“The government deserves credit for its level-headed decisions on alcohol”, Roger Kerr, executive director of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, said today.  “It has clearly listened to evidence and argument and avoided over-reaction.”

Mr Kerr said that alcohol raised serious issues but the more heavy-handed of the measures proposed by the Law Commission, which were unsupported by any regulatory impact analysis, would have penalised responsible consumers but done little to curb problems of abuse.  Policies that target the misuse of alcohol rather than responsible use are required to address anti-social behaviour.

Taxpayer-funded, anti-business public health lobbyists too often played the man rather than the ball and failed to adopt a balanced and targeted approach to problems.

 “Much more could be done to reduce harm by sheeting home responsibility to individual abusers rather than restricting alcohol supply generally.  Behaviour is mostly changed by changing the incentives people face. 

“More self-responsibility on the part of parents, schools, universities and other organisations, better enforcement of existing law, greater recourse to ‘naming and shaming’ of abusers, denying ACC benefits for self-inflicted harm, and not allowing welfare to support alcohol habits are examples of strategies that could be more promising than blunt controls on availability.

“I personally query whether there is much point in some of the decisions, such as increasing the purchase age to 20 for off-licences.  The idea of introducing a minimum price system for alcohol would be untargeted and anti-consumer and highly unlikely to satisfy a regulatory impact analysis test.”

Mr Kerr said that the details of legislation to implement the decisions would be important, but the government appeared to be heading in the right direction.

Click here to read the New Zealand Business Roundtable's submission to the Law Commission on Alcohol in Our Lives: An issues paper on the reform of New Zealand’s liquor laws

23 August 2010

For more information contact:
Roger Kerr
Executive Director
Ph: +64 4 499 0790
Email: rkerr@nzbr.org.nz