politicians will have to debate it. Until now, every time this issue comes up, they've humm'ed and hah'ed and reordered their papers, mumbling and ducking for cover. They're scared of the alcohol lobby. They're scared of being called Nanny State.

This time, there is no running from the debate.