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 Jacqui Dean): 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 second time.

I want to address my thanks to the members of the Health Committee, chaired by my colleague Tangi Utikere, and to all those involved in this process, which included almost 2,000 written submissions from the public, including 84 submitters who made an oral submission to the committee. I want to acknowledge that the committee did not significantly change the bill. In the final report, the committee recommended that the bill proceed with a limited number of amendments, including setting the number of retail outlets allowed to sell tobacco and including the nicotine concentration in the primary legislation. In addition to those amendments, I am also proposing minor amendments based on advice from the Ministry of Health for further clarity, transparency, and consistency of the bill.

It is not every day that members get to vote on legislation that is as lifesaving, as life extending, and as life changing as this bill. This legislation will help us save thousands of lives a year. There are 4,500 people who die of tobacco in New Zealand each year. It is our leading preventable cause of death. That is not even overselling what a difference it will make for people. We have the chance once and for all to take control of a product so deadly that it kills half the people that use it. Even COVID or the 1918 influenza pandemic cannot compete with the death toll that tobacco exacts on our people. There are many families who have lost an aunt, an uncle, a grandma, a grandfather, a brother, a sister, or parents to smoking. Many whānau are missing members who never got to live to old age and who died earlier than they should have. Tobacco has done no good whatsoever, and we have the chance to get rid of it.

Today, all MPs in this House have the chance to stand on the right side of history, but time and time again parties in this House have slowed, voted against, halted, and blocked action to tackle tobacco, and this has been going on for decades. In this House in 1990, Opposition health spokesperson at the time Don McKinnon claimed that New Zealand’s first piece of smoke-free legislation, the Smoke-free Environments Act of 1990, was an assault on freedoms, it was anti-employer, anti-worker, and it might destroy jobs. He said that a National Government would ensure that the bill did not survive.

The bill did survive, and so did many New Zealanders whose lives were prolonged as a result. The National Party have been making the same tired old arguments for decades. They claimed back then that legislation to stop smoking would destroy New Zealand hospitality businesses. Well, what’s changed in hospitality? It’s going from strength to strength—you just come home from a night out without your clothes smelling of smoke. That doesn’t stop them from making these repetitive arguments.

Now, we move to control the number of retail settings in which tobacco can be sold. Independent studies—and I’m not talking about those published by Imperial Tobacco in our media lately—show that only a tiny percentage of sellers’ profits, less than 5 percent, comes from tobacco. That’s why around the country many retailers are leading the way by ditching tobacco and going smoke-free, like in Northland where 25 retailers have taken the step to stop selling tobacco. Most of them recommend other retailers follow their lead. The vast majority of tobacco-free retailers, 88 percent, experienced a neutral or positive financial impact from ditching tobacco.

I believe that it is our duty as legislators to pass laws and take actions that save the lives of New Zealanders, and I know it is my duty as a doctor and a member of this House to bring proposals here that will save lives. Dr Reti, now is not the time for arguing about the evidence or delaying these proposals—lives are on the line. Vote for this bill or renounce your oath. This legislation will reduce the burden on our health system. It will reduce numerous types of cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and amputations.

Cigarettes are products that the tobacco industry has engineered to be so addictive that it overwhelms the will of people who know they are dying from them, and they can’t give up the very product that is about to cut their life short. This is what addiction does to people; there is so much human misery caused by it. If I reflect on the people I have met who have been trapped by tobacco: unable to walk to their letterbox because their lungs were so damaged, people who have lost their limbs because of tobacco, mothers who have been unable to hold their babies in their arms because tobacco smoking meant that their child had to be taken to neonatal intensive care, people who have had cancers, who have had repeated surgeries. There is absolutely no good that comes from this product.

I hope members of this House fulfil their duty to the people of New Zealand to serve in their best interest and vote for the good of our health system and the good health of our people. In 1990, the Smoke-free Environments Act was world leading. Today, the smoked tobacco amendment bill is again world leading. Everyone in this House has the opportunity to free the next generation and everyone that comes after from the burden of disease and premature death that comes from smoked tobacco. I am proud to be a part of that, and so is this Government. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I certainly enjoyed the virtue signalling from that member, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall—“Now, let’s get pragmatic. Now, let’s talk about what can be deployed.” How interesting it is that what she’ll actually find out is that, of the three operative actions in the bill, we’re actually supporting them all—just changing the timing. So it’s kind of ironic to say that we’re not in favour of what’s being put on the table here. It’s just the timing and what’s actually going to work—amongst other things. Let’s remember, National supports nicotine reduction. We support these smoke-free goals—we created them, for goodness’ sake!

