Page 5701 - Week 13 - Thursday, 18 November 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MRS DUNNE: Thank you for your guidance and I thank you for the assistance of the Clerk. I have not done this one before.
I seek leave to move a supplementary amendment to the liquor regulation, circulated on a separate page, which amends schedule 1, section 1.20(2), the definition of fortified wine.
Leave granted.
MRS DUNNE: I move:
Omit amendment No. 9, substitute:
9
Schedule 1, section 1.20 (2), definition of fortified wine—
omit the definition, substitute
fortified wine means wine to which alcohol has been added to stop fermentation or to increase the strength.
Mr Assistant Speaker, you may recall that there was some discussion of the definition of fortified wine in the scrutiny of bills committee. There is a list of things that have to be reported to the Chief Health Officer—light beer, strong beer, heavy beer, midrange beer—all of which are sort of defined in the regulation in fairly scientific means. Then it said “fortified wine” and it gave a list of products which was neither particularly informative nor exhaustive. It was discussed in the scrutiny of bills committee and I decided that we should fix this up. Then I realised that I was actually going to propose to remove the whole section, and it is usually the reverse; you usually amend something to make it better and then you remove it. But seeing that it is quite clear that neither the Greens nor the Labor Party will support the removal of the whole section, I think it is important that we fix up the definition of fortified wine so that it now has the dictionary definition.
I spent some time talking to people about what would be an appropriate definition for fortified wine and I came up with a definition of fortified wine. It is interesting that when I went to the parliamentary counsel to have that ticked off, they said, “That is the dictionary definition.” So I think that we all got to the same point by a number of circuitous methods. So I will recommend that amendment to you after we have voted on amendment No 9.
I want to thank members for their participation in this debate. I think that the fact that there is a level of agreement that there needs to be some amendments to the regulation shows that there is probably a lot more that could be done by way of a consultative and open approach to these things. If there is general agreement in the Assembly that there is a particular policy approach and we all agree that we should be looking at reducing the harms associated with the consumption of alcohol, it would be much better if we could sit around a table from time to time and talk about how we might achieve those ends, rather than dealing with amendments at 30 paces and not providing information in a timely fashion.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video