Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon Dr AYESHA VERRALL: I move, That the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

I want to start this speech, not in the words of my own, but in the words of 12-year-old Pōtatau, who submitted to the Health Committee’s hearing in Tāmaki-maka-rau, and this is what he said. He said, “Why do you, the Government, support businesses that sell tobacco that kills Māori, that makes us very sick? That is wrong. You can make it right and make businesses stop selling tobacco.”

My message to Pōtatau is this: you’re right. There is no good reason to allow a product to be sold that kills half the people that use it. I can tell you that we will end this in future as we pass this legislation.

This bill will create generational change, and it will leave a legacy of better health for our youth. It will allow New Zealanders to enjoy more quality years with their whānau and friends. They will have healthier pregnancies. Babies will be born at term and stay in their mother’s arms rather than be snatched away to neonatal intensive care. It will reduce hospitalisations and reduce the burden of smoking-related illness. It will save thousands of lives and billions for the future health system.

Sadly, most people have a story about someone they know who has been harmed by tobacco, and that is reflected in the many stories submitted to the Health Committee. One submitter spoke of being a teenager and witnessing smoking-related illness and death in their whānau. A nurse described her distress at caring for people with chronic lung disease. Another submitter said, “A lot of my whānau and very close friends have passed away through cancer and because of smoking. Eighty percent of the people in our urupa died of cancer.” And one, who saw “the three most important people to me, the pillars of my whanaunga, the matriarchs of our whānau, all died of lung cancer, smoking, health issues. I cared for most of them in their dying days, and it was hard to see, hard to witness”. So she wants a better future for her daughter.

These stories ring true to me because they are the sort of stories that I heard day in and day out as a doctor in our health system. I met people coming back into the emergency department, week after week, as a result of their chronic lung conditions; struggling for breath, knowing that they couldn’t give up smoking, even while they knew that it was killing them. I met people whose gangrene I tried to treat, but when I couldn’t, they had to go to a surgeon for amputations. I sat with people while I told them about their lung cancer diagnosis, and then again, later, as they died.

Tobacco causes so much harm for our community. By voting for this bill, we are saying we’re not prepared to let our people be sacrificed for vested interests like the tobacco industry. We’re saying no to the tobacco industry loading up their product with nicotine to keep people hooked. We’re getting tobacco out of communities, particularly low-income communities, where retail outlets cluster.

This legislation accelerates our progress towards a smoke-free future, and it is a future that is close, within reach; our smoking rate is 8 percent. We know that Pākehā New Zealanders are well on the way to reaching that target of 5 percent smoking, but we have to do the measures in this bill to create an equitable outcome, to make sure that Māori and Pasifika also reach that goal and share in that better future with us.

While thinking about the future, it is also important to reflect on how we have come to this point and how we are able to make this decision today. Over 30 years, Aotearoa has made history as one of the first countries to take bold action to save its people from the harms of tobacco. I want to acknowledge the work of Helen Clark, who was health Minister at the time and brought in the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990. It was a historic measure. Today, we can celebrate another historic moment again, with the passing of this legislation.

It has been 12 years since the Māori Affairs Committee inquiry presented its recommendations for the Government. In fact, it was that inquiry that set a target of the smoke-free goal that was adopted by the Government, and it’s that goal that is a foundation of this bill.

We are 70 years now from when cigarettes were first identified as one of the leading causes of cancer. Aotearoa New Zealand, today passing this legislation, is saying that we are going to stop the harm that tobacco causes.

I want to note that smoke-free has previously attracted bipartisan support in this House. Initially, the National Party was supporting this bill. Well, what has changed? Are there new political opportunities open to the National Party, and are they prepared to let thousands of New Zealanders die to pursue those opportunities? Dr Reti, I know you know better; you have the opportunity to put yourself and your party on the right side of history, and I say to you—I say to you again—vote for this bill or renounce your oath.

One of the key outcomes of this bill is to reduce the disparities that continue to be so keenly experienced because of the deadly stubborn habit that is smoked tobacco. Let’s be clear: the modelling shows that for Māori women, the life expectancy gap between them and Pākehā will be reduced by a quarter; what other vote will you take in your life that could make such an important difference to the health of Māori? I find it very hard to think of one.

This is a singular issue, and parties who believe in caring for the health of their people need to vote for this bill. By doing so, we will reach a vision that one submitter described as “better health, cleaner air for our whānau, to live and work and to have recreation in a smoke-free environment. We will break the cycle of harm caused by tobacco.”

I want to acknowledge colleagues in the House. I want to express my gratitude to Tangi Utikere and the members of the Health Committee, whose deliberations improved the shape of this bill—and yes, I include my colleague from the Green Party Chlöe Swarbrick in that gratitude.

I want to also thank the officials from the Ministry of Health, led by Sally Stewart, who gave excellent advice on this topic; the Parliamentary Counsel Office; submitters as well. I want to thank the many advocates and researchers and others in the tobacco control sector who have kept this issue going even when they didn’t find support in Government. Their passion, their determination, and their collective efforts have brought us to this day, after so many petitions, submissions, and research.

I want to thank the health workers and community health promotion experts at the grassroots level. They have stood alongside smokers and communities through thick and thin, when they received support from Government and also when they didn’t, helping people to make the change to be smoke-free. I can’t name them all, but the ones that I have recently had engagement with, like The Hashtags of Wainuiomata campaigning for smoke-free cars; Kāute Pasifika in Hamilton, de-normalising smoking; Hāpai te Hauora with their health promotion; the Cancer Society, particularly in South Canterbury, where they’re lobbying councils for more smoke-free environments; the work done by the Northland community to address retail outlets in their community—I say to those community activists and health promoters that our work is not done. We need to continue to support our people towards our smoke-free goal, as they have done for years—but also after the passage of this bill.

Finally, I wanted to share a plea from one submitter, who said, “A lot of my family members have passed away from tobacco. So if you really want your family members to be here with you today and tomorrow, make sure you support this bill.” I can’t think of a better sentiment to take into the Christmas holidays, knowing that we’re voting for a bill that will keep New Zealanders alive for longer, which will make more families have more time together. It is with great pleasure that I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. National has never disagreed with the end point of nicotine reduction—never have, and we don’t here today—but we do disagree with the process that purportedly is going to get there.