Before we get to the crux of this bill, here’s some context because this is a second reading and we should reflect back on what happened in select committee. The Health Committee received 1,965 written submissions—1,194 of them, the majority, were from small business and community retailers. There were 84 oral submissions. The select committee went to Wellington and to Auckland to hear them. I want to thank everyone who submitted. But here for the first time in the Health Committee’s hands, we see the heavy hand of the health reforms centralising everything to Wellington. Because, I ask you, where are the local public health unit submissions? Go back and look over previous vaping and smoking legislation and look at the submissions f rom the public health units, those local units that represent the view and the experience of the small communities.

In fact, it’s kind of ironic to hear the member before me talk about the Northland example, considering they weren’t allowed to submit. Why weren’t they allowed to submit? Because, now, under these health reforms, all advocacy for legislation of this type has to go through Health New Zealand. Oh, and while we’re talking about it, look back at the second-hand smoking in cars. Where did that come from? Well, that actually came from Northland school children through the Northland Cancer Society and through the Northland public health unit. There’s no voice for them here in this bill, because under these health reforms, advocacy on bills like this now all has to go through Health New Zealand. So what did they end up doing? What did the public health unit advocate and—at what was previously the Northland District Health Board—end up doing? Putting the bill in her personal name—how disgraceful is that? Representing the community and to avoid the sanitisation, if you like, from Health New Zealand to this bill, she had to put it forward in her personal name. Here is the heavy hand of the health reforms and centralisation showing itself to the Health Committee. Those voices are now lost.

National will not be supporting this bill as we have concerns that, of the three initiatives, many are untried and some of them are indeed, in our view, just virtue signalling. We are also very concerned that small community retailers are the sacrifice for this virtue signalling. Let’s break it down then and look at the three smoke-free initiatives. The smoke-free generation: effectively, untried and not widely deployed. Denicotinisation: now, this we do support; it is modelled, and it is modelled on implementing the greatest impact. Studies have shown up to 70 percent product acceptance and, at 20 weeks, 50 percent reduction in cigarettes per day. I think this is something—certainly as the modelling shows—that could do the heavy lifting towards the objectives that we’re talking about. I’ll come back to this, and I am aware that there have been differences in opinion around the effects or the benefits, particularly, of denicotinisation, and I have weighed them up in this submission and in the proposals that we will make. Retail reduction: this is where the rubber really hits the tarmac, because this is who pays the price for this virtue signalling. Retailers, small businesses, and community dairies pay the price for Labour’s virtue signalling. The price they pay is a reduction from 6,000 to 600 retailers.

Where did that number come from, this magic 600? Well, it’s clearly 10 percent. What is the science behind the 10 percent if anyone can tell me? No one could bring it to select committee. How was that 10 percent selected? They just put a finger in the air and took a guess. And who pays for that guess? It’s the small community retailers. There was no science—there is no science—around that reduction number. And at a time when small retailers are hurting—desperately hurting—and marching in the streets because they’re being ram-raided and because they have burglaries, this Government puts the knife in, this Government says, “We will now reduce your ability to earn a livelihood; we will cut your ability to retail cigarettes and smoking products from 6,000 retailers down to 600.” They’re already on their knees, and now this Government pushes them down on to their face with very little thought for their own ethereal virtue-signalling that this is a good thing to do. In fact, if we want to look at what the Minister actually said about this, she said when she spoke to the Health Committee on 28 September that compared to denicotinisation, retail reduction “has much uncertainty about it.”—much uncertainty. And yet this Government will proceed with retail reduction first off in 2024 on numbers that cannot be scientifically evidenced. In fact, in that presentation to the Health Committee, the Minister alluded that retail reduction was simply easier to do, and that’s why it was being implemented first. Well, good luck telling retailers who will lose their livelihood that they’re kicking off first because it was easier to do. That is not a rational scientific argument at all.

During the select committee stage, we raised the question of snus and why that wasn’t being considered, because we needed to explain to New Zealanders that we’d thought of all the tools in the tool box. And if you look at the Scandinavian experience, it has been a significant contributor. We were told, no, it’s currently illegal. Well, that’s an observation, not persuasive reasoning. The unanswered question is: why was this apparently effective treatment not considered further? It’s been determined it’s illegal. We can likewise determine it is not illegal. We think this should have been considered further and is a missed opportunity.

