Pub door opens to teen drinkers

By Audrey Young

political reporter

The drinking age will be lowered from 20 to 18 and shoppers will be able to buy alcohol on Sundays in sweeping changes to liquor laws expected to take effect from October 1.

Parliament tempered the changes last night with several measures to tighten enforcement of drinking laws.

These will not allow any exceptions on the sale of liquor to under-age drinkers - although parents and guardians will be allowed to buy their under-age children a drink on licensed premises.

Under an amendment proposed by the National MP for North Shore, Wayne Mapp, courts will be given the power to close for up to seven days the premises of a licensee convicted of selling or supplying liquor to a minor.

MPs rejected a proposal to let premises such as dairies and video stores sell alcohol.

The vote to lower the drinking age was debated at length and passed narrowly, 59 votes to 55.

The final vote on the drinking age was corrected four times throughout the night, though the result did not change; eight proxy votes cast by National were mistakenly cast on instructions left by absent MPs on another issue.

The vote to open up Sunday trading was carried after virtually no debate.

MPs agreed so strongly on the voice vote that no one called for individual votes to be recorded.

They voted down a move to let supermarkets and grocery stores sell spirits, but approved letting them sell beer as well as wine.

The 11 conscience votes on liquor laws are not yet binding.

Yesterday's decisions will now be drafted as legislation, and will be returned to Parliament in about three weeks.

In yesterday's debate, Prime Minister Jenny Shipley supported lowering the drinking age, saying the present law was muddled.

She said that 28 years ago, she had been in a hotel as an under-age drinker with Burton Shipley, now her husband.

The law needed to be both respected and enforced.

"Young people need clear boundaries," she said. "The problem is that for 30 years we have fudged it."

The retiring National MP for Whangarei, John Banks, wanted the age limit kept at 20 because of the role of alcohol and cannabis in violence and social dislocation.

Mauri Pacific MP Tukoroirangi Morgan (Te Tai Hauauru) accused those supporting a lower age of having a "colonialist, we-know-better attitude."

He said 75 teenagers of Maori descent, aged 15 to 19, had died in alcohol-related accidents last year.

"You may as well go out and shoot another 75 Maori," he said.

MPs supported an amendment by Labour list MP Lianne Dalziel that no exceptions be allowed for selling to under-age drinkers.

She said the only question harried bartenders should have to ask was whether a person buying liquor was 18, not whether he or she was in the company of a guardian or parent.

But while minors cannot buy alcohol themselves, the MPs voted to let accompanying parents or guardians supply it on licensed premises - although it will be illegal to sell or supply alcohol to an under-age spouse.

Earlier, the House debated proof-of-age documents.

The question was not whether identification should be carried compulsorily, but what a licensee could reasonably use as a defence when charged with having served a minor.

It will now be an added defence if the licensee or manager's belief is based on the person's producing an "evidence of age" document.

Parliament decided that document could be a driving licence, passport or a photo ID with evidence of age, as approved by the Minister of Justice.