Let’s remember, we offered a bipartisan view. We offered an alternative and the Government said, “No.” So before they point the finger and say, “You don’t want to play”, that is not what happened. National supports nicotine reduction. National supports the smoke-free goals. In 2011, the National Government announced the smoke-free 2025 goals—let’s remember it was goals in our hands. And this arose from the 2010 Māori Affairs Committee recommendations that by 2025 we would be smoke-free. Is that going to be true? Are we going to be smoke-free by 2025? That’s not possible, and I’ll tell you why it’s not possible.

In 2018, interim targets were set. In the baseline in 2011—when the National Government started down this mission—the smoking rate for all adults was 16.3 percent, so interim target rates were set. That interim target rate was, in 2018, 10 percent. And what happened when we got there? When we got there, it was 13.1 percent. So in 2018, we’d already failed the target. And this Government’s presuming that what they’re doing here today—that all this hurry and rush at the expense, as I’ll talk to later, of retailers—is because they want to hit the 2025 goal. It will not happen. It is not possible. You don’t actually start retail reduction until 2024. You don’t start denicotinisation until 2025. It is not possible that this Government will reach the 2025 goal.

So given that is a statement of fact, what is the hurry to get rid of small retailers and cast aside others in their ambitious rush for the sound bite and for the virtue signalling? What is the hurry? This Government will not reach the 2025 goals and they knew it in the very beginning. Yet they’ve used the argument of urgency and a need to get to this goal to justify their poor processes.

Our positioning on this bill has been to achieve nicotine reduction with the least collateral damage possible. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Labour’s position is to achieve nicotine reduction regardless of the collateral damage. Under Labour, who is the most affected? Who is the most damaged? The same hard-working retailers who are currently being damaged by their ram raids and their burglaries—our corner dairies who open all day to provide the convenience that we want. How ironic, then, it is the same convenience on behalf of the Government that will close their corner dairies for the sake of their virtue-signalling experimental initiatives. It is convenient to sacrifice small retailers.

This didn’t need to happen. There was an alternative pathway that could still achieve large amounts—take the better pathway towards a 2025 goal, actually, than what’s being put on the table here today—but Labour didn’t want to hear about it. All they saw was the sound bite arising from, “We’ll do a smoke-free generation.” Remind me, who’s implementing that? How’s that gone? Or do retail reduction? Remind me, who’s implementing that? How’s that gone? We’ll denicotinise—now, that does have some weight to it: it’s being deployed in Colorado as we speak. It actually does have a pathway that is successful, but they didn’t want to know. Remember, go and look at the Facebook page. We offered to collaborate and they didn’t want to know.

This Government has chosen to do retail reduction first and reduce dairy selling tobacco products from 6,000 to 600 retailers. It is the milk and bread and other products that people also purchase that generates their living, not the low-margin tobacco. But no, retailers were—as the Minister said to us—easy to implement. What she also said was retail reduction has much uncertainty. We know that already; that’s why it’s a foolish thing to be starting with.

This was unnecessary. The National Party proposed denicotinisation first and then retail reduction if needed. The Government wanted the easy hits—the sacrificial lamb on the altar of virtue signalling. We could have had both.

When the local dairy is closed and you have to drive further, consuming more petrol, emitting more fumes, thank a Labour Government who didn’t protect these people and didn’t protect their livelihoods. They were expendable for the sound bite. Corner dairies: you are expendable for the sound bite, the Labour sound bite.

The first sound bite came out last year when it was announced around about December, the smoke-free generation and the retail reduction. There is no epiphany to this. This is no original thinking from Labour; it’s been on the cards for years. No one deployed, it for several reasons; (1) no one was sure it was going to work; and (2) the risks and the collateral damage were too great. So no new thinking here. Both here or internationally, this has been discussed for decades.

I think there’s also a point to make to people who are saying reducing smoking will reduce ram raids. Well, that’s kind of circuitous logic, because what we also know is that the ram raids also attract attention towards alcohol and towards vaping products. I think that’s a circuitous logic to say reducing the number of retailers is going to reduce the ram raids. I don’t believe that.

We also put on the table, which wasn’t mentioned here today in the Minister’s speech—which, for the very first time, actually occupied her full 10 minutes. So unconvincing is this bill that in her first reading it was eight minutes and 27 seconds; in the second reading, seven minutes and 13 seconds. We’d sat down before we had to get up again to answer her—that’s how unconvincing she was and is on her own bill.

We put forward, at the committee of the whole House, a number of Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs). The first SOP proposed the change in scheduling that I’m enunciating here. The second talked to vaping; the second to the Local Government New Zealand remit that said, “Can we do something about the proximity of new specialist vaping retailers when they go for their application?” We thought, “You know, that kind of make sense.” And they gave the example of Dargaville, and I won’t reiterate that—we did that in the committee of the whole House.

So we put forward a very reasonable proposal, supported by Local Government New Zealand, saying, “Could the Director-General of Health please take into account the proximity of other specialist vape retailers when they issue new licences?” The Labour Government didn’t want to hear it. They didn’t want to hear that community voice.

We also put forward an SOP that talked to doing a better job with underage vaping. I honestly believe that across the House, we probably are all concerned with underage vaping, which has tripled, roughly, from 3 percent to 9 percent is some of the figures that I’m hearing. Yes, it has achieved the goal that we wanted to achieve with adults—and I believe it will continue to do so, and that is a good thing.

But we always had that concern that it would be a gateway. It looks like it may well be—not quite as much as we thought, but still a gateway. We also had that concern that it would start to disrupt social networks, and that even the small amount of nicotine that’s in vaping could be dangerous to a developing teenage brain. These concerns remain. These concerns have been brought to us, and I believe brought to every single person in this House. I defy anyone here to say they haven’t received an email from parents, schools, and principals saying, “We have a problem with underage vaping.” As the newspaper headlines said, “An epidemic of underage vaping.”

So this was a gentle SOP proposing that maybe we should be applying more resources, maybe we should be particularly indicating that we are concerned for underage vaping, and the mechanism to do that was to step up the compliance monitoring around underage vaping.

Parts of the bill attended to this—looking at online self-identification, making sure that they truly were over 18 years—but there was more that could be done. We could have sent that signal to communities, to schools, and to principals that “Yes, we’ve heard. Yes, we believe. Yes, we agree. And so we’re going to encourage the director-general to particularly have emphasis on under-age vaping”—and have emphasis on the two-minute bell that hasn’t rung.

