This past week has seen two prime examples of politicians talking crap on issues affecting young people.

First of all we had the perennial call to raise the drinking age back to 20. Thankfully, the majority of the Government sees that there is no sense in doing this. The only message that raising the drinking age will send to young people is one of inconsistency, something young people can immediately spot and condemn.

The drinking age was lowered on the proviso that the alcohol industry would properly enforce the age limit. The police were also recently given extra powers to enforce this age limit. This has not happened.

What we have seen is an increase in the aggressive promotion of alcohol use as cool and sexy. The booze barons try and tell us that their advertising is not targeted at minors, but anyone with half a brain knows that young people lap up media messages telling people how to define their self-esteem. The most effective way of targeting young people is with ads that show drinking by the people they want to be - their older siblings.

I have a private member's bill in the ballot to ban broadcast media advertising of alcohol. Tobacco advertising is banned and we know it has an impact. Promotion of any kind of drug use, particularly the drug that has the most detrimental effect on society, is not acceptable if we are serious about the harm reduction philosophy that underpins the National Drug Policy.

The other interesting debate around young people this week has been the discussion on the age of consent for sex. The amendment in question is not likely to go through now because of all the media-generated hysteria over the subject, but it still raised some interesting issues and arguments.

The suggestion was to keep the age of consent at 16 but decriminalise underage sex where the age difference was less than 2 years. This was about protecting young people from adult sexual predators while recognising that underage sex happens. As a nation we have to ask if putting young people in court and prison is going to do anything to help this situation, if not make it worse.

Which raises some very interesting comparisons between this issue and cannabis law reform. If we know people are doing it and are going to continue doing it no matter what the law says, is it not time to take a different approach? Shouldn't we bring these issues within the scope of the law so we can address them rationally without people being threatened with criminality?

What I find bizarre is the language that is used when discussing young people. Too often it's the "we know what's best for you" response, without anyone asking young people themselves what they think would work best.

It's funny how (mostly chronologically challenged) politicians talk about 'them' all the time, blame 'them' for our own inability to set ourselves as good role models. We make young people pay tax and then don't let them vote. Perhaps it's time we did.

Do you agree that we should concentrate on enforcing the current age limit on alcohol before we go changing the age limit back?
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Last week the Clean Slate Bill, legislation that wipes minor convictions from people’s records if they haven’t reoffended after 7 years, was passed by Parliament.

Well, not the Clean Slate Bill exactly. What actually passed was the Government's version, called the Criminal Records (Clean Slate) Bill. When my private member's Clean Slate Bill was introduced to the House, the Government decided it was such a good idea they had better think of it themselves!

I take it as a vote of confidence that the general approach of the law that was passed is very similar to my Clean Slate Bill, which took a pragmatic and realistic approach to concealing records, rather than trying to physically expunge the record. What it means is that, except under a few specific circumstances, someone's minor offences can no longer be revealed after seven conviction-free years, allowing people to get on with their lives and say, with all confidence, they are not a criminal.

It could have been better. My Bill would have applied to convictions that received a prison sentence of six months or less. Unfortunately the Government couldn't agree to that and their Bill only applies to non-custodial sentences. Take a look at sentencing history over the past few decades and you will see that 20 years ago people received small custodial sentences for the kinds of offences that you would receive diversion for today.

I regularly get emails from people who are affected by the minor convictions they received 20 or 30 years ago. I have a whole stack of letters from people who have written to me saying they are desperate for this legislation to pass into law so they can finally get on with their lives. One, for example, is from someone who never even offended in the first place but had, many decades ago, got caught up in an incident at a young and impressionable age. They naively pleaded guilty, resulting in being sentenced, under-age, to an adult prison for a simple disorderly behaviour charge. Even today, people such as this have to pay the penalty for some minor infringement, or for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, all those decades ago.

The Government's Bill was opposed by National, Act, NZ First and United Future. During the first reading of my earlier Bill Wayne Mapp of the National Party said he supported the principle involved and would have supported my Bill if it had applied to only non-custodial sentences. The Government's Bill does just that. It is a demonstration of the blatant inconsistency in the National Party position that they opposed this later legislation with venom, claiming it was tantamount to state-sanctioned lying. Interesting turnaround!

A similar parliamentary debate occurred in the 1980s. One Member of Parliament said then; "In New Zealand today a convicted offender bears an invisible version of the mark of Cain - his criminal record. Although he may be rehabilitated, reformed or an exemplary citizen, the offender cannot escape from his 'record prison'. He finds that a criminal record substantially decreases his alternatives in every walk of life."

Those words came from current Act leader Richard Prebble. So evidently, like National, Act employed selective amnesia in its attempts to derail the Bill. They failed. And it was lucky for the half-million New Zealanders that this legislation already affects that they did, because they can now get on with their lives.