Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a visit to a business in Christchurch today. Ardern said Government was looking at a possible change to alcohol laws. Photo / Nathan Morton
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern during a visit to a business in Christchurch today. Ardern said Government was looking at a possible change to alcohol laws. Photo / Nathan Morton
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Government is considering changes to the way councils can introduce their own rules for alcohol sales.
She said today that alcohol law reforms which were meant to give local authorities more power over the sale and distribution of alcohol in their areas had not worked as intended.
Parliament will this month debate a private member's bill in the name of Green MP Chloe Swarbrick, which would block appeals of councils' local alcohol policies.
These appeals - typically by supermarkets and the liquor industry - have stalled councils' policies, especially in major centres like Auckland.
Labour was treating Swarbrick's bill as a conscience vote, which meant MPs could cast a personal vote rather than voting along party lines.
Ardern would not directly answer which way she would vote when asked by the Herald today. But she said that Government wanted to look more closely at local alcohol policies (LAPs).
"Chloe has rightly raised the issue there around the fact that local alcohol plans were a tool to be used to allow local communities greater control over the sale, supply and distribution of alcohol in their local areas," she told reporters in Christchurch.
"Unfortunately they have been challenged and held up to the point that they have not been able to have the effect that Parliament intended.
"I agree that should be fixed, the question is whether or not a member's bill is the best way to do that."
Ardern said the Government was now taking a look at the issue.
"I acknowledge [Chloe] for raising this, it is an issue that needs to be resolved."
Green Party MP Chloe Swarbrick's private member's bill on alcohol harm reduction is likely to be debated by Parliament later this month. Photo / Alex Burton
A spokeswoman for Justice Minister Kiri Allan said she had asked officials to investigate what could be changed to make LAPs function better, but that no decisions had yet been made.
Allan has previously said she would vote against Swarbrick's bill because the Government planned to introduce its own alcohol harm reduction reforms.
Other Labour MPs, including Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson, have also said they will vote against the bill because it would also ban alcohol sponsorship of broadcast sports. They said that could remove crucial funding for grassroots sports.
Some Labour MPs, especially in poorer electorates, have indicated they will support the bill. They said their communities were frustrated with how difficult it was to control the proliferation of liquor stores and combat alcohol harm in their neighbourhoods.
National and Act say all of their MPs will vote against the bill, while the Greens and the Māori Party are voting in favour. That means Swarbrick needs most of the Labour caucus - 49 votes - to vote "yes" for it to pass the first reading.
Analysis by Alcohol Healthwatch found 42 councils had a LAP, but they covered only 34 per cent of New Zealand's population. The rest of the councils did not have an LAP, had abandoned the policy, or were facing appeals. Supermarket giants Foodstuffs and Progressive Enterprises (Woolworths) appealed against 94 per cent of LAPs, the analysis found.
Auckland Council's LAP has been mired in legal action for five years due to a challenge by Foodstuffs and Woolworths. It has now been appealed to the Supreme Court, costing the council more than $1m in legal bills.