But what we’re also saying here: this was a very important SOP that was gentle, it didn’t ask much of anyone. It didn’t cost much at all to say, “Can we please apply ourselves to underage vaping?” Schools, principals, the community are saying they’re concerned, but this Government didn’t want to know. It was way too much of a distraction from the sound bites that they want, from the virtue signalling that they want. They didn’t want to do the real work. They didn’t want to listen to schools and communities, and so they’d marched off into this fanciful horizon that will not deliver a 2025 smoke-free goal.

So we’re going to stand here today and, of course, we’re going to oppose this. We’re going to oppose it not because we disagree with the end points. I’ve seen as much clinical harm from smoking as anyone in this House, but we do disagree with the pathway and the process, and we will not tolerate collateral damage when those goals could have been achieved with a different mechanism—in fact, this Government’s own mechanism. All we asked for was a change in schedule, and they said, “No.” They can answer to small retailers. They can answer to communities when small retailers leave. This will be part of your collateral damage that you will answer for.

This bill is flawed; this bill will not achieve the 2025 goal. We believe in that goal; we want to get there. This is not the pathway to get there. We have an alternative proposal; we have a plan. Thank you.

Mālō e lelei, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a very brief call in support of this legislation. Can I acknowledge Associate Minister Verrall for her leadership in this space. Can I acknowledge colleagues on the Health Committee—which was able to scrutinise this piece of legislation—along with the advice of officials. Can I also acknowledge the many, many, countless submitters that participated in this process—individuals and collectives who care about the wellbeing and future of their whānau and of generations.

I’ve made contributions previously, so the only changes are tweaks through the committee of the whole House stage, in terms of what the bill looks like before the House today. But this piece of legislation will take steps to prevent deaths, which are—let’s be honest—largely and hugely inequitable for our Māori and Pasifika communities, and so this is a great step forward. I am very proud to commend this bill to the House.

Oh, look—took me by surprise, a Government MP couldn’t even speak for the full 10 minutes on his own bill. And I’m not surprised. Isn’t it—getting near the end of the year—just an absolute shambles as this Government crawls towards the end of the year? But there was one quote I noticed today: I quote, “I feel I am better suited for government than opposition”—Jamie Strange, Labour MP from Hamilton East. Because he’s been at the front line of the political war for the last six weeks, and he knows how the tide is turning. “I feel I am better suited for government than opposition …”—it says it all, really. Good on him for standing up and being honest.

There’s a lot of crossover, in that honest statement today from Jamie Strange, to the bill we’re discussing today. A bill that is filled of missed opportunities; a bill that speaks to an arrogant Government that knows best. Full of sound bites and virtue signalling, but when you look deep into the public policy aspect of this bill it is hugely lacking. The flaws that my learned colleague Dr Shane Reti spoke about in the first reading clearly outline why National will oppose this bill in its third reading. And here we go, another example of Dr Shane Reti, who, on his own, has put a compelling argument forward and a credible alternative, and gifted it to the Government, who turned it down. Shades of months ago, when the Government was scrambling and struggling to put legislation together for the medicinal cannabis bill, and Dr Shane Reti put his own framework together that was widely acclaimed by the health community. Here we have, again, another issue with this Government that just won’t listen.

As Dr Reti clearly outlined, the National Party agrees with the end goals. In fact, to a point, we actually even agree with the three policy levers of reducing retail shops, denicotisation, and making it illegal for a certain cohort of New Zealanders born after 2009 to buy cigarettes. But where we differ on this side of the House is the order of those three levers. Why are we sending the sacrificial lambs—our small-business owners—in first? Ones that have been under the pump for several months due to the soft-on-crime Government who are facing the voracity of the increased crime in New Zealand. And now, through the sound bites and the virtue signalling, they are put up first to lose their livelihoods. Under this bill, potentially 6,000 small retailers will be reduced to 600. All we’re saying is, “Yep, that’s a lever you can use, but why not pause? Why not use one of your other policy options first?”—denicotisation. Because if reducing the nicotine in cigarettes gives us the ability of reaching the smoke-free goal of 2025, of less than 5 percent of New Zealanders smoking, then why would we not try that first?

We still haven’t had one compelling reason from this Government. One of the reasons we don’t have any compelling reasons is because they get up and do 90-second speeches. Welcome to being a Government backbencher in an unpopular Government, where the whip just says, “I’m not worried you’ve been up all night preparing your 10-minute speech—we want to rush this bill through. It’s not the best; we’ll just get it through. Ninety seconds—just go for it.” And to think that these MPs, two years ago, were in the electorates, you know, saying to their constituents, “I’ll work hard for you.” you know? And what they call that is a lion in their electorate, but a lamb in Wellington. Because they won’t stand up for their electorates and they won’t do the right thing. So I look forward to the Government MPs going back to their small-business owners, going back to their dairy owners, who are under a lot of pressure at the moment to say, “Yep, there was another policy lever open to us: denicotisation. We could have done that first, but we chose not to.”

And you can’t say the science stacks up, because what was very interesting in the first reading of this bill was how much international coverage this bill got. And fair enough, too. I mean, it’s quite experimental. I don’t have any problem with New Zealand leading the way and I think we’ve got to try things. We’ve got to be flexible, we’ve got to be responsive, and we’ve got to be reflective, but it just doesn’t make sense, when you sequence those three policy levers, why the current Government is so stubborn about closing down our small-business retailers first. Why would you not try denicotisation?

Then there is the other issue around the gaps we’ve now got in this bill, because there was a real opportunity to address some of the issues about vaping we have in New Zealand. I personally think for those who smoke and have the ability to transition to vape, it’s a fantastic solution for them. It’s great, and for many it’s been the only solution that has worked when they’ve tried several mechanisms for getting off tobacco smoking. The problem we do have in New Zealand, though, is there are a number of young people who haven’t smoked—traditionally, tobacco first—going straight on to vaping. I’ll challenge any MP in this House that hasn’t heard of, or been approached by, a parent who’s really concerned why underage kids are getting access to vapes at the vape stores in our towns and in our cities.

