They said that the bill simply tinkered with the issues and didn’t deal with the almost complete cultural acceptance of the harm this highly dangerous and addictive drug causes.

The availability of liquor and the destructive patterns of alcohol consumption – that according to one recent study cost the nation $4.8 billion – are so widespread and deeply engrained in our communities that a comprehensive review and effective action are now needed.

They also identified that young people are being used by government and industry as a diversion from the real issues, like proliferation and under resourced enforcement:

Another flaw is that the Bill’s focus on youth drinking appears to be something of a distraction and a case of moral panic in that it ignores the problem drinking of older New Zealanders. While claiming to get tough on those retailers who sell liquor to under-age youth, the Bill’s “three-strikes” and the retailer loses his or her licence stance fails to address the reality that the present law is being widely flouted. The proposed three-strikes will not deter unscrupulous liquor retailers from continuing to sell to minors as the current enforcement regime means they have a low chance of being caught, says Major Roberts

This followed very closely on the heels of the Law Commission’s Geoffery Palmer, who said last week that :

Alcohol is no ordinary commodity. It is a drug… Alcohol would be classed as a Class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 if it were treated on its merits, according to many experts.

He also said that:

It is the minimisation of this harm that has to be the prime object of any new law, balanced with the need for any regulatory controls to be efficient and effective.

I agree absolutely and so does our party policy. Rational, effective drug law that is focused solely on minimising harm to both individuals and communities is what this country completely lacks. And we desperately need.

Of course the media focused on the possible tax increase and the drinking age rather than the support for reducing proliferation and advertising. These last two directly impact on the alcohol industry and tend to be ignored by politicians. Instead young people are vilified and older people get away with excusing thier own poor alcohol behaviour.

We need alcohol advertising to be restricted in the same way as tobacco advertising. We need further constraints on proliferation and we need alcohol and tobacco to be classified under the Misuse of Drugs Act. The Law Commission expects to produce its discussion paper in July and this will provide our community with the information it needs to lobby MP’s to implement rational drug policy that will minimise harm and keep our communities safer.

With the likely destruction of the Electricity Commission and the gutting of the RMA, anyone will be able to build pretty much anything they want, anywhere, as long as it uses natural gas which we haven’t found yet, but which National will subsidise searching for. Jeanette summed it up as a “drill and hope” policy. I have quoted much of her release in my last post.

This means completely cutting all the Energy Efficiency programmes that the Electricity Commission (EC) manages and pays for, which are targeted at big business. Now, some may say that I am not a fan of big business. However, the assistance they get from the EC is paid for by themselves through a levy. That means businesses, which are inherently inefficient, will not get the help they need to find all the energy efficiency savings that are staring them in the face.

A typical audit for these businesses finds cost-effective savings of nearly 30%. After they capture that, follow up audits usually find a further 20% in cost-effective savings. Why would you kill a money spinning scheme like this, which raises productivity and profits? Just for ideological spite. The result is that we will need more generation to supply all that wasted energy. We will all pay for that and our security of supply will be worse off than now.

Next come the household consumers. The EC makes sure that we have enough generation and enough transmission to keep the economy going without breaking the budget. It was created because the National Party’s so called electricity reforms of the ’90s actually gave generators an incentive to build less and charge more. Thus, our higher prices are, as National claims, in part the result of capacity constraints. However, National’s policies are to blame, not the EC.

The EC was created to fix that problem and it is working. Now National wants to ditch the EC. Without the EC, we would have had blackouts this winter. They are the ones that made sure we had enough generation to cope. And it worked!

Then there is their false promise of a renewable future, all the while making firm financial commitments to a gas-fired future. Very disingenuous.

Oh, well. Same old failed policies of the past. No surprise there. The wolves will be circling around the carcasses after another round of National Party ‘reforms’. Do voters really have such short memories?