And this was an opportunity to put in—again, Dr Shane Reti wrote it all out for the Government. These guys have got thousands of officials, and one astute doctor writes better policy than their thousands of officials. Because he knows what’s right, and that’s why he did it. So why did we not tighten that up for young kids who are getting access to vapes? I’ve tried to address it in the small town I live in, and the police just basically said, “Too many bigger priorities at the moment, Matt. We’re not going to be able to focus on that.” This bill could have gone part of the way to do that, as well as enabling, through legislation, a view on proximity by the director-general for future vape shops? And you might ask, “Well, has a Minister tried to muddy the waters through the committee of the whole House stage?” Well, the similarities between proximity of vape shops and reducing from 6,000 to 600 for tobacco shops—very different. It’s not retrospective; proximity for vape shops was growth for the future. We had an opportunity—we’ve had several opportunities through the course of this bill.

We have a hard-working future health Minister. And boy, I’ll tell you what, the state our health system’s in at the moment, especially for those people who go into our emergency departments, wait longer than six hours than they did under a National Government, and then leave because they can’t get seen—they can’t wait till Dr Shane Reti’s the health Minister, to bring back targets into our health system, and to bring back a health system that actually delivers. When you listen to Dr Shane Reti, it’s very clear from his speech that he’s focused on the outcomes.

It’s very clear that if we’re going to reach Smokefree 2025, the three policy levers we are debating in the third reading this afternoon are ones we’re happy to support. It was how you would deploy those three policy levers and what we’re doing now is setting up our small-business owners, our dairy owners, our retailers—all members of our local communities—and they’re going to have to front it. They’re going to have to front it with their families and do the heavy lifting when denicotisation could have been the lever—it could have been the one that drove it down. As Dr Shane Reti clearly pointed out, we could have reviewed it and gone from there. But another example of a Government that’s stubborn, has missed opportunities, and is arrogant.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Every year, 4.5 thousand people die from smoking, so we can continue to talk about it ad nauseam—as my colleague Matt Doocey has just ably demonstrated—or we could actually do something about it. Ten years ago, the Government set a goal that by 2025, fewer than 5 percent of New Zealanders would be smokers, and this bill is the bill that intends to achieve that goal and improve the health and the health outcomes of New Zealanders. And it’s really disappointing that National aren’t supporting this bill—they say that they support the concept of smoke-free; they’re just not willing to do anything about it, and that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But on this side of the House, Labour knows that this is the right thing to do; it is a bold piece of legislation, it is world-leading—the three elements of this bill work together in a way that will see it be successful, and on that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. I used to think before I came to this place that this is where we would debate issues and their substance with evidence and really thrash it out, and when it comes to drug policy—all drug policy—I’ve been really let down by that hope. I actually want to allude to some of the first reading speeches that we heard from National Party MPs. Matt Doocey was one of them. He got up and said, “The National Party back evidence-based approaches to drug harm reduction.” I said at that point in time, and it was recorded in Hansard, that I will be raising that with the National Party every opportunity that I get, because what we have here in this proposed legislation, which will go through its third reading tonight, is a response to a substance which can cause harm. So, substances, whether they be alcohol or cannabis or tobacco, we can recognise them from a health approach and say, “Well, this substance obviously, when ingested by the consumer, has X, Y, Z impacts.” When it comes to tobacco, we’re seeing approximately 13 New Zealanders die every single day from smoking or from second-hand smoking. So we have to say that substance very obviously can cause harm.

We then have to ask the question, well, how do we go about reducing that harm with a legislative framework that incorporates public health—not just the health-based approach but the public health approach, which contemplates the communities that people are living in, the resources that they have access to to wean off of their addiction, and all of those other really critical surrounding circumstances that are necessary to deal with that issue. I think as all of us in this place can probably acknowledge, criminal prohibition of substances has never got rid of those substances, which is why it is so important that we have those alternatives, like, for example in this legislation, the likes of vaping, which others have acknowledged doesn’t come without its own harms, and we’re starting to see a proliferation of those harms.

So I just really wanted to address that point and also to speak to those Supplementary Order Papers and those ostensible solutions that were waved around by Dr Shane Reti. I’ve got a lot of respect for and have collaborated with Dr Shane Reti on a number of things, including the likes of the medicinal cannabis legislation which went through this House a few years ago now, but as we’ve very thoroughly canvassed in the committee of the whole House stage—and it’s available out there for anybody who’s listening along at home who does want to go and look at this stuff—those proposals, those Supplementary Order Papers, largely were unworkable and they did not do what they said on the tin.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! Sorry to interrupt the member, but we are in the third reading, and any matters dealt with in the committee are now in the past. So I’ll ask the member to address what is in the bill post committee of the whole House stage at its third reading.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: All right, OK. So, yeah, moving forward, then, we had throughout the process of this legislation, obviously, as reflected throughout the debate that others have raised with regard to the contributions of Dr Reti, that, actually, within the director-general requirements in this legislation there is the opportunity to do precisely those things that he was speaking to, around, for example, consideration of proximity of vaping shops and the concentration of them.

But let’s come back to the core point, the core issue, the kaupapa, that it is that we are debating tonight, that is, of course, the third reading of this legislation, which does contain a range of novel measures to try and tackle that really hard core, that final, kind of, part of New Zealand that is still struggling with getting off of their addiction to tobacco, because as we heard from the many submitters at the Health Committee, tobacco, perhaps unlike most other drugs—alcohol, for example—is a substance that most of its users want to stop using, quite actively. What we know is that there are obviously measures, which it’s interesting to hear, and I’m glad to hear, the likes of the National Party agree with as well—that denicotinisation will go a long way towards reducing the attractiveness and the addictiveness and, basically, not satiating that addiction that people have to tobacco and therefore helping them to get off of it.

I also just wanted to note, as I haven’t been able to say so fulsomely at other points throughout this debate at each reading, that we really do need to shout out to the officials here, because they were phenomenal. I noted at the end of the committee of the whole House stage—not alluding to that, Madam Speaker, but at the end of that stage, we were left with some presentations from other members in this House that the officials hadn’t done their job. The officials did their job very diligently, and they were phenomenal for the members who did turn up and did engage in that process. So I want to thank the Minister and the Health Committee, very diligently chaired by Dr Tangi Utikere, because throughout that process of collaboration, both with the Minister prior to the legislation coming to the House and through the Health Committee, some really core things that were critical to the Greens were progressed in this legislation and reflected throughout it.

The most important thing is that we didn’t end up picking up on, particularly, those really problematic kind of consequences of a criminal prohibition approach to substances, like we’ve seen, for example, under the Misuse of Drugs Act. This legislation does not create a new criminal framework; it creates a new kind of course of civil fines that are available for people. I think, as we actually discussed quite robustly inside of my caucus, it is really important to note that in certain circumstances where we do see that people, you know, at the more structurally marginalised end of our communities who receive these fines, they can end up escalating, effectively, into criminal charges if they are not paid. But importantly, again, this legislation and the new regime does not target those users; it is very much targeted on sale and supply.

Importantly, as well, we do have the containment of—and this is something which we achieved through the select committee—a review, a review that will be really important for reviewing the efficacy of some of these particularly novel measures. There is, of course, also the capacity inside of this legislation for the likes of growing your own, if somebody does want to go out of their way to go through the process of growing and processing their own tobacco, for some reason.

The thing that excites me the most personally in having really gone through the weeds of this legislation is the testing regime and the licensing regime around, kind of, approved products and approved retailers, particularly the testing regime for vaping. We know that there are a number of products out there that are not what they say they are, so that approved process for products is going to be really important.

But just in my final few minutes, I did want to note that there is, of course, more to do, which I think all of us in this House have also noted. To that effect, back on the hobby horse of the cigarette filters, cigarette filters, as reflected in the Health Committee report, they do not reduce the harm of smoking tobacco. They are a faux harm cessation device, and all they have basically done is serve to make people think that the product that they’re consuming is safer, but all they do in reality is make the product more palatable, in turn being littered all across our cities and flowing out into our moana. I was out, actually, with Sustainable Coastlines just yesterday and we were picking up just for 20 minutes some litter around the Wynyard Quarter area in Auckland Central, and in that 20 minutes we found dozens and dozens of these cigarette filters, which are terrible for the fishies.

The other thing is, of course, vaping. All of us have said we want to do more on vaping, so what does that actually look like, because, again, as we’ve noted, there is in the regulatory powers for the Director-General of Health the ability to set, for example, the likes of, as Matt Doocey was putting forward, proximity requirements, or, rather, not having dense proximity of vaping outlets. But I think it sounded like we had some form of consensus in the House to look towards perhaps phasing out disposable vapes, because disposable vapes tend to be cheaper, they tend to be a lot easier for our young people to get hold of as a result of also being cheaper, but they also tend to fool people into thinking that they’re not starting an addiction, and they also tend to explode in our rubbish tips and landfills—so, once again, a massive environmental hobby horse for us in the Greens.

I also think, and I’ve said as much to the Minister, that it is really critical that we’re not just seeing this legislation pass as it is but also, again, as canvassed in other readings, that there is some serious resourcing that is given to particularly the cessation programmes that are already doing phenomenal mahi out there in our communities, particularly, as we heard at select committee, for our Māori and particularly our Pasifika organisations who are doing this work on the ground.

Just finally, I want to thank all of the submitters and all of the advocates, and Tiger and her mum. We read out Tiger’s contribution to the Health Committee in the House, obviously, during the second reading of this bill, and what we had at Health Committee was some incredible young people, some incredible tamariki and rangatahi, the likes of the HashTags as well, who are making the case for a healthier future. Our young people want this, the people who are currently addicted want this, our communities want this, and we have the opportunity to achieve it, albeit with some novel measures that are going to require constant updating, reviewing, and resourcing. All we in the Greens ask for is some logical consistency when it comes to drug harm reduction.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party and my caucus colleagues in opposition to the third reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.

We stand opposed to this bill because it’s a bad bill and it’s bad policy—it’s that straightforward and simple. There won’t be better outcomes for New Zealand; there will be worse outcomes for New Zealanders, because we need to look at what the effects—the true effects—of this law will be on our communities and our people within our communities. That’s because when you create a law, you need to look at the costs and the benefits, and you also need to ask the question of “Well, what will happen next from us passing this law; what will be the flow-on effect of this law?”

Now, this law says that it has the goal of reducing smoking in New Zealand. That’s a nice goal and it sounds nice in theory, but the devil is in the details. Nobody wants to see people smoke—I don’t want to see people smoke—but we live in reality and we know that it happens, and some people will smoke. This bill, rather than helping our communities, is simply nanny-State prohibition that will cause more problems in our society because, in reality, the effect is it will create a large black market, it will kill off our community dairies, and it will increase illegal activity and harm in our communities. So the ACT Party believes that it’s a poorly thought-out, feel-good policy that sounds nice in theory, but it comes with huge downsides, and I want to go over a few of those in detail with the time that I have.

This bill has three policies within it to bring about the goal of reducing smoking in New Zealand. So starting with the first goal to significantly reduce retail availability by restricting sales of smoked tobacco products to retail outlets approved by the Director-General of Health. There are around 6,000 community retailers that currently have the ability to sell cigarettes, amongst all of the other types of goods that they sell. This bill will reduce the number of retailers that can sell cigarettes and smoked tobacco products to 600. That is a huge reduction. It’s estimated that around 80 percent of these retail businesses will go out of business—they will close.

Let me tell you a little bit about some of these retailers, because I’ve had a lot to do with them in recent months. Some of our retailers in our communities have faced the hardest time in New Zealand. They are constantly being attacked, they’re constantly being robbed, they’re at threat of ram raids, they have a threat of being attacked, working in their own shops, and it’s not good that in our community we have anybody going to work who feels like they might get attacked just for doing their jobs in the local community. That’s not OK. But we have a lot of retailers who get up, they work hard, and they’re just trying to do their best to serve their local community, and that’s really tough to see.

But, on top of all of that, on top of all of the crime that they have, the Government is now coming along and saying, “Forget about all that hardship that you already faced; we want to put you out of business. We want the ability to pick and choose which one of you will be able to survive into the future.” It’s not fair. It’s not the Kiwi way. We have community retailers who won’t be picked and they will find it really hard because this bill is anti-competitive. You know, if they’re not able to sell cigarettes or smoked tobacco products, that’s not just that cigarette or smoked tobacco product that they’re not able to sell; it means that that customer, who would have come in to buy that good, now won’t come in to buy the bread or the milk or the water bottle or even the newspaper that might have come alongside it—all of that business now goes to their competitor. So it’s not just the effect of not being able to sell the cigarettes; it’s not being able to sell all of those other goods that people buy when they’re in the shop as well.

So I believe that’s disrespectful. It’s disrespectful for the way that we go about doing business in New Zealand, and it’s disrespectful for the hard-working Kiwis who want to serve their local communities. It is wrong.

But the second part of this policy is that, even worse, on top of all the crime, it puts a bigger target on some of those retailers, who have been affected by crime and who have been affected by ram-raiders, because now there’s a smaller pool of them to be targeted. I think that is going to be a terrible consequence of this bill. It also means that it will lead to a larger black market because, you see, a lot of people like accessibility. They like to know that they can pop down to their local shop and they can get what they need when they need it. Now, if you’re moving a store further and further away from someone, they either have the ability to drive further, take a bus even further, or walk further, or they can go to their local gang member and get it from there. They can get it around the corner. And that is what will happen. Illegal activity will increase. Because you know who’s smart? Criminals. They know that this is wanted in their communities and they will be there, arms wide open, providing illegal cigarettes on the black market.

The second point that I want to talk to is reducing the appeal and addictiveness of smoked tobacco products by setting a limit on the quantity of nicotine and enabling limits or prohibitions to be set on other constituents. This creates a radical reduction in the amount of nicotine content within each cigarette, and I think there are people in our communities who are addicted to cigarettes. The effect will be that those who smoke and are addicted, and who can least afford it, will spend more on their habit because instead of having one cigarette to get their hit, they’ll have two—they will increase how much they’re smoking. The effect of that is that if they’re smoking more cigarettes to get the same hit, they’re going to be increasing their tar intake, which is actually worse for their health. This will affect families who can least afford it the most because more of that money will be going to an increase in buying cigarettes for a habit rather than going to other costs of living that that family need.

The second part is the alternative—they don’t smoke more cigarettes for their habit, they once again go to the black market to find exactly what they were looking for originally. I hope that Customs and our police are ready for the increase in illegal activity that will happen. We are going to see more illegal cigarettes come through the borders, through customs, and through containers than we’ve ever seen, because people will want these products and the gangs will be there to give it to them.

Number three is preventing young people and future generations from ever taking up smoking by prohibiting the sale of smoked tobacco products to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009. Now, if we know anything from history, it’s that prohibition does not work—it absolutely does not work—because a great example is drug law in New Zealand. You know, we have a lot of illegal substances in our communities and we say we don’t want young people using pills at festivals. We know it happens, and we know people supply it to them. This is the same thing. Prohibition doesn’t mean that the problem goes away; it just shifts to the black market. It’s really that simple. A ban on a problem does not make it disappear; it will increase criminal activity in our communities and make us less safe.

So who are the losers out of this policy? Well, it’s the dairies and the people in our community who want to serve our local communities; it’s businesses, knowing that the Government thinks it’s acceptable to pick and choose winners and to have bureaucrats sitting in Wellington decide who the winners of a business environment should be, rather than the local community; and it’s all New Zealanders. New Zealanders are worse off, knowing that the Government restrict business activity in New Zealand—they cannot see the flow-on effects of the policy, which will increase harm in our communities, yet they create feel-good laws that actually make us worse off. The winners of this policy are the crims and the gangs.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. To that last speaker, Brooke van Velden, my son would say to me, “What a bunch of baloney”. That was so hard to listen to, and the outcomes that she was speaking to, I would say, as a clinician still working in South Auckland at our medical clinics—the outcomes we would see with this bill is less patients coming in with less respiratory conditions, less cardiac conditions; it is long-term conditions that result from smoking. Māori and Pacific and vulnerable populations that have long-term effects from the smoking—this bill would make a huge difference for our communities. So I’d say to the last speaker that is just totally incorrect what that speaker was saying.

I just want to acknowledge the Minister, the select committee, and the submitters: the Māori and Pacific organisations that came through, ProCare, the primary health organisations, the medical, the paramedics. They came through and said their bit about this bill that would make a huge difference to our vulnerable communities. And I want to say a huge mihi to our organisations that are up there: thank you so much for your advocacy, your research, your mahi in this space, to help push this bill through and draft it to where it is today. Malo le tautua, malo le tauivi. And on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Penny Simmonds—five-minute call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I would like to start by saying what a disgraceful and disrespectful display it was from the Minister in her opening speech with her personal attack on National’s health spokesperson, Dr Shane Reti—Dr Reti, who has such credibility as a medical practitioner, such credibility as a medical researcher, and such commitment to the health of Māori and all New Zealanders. For this Minister to have spent her time personally attacking him for trying to work in a bipartisan way to make this bill much better and much more effective was arrogant and shame on her. It reflects very badly on her.

National, I want to reiterate [Interruption]—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Tone it down—bring it down.

PENNY SIMMONDS: I want to reiterate that National absolutely supports a smoke-free agenda and we are proud to have established the 2025 smoke-free target. But this bill will not get to that target. It won’t get there because it doesn’t follow the science and it doesn’t follow the international research. The Minister even confirmed that when she said that the first initiative of reducing the number of outlets had much uncertainty to it, but it was the easiest one to do. It was the easiest one for this Government to do to virtue signal and to make an announcement, but don’t worry too much about whether it’s going to work or not. And that is this Government to a tee.

So Dr Shane Reti tried to do the work to make this bill more effective to try and get to those targets. One of the earlier Government speakers said National wouldn’t do anything. Well, how they could accuse National of not being prepared to do anything when Dr Shane Reti came up with the Supplementary Order Papers that would have given this bill a chance of being effective—he picked up on the international research that was going to be the most effective part of it. He urged this Government to pick up on putting the schedule away and relooking at the ways in which it might have been more effective and cause less harm. But the thanks he got was a personal attack from a Minister on somebody who has such integrity—

Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall: Does he?

PENNY SIMMONDS: —and it will come back to haunt her. Well, that’s a very big call for the Minister to be doubting another member of Parliament’s integrity. So it’s disingenuous of this Minister to have been so scathing of Dr Reti, when he sought to improve this bill, he sought to make it more effective, he sought to give it a chance of meeting the targets that we agree with, but she turned her back on any sort of bipartisan work on this bill, and she chose instead to mock him.

So we have in full flight the arrogance of this Government: the fact that they know best, that they were prepared to ignore Local Government New Zealand and the laws that they had passed trying to regulate the sale of vaping products. They told the local authorities that they didn’t know what they were doing. This Minister knows best, she knows all. The local government, councils, can just take a running jump. She will do what she likes in their community. She told the community dairies and small businesses that, again, she doesn’t care what happens to them. She cares much more about her virtue-signalling announcement that will give her a bit of airtime in the media. She doesn’t care how much she kicks those small business owners when they are down.

The member’s time has expired.

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order!

Debbie Ngarewa-Packer: It’s a very, very loud Whare this evening. I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori to speak to the third reading.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—five-minute call.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka. Tēnā tātou e te Whare. It’s a very, very loud Whare this evening. I rise on behalf of Te Paati Māori to speak—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Debbie Ngarewa-Packer—five-minute call.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: Thank you; I’d already started.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I know.

DEBBIE NGAREWA-PACKER: I appreciate that. I was getting a bit worried I’d missed my turn!

So, just to re-emphasise, I rise to speak to the third reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill. We support this bill, so I’ll get that out of the way in the first sentence. [Cheers across the House] Thank you. We acknowledge the Government for continuing the work of Tariana Turia and Hone Harawira and the kaupapa Māori health advocates across the country. Te Paati Māori are extremely proud of our founders who paved this way, and I guess it’s also something that we’ve been fighting for, for decades: to reduce tobacco in Aotearoa.

It must be acknowledged just how successful it’s been. In the year 2000, the daily smoking rate for rangatahi was 31 percent; today, it’s only 5 percent—I shouldn’t say only, but it lowered down to 5 percent. It’s easy to forget just how far we’ve come in the last 20 years.

Yet we recognise we’re still in a dangerous position as a people. More than 22 percent of Māori adults are daily smokers, well over double the general rate of the adult population. We know the harm that tobacco, alongside other drugs, continues to cause. That is why we support this bill and the vision to end drug abuse in our communities.

In particular, Te Paati Māori strongly support reducing retail availability, appeal, and attractiveness of smoked tobacco products for young people. The research is clear: these measures will go a long way to achieving continued decreases in smoking over the coming years. As I said in our first reading kōrero, we need to look at this issue holistically and acknowledge that the drivers of drug abuse are poverty and marginalisation. We can never truly end drug harm in this country unless we eliminate poverty, unless we end homelessness, unless we put a stop to domestic and sexual violence

That is why we remain concerned with the Smokefree generation policy, which would prohibit the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after 1 January 2009—in short, meaning anyone 13 years or younger will never legally be able to buy smoked tobacco products in their lifetime. Our concern is that this could promote the rise of a black market for tobacco products, leading to associated issues with crime, safety, and control of products for younger people. We acknowledge that the bill doesn’t contain possession offences, but possession offences aren’t the only charges that can cause harm for innocent people and undermine Māori communities. So supply charges could be used against older siblings or whānau members who also look to share tobacco with younger whānau members.

We are confused with the decision to ban smoked tobacco products but to continue to allow nicotine vaping products. By allowing vaping products, Government is acknowledging that it would be irresponsible to completely ban tobacco products, as banning drugs simply doesn’t work; yet, there is far too little research on the risks of vaping, and we believe it’s irresponsible to codify vaping in legislation as a safe alternative to smoking when there’s not enough evidence to conclusively say that it’s safer.

One of our key goals is reducing the attractiveness of tobacco products, as we said earlier. It’s also important that Te Paati Māori place these concerns on record as everyone knows it is tangata whenua who will disproportionately suffer the health and social harms associated with the prohibition of drugs. We believe a review of the legislation will be needed to ascertain if these concerns come to pass. However, we acknowledge the balance that this bill strikes and the strong mitigating factors that help reduce the chances of the black market taking hold in our whānau.

We recognise the extraordinary leadership of our hauora champions and thank them for engaging with us on this kaupapa—extremely engaging. We are confident in the Smokefree action plan and are grateful for the roadmap it lays down to eliminate tobacco harm, but, at the end of the day, this issue will be won or lost in the hearts and minds of our people. They have the power, and as we have seen over the last 20 years, they are using it. It is our role in this House to advance kaupapa that creates a social and legal environment that enables our whānau to live happy and healthy lives so that drug abuse isn’t even a feature of our reality.

So we, the members of Parliament in this place, have the power to do that, and we’re quite happy to support that. We get on and let’s use it. Kia ora rā.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be able to take a call on the third reading of this important piece of legislation. We’ve heard calls from the other side that we need to do a cost-benefit analysis and we shouldn’t pass this bill. And I would ask the question: what is more important than saving the lives of our children from the harms of tobacco smoking?

I’ve had two people close to me die of lung cancer. They weren’t smokers, but they lived lives surrounded by the harms of second-hand smoke. I don’t want that future for my children, and I think that we deserve to give them the benefit of the doubt and use the science that we have and the evidence that we have to try and imagine a new world, a new New Zealand where second-hand smoke and smoking does not affect our most marginalised communities, make our people sick, and lead to preventable deaths.

I commend the Minister for bringing this important bill to the House and having the courage to imagine a better future for New Zealand without tobacco smoking.

Well, thank you very much, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill in its third reading. I want to start off by acknowledging my personal experience in regards to the impacts of smoking on individuals. As a registered paramedic and a volunteer with St John who still actively operates on the front line, I’ve attended many a call of patients who are in severe respiratory distress in regards to emphysema and also around chronic bronchitis. And that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and the implications of that disease on our population—particularly the elderly population for whom, I think, in those days smoking was commonplace—is a significant consequence and a very distressing way in which an individual will die because, of course, that damage to the lung is irreversible.

I want to also reflect on the fact that actually my grandfather, when I was a young child at the age of eight, I watched him die with emphysema as well. So those implications of watching the implications of smoking on people of which you may or may not know and the implications of that have led me personally to have never smoked in my life. And I reflect on that in terms of where we are.

The reality, though, in regards to where we are today and looking forward, is different to where we were 20 years ago looking forward. And the implications in terms of those that are smoking today and looking forward to future generations are significantly—day and night—less than what they were in the past. I think a lot of the narrative this evening has been around this is going to save lives of our children and all of that type of stuff, and that’s absolutely rubbish. The vast majority of children or young people that are smoking nowadays are vaping, and they’re using vaping products; they’re not using traditional tobacco smoked cigarettes. And those products are products that are absolutely and unequivocally linked to the lung disease implications which I’ve just referred to. So this whole narrative around the fact that our young people and children are going to get caught up in this to the degree in which it was in the past is simply a fallacy. It is not the reality, and I think it’s quite ingenious for those on the other side to be referring to that.

We also heard comments from one of the other members who has a medical background in regards to his experience in hospitals or in primary care in South Auckland. And absolutely I’ve seen those implications as well in South Auckland in terms of a front-line aspect of that, but this is a generation that have smoked, for many of them, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years—all their life—in regards to that. That’s not what we’re looking at going forward from where we are today in terms of dealing with the final percentage of the people in a very small percentage that are smoking.

Dr Shane Reti, our health spokesperson, is a general practitioner by training. He operates and works in Whangārei. Northland is an area which has both wide geographical variation, but also high levels of disparity and deprivation. And I think anyone in terms of that experience, having worked and operated in that part of New Zealand, would understand both the challenges of dealing with health challenges such as smoking, but more broadly the implications of that. So to hear the Minister on the other side in the opening elements of the opening speech in this bill undertaking personal attacks on a member who has such high standing in regards to his capability and competence in the health space is an absolute disgrace. But what it actually gives you an insight into—and for those watching, just so they can get a bit of a feel of what’s going on inside the Labour Party caucus at the moment, there is an absolutely “let’s play the person, not the ball”, right? They play the person, not the ball. And that is the degree of arrogance on that side, because this bill is a bill that at its heart is not going to improve and not going to achieve the outcome of that final mile of reduction in smoking for individuals that need that support. We’re not talking about our young people in our schools that are currently vaping. This is about those that are dealing with the tobacco products.

And we’ve spoken, and Dr Shane Reti has put on the table to the Minister in a bipartisan manner, a mechanism and a pathway in which he believes, and is supported by the National Party caucus—that we believe will achieve that outcome. We’re not in this game to do virtue-seeking policy; there is no point in that. We are in the game in order to improve outcomes.

Chlöe Swarbrick: What’s your drug policy?

SIMON WATTS: You can hear some of the comments from the other side. You see, you can hear some of the comments from the other side. And it’s interesting, because in their contributions—and for those that have been watching—you’ll see how long they actually took their contributions this evening, and most of them didn’t even make 60 seconds. But yet they’re quite happy when we stand up on this side of the House to articulate the narrative and rationale around why this bill will not deliver, to mock it, to make personal attacks across the House in regards to that. But, again, it simply reinforces a narrative that this is a Government that’s on the ropes, this is a caucus that are ill disciplined, and they are struggling internally at the moment.

So back to this bill. The implications which we have particular issues with are in regards to the recommendation around the impact on retailers who are selling tobacco products. The reality is for these smokers who smoke—and anyone who is addicted to nicotine knows if the shop at the end of the street doesn’t sell it, that’s not going to stop them from smoking; they’re just going to find the product through any mechanism and any means. An addiction drives a desire to achieve that product over anything else, and that also includes going into the black market to achieve and obtain that product. They will stop at nothing in order to obtain that product. And simply the conversation around reduction from 6,000 retailers to 600 is absolutely not going to have any consequential impact in regards to reducing the availability and access of cigarettes to the people who are in most need of reducing their consumption. If anything, the only implication of that decision is going to impact on those hard-working retailers who are already under significant pressure and stress as a result of this Government’s soft on crime approach.

The impact also in regards to the black market cannot be underestimated. We already know that significant quantities of illegal tobacco come in over our borders, through our ports predominantly, in a ratio of which we’re probably only picking up one container out of seven containers of illegal cigarettes. That is the reality today in regards to the degree and scale of counterfeit tobacco products coming into this market on the black market. And most of that, the gangs will actually sell into the system and, as a result, those products are flowing through. So simply cutting out these retailers is simply creating another market—an illegal market—that will be ruthless in regards to taking advantage of those individuals that require that product at any cost, and they don’t and will not conform to the regulations, and any of the compliance requirements around that, including the quality of the product or what’s included within the product as well.

So that’s what’s at stake here. I think the element around reducing the nicotine in the cigarettes is the pathway in which we support in believing that that will actually make the material impact in order to deal with that last mile of smokers. That’s evidence-based and supported in terms of that, and that is the implication and that is the action that will result in the outcome that we need as a country. So it simply bewilders me why the Minister is not willing to engage. I mean, take our political hats off. Good policy should be adopted by any party, and sensible policy that achieves outcome should be adopted by any party. And maybe I’m just being naive with two years in this House, but the reality is that this Government are failing to listen to a pathway which will actually deal with the outcome that’s in front of us, without putting in place the significant implications and negative consequences on business owners across this country that will absolutely be—as I think Dr Reti noted previously—the collateral damage in this conversation. And I feel sorry for those entities, particularly when it is going to have no significant impact in regards to the reduction of nicotine and tobacco consumption, which is the whole purpose of this bill.

So National will not be supporting this bill. We have put on the table an alternative policy of when we’re in Government in 2023, then that’s what we will adopt, and in the interim period, we will watch how this goes. This Government will use their majority today to ram this through at any cost, they’ll tick the box, the Minister will do the virtue-signalling victory lap, but the reality is it’s not going to deal with the underlying issues, so we do not support this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to take a short call and to be the final speaker in the third reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.

I heard speakers from across the House. This bill is not a “feel good”; it is a must do. It is a must do as we work towards the 2025 goal, specifically to reduce the retailers that are making this product available. We heard on the Health Committee, as members, the number of submitters in South Auckland who represented many of the community groups who are running the cessation programme, who are vulnerable community members and doing a lot of work in the motu. Tobacco is no good. This bill will help to bring forth healthier and better outcomes for our generations.

I want to, on that note, thank the submitters, thank the members of the Health Committee, and thank the community organisations that came forth and spoke with courage and bravery around why tobacco is no good. And on that note I also want to thank the Minister for her bold and courageous move. I commend this bill to the House.

Order! Order! No, apologies to the gallery, but they must not be part of this debate, enthusiastic as they are.