The black market received much discussion through the select committee, with a range of views. I think everyone would agree that there will be, from all of these three initiatives, some impact on the black market, on the illegal market, for cigarettes. And that range varied significantly, but I think everyone does agree that there will be an impact on that. It’s also been raised with me that we should be paying attention to the recently changing volumes of loose tobacco and what that might say about the impact of this bill and the impact of the illegal market.

As we said when the Minister challenged us to be a part of this, we’re not actually going to oppose, at this point, the three operative initiatives in this bill—which are retail reduction, which are denicotinisation, and the smoke-free generation—but we do disagree with the timing of them. We disagree significantly with the timing of them, and that’s why we’re going to vote against this, because they’re going to sacrifice retailers, first of all, when there is much uncertainty, much unknown. The first out of the breach are the retailers. They’re the ones who are going to pay the price for this virtue signalling.

So we have an alternative plan, one that we actually put to the Minister in a bipartisan approach. We said, “Minister, would you entertain,“—go back and look at the transcript—“that maybe we denicotinise first.” And she said, “Oh, the member wants to go hard and fast.” I’m happy to be ambitious for this. I’m happy to go hard and fast. And speaking with manufacturers, I do believe that we can denicotinise first and just maybe we reach the goal just with that. The modelling suggests 85 percent of the heavy lifting will be done with denicotinisation. So why are we throwing retailers under the bus first off? Maybe what we should actually be doing is doing that first, deploying it, and then watching and seeing if it has the effect that we’re expecting it would and if it actually meets the modelling. Why don’t we do that?

And then if you recall, to select committee, retailers said, “If this was going to happen, we would need two years to actually do a transition period where we could maybe move to new business models.”—some of the things that the member has talked about. Well, why don’t we give them that opportunity? Why don’t we denicotinise and, over that two-year period, give retailers the chance to change their business model? And at the same time, let’s see if denicotinisation has done everything that was promised. This is the suggestion, and this is why we’re opposing this at this reading, because we put this to the Minister and she wasn’t interested. We were prepared to collaborate with a bipartisan approach. In fact, we were prepared to say that if denicotinisation fails after an observation period, then maybe we would have to look at retail reduction and then maybe the smoke-free generation, even though the modelling shows they do a very small part. Again, all the heavy lifting is done with denicotinisation. We proposed this, and the Minister wasn’t interested, so we brought collaboration to the table.

The other thing that I want to talk about is vaping. Vaping is tightened up in this bill, and this is a good thing, recognising that vaping is having the hoped-for impact on adult smokers, particularly with recently encouraging figures. I think that’s a good thing. We do, however, recognise the concern that parents, schools, and communities are expressing around underage vaping and the helplessness that they feel. Vaping in young people has tripled, and while some have said, “Don’t worry; there’s minimal harm, but look at the benefit it is doing for their parents.” I think the National Party shares the concerns of parents and communities, and we’ll propose Supplementary Order Papers that require the proximity of other specialist vape retailers to be taken into account when new licences are issued, and increased monitoring and compliance of underage use and access.

National supports nicotine reduction. We have an alternative plan that will not savage, cannibalise, and run retailers into the ground. We put it to the Minister. We were prepared to collaborate. She wasn’t interested. We have a plan.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise as the chair of the Parliament’s Health Committee to speak in support of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.

Can I acknowledge the leadership of Minister Dr Ayesha Verrall in this particular space, who is prepared to save lives rather than put an additional life at risk. So I want to place on the record the acknowledgment of the Minister’s leadership in this space. Can I also thank colleagues on the Health Committee, committee staff, the officials from the Ministry of Health who provided a huge level of support for us, the team at Parliamentary Counsel Office, and also the submitters.

Nearly 2,000 submitters throughout New Zealand took the opportunity to share their views, their perspectives with the select committee. We did hear some evidence in oral form from 84 submitters and we also had two subcommittees that were set up to hear those, and I want to acknowledge the deputy chair of the committee, Dr Tracey McLellan, who also assisted in chairing one of those subcommittees.

When we started this process, we heard from a number of individuals such as Hone Harawira, and also Tau Henare, who encouraged the select committee to go out into the communities and hear directly from the people for whom this will make a huge difference. So we did. We went to South Auckland and we sat down for the better part of a day and we heard from the community there. Chlöe Swarbrick, who’s been part of this process, gave her apologies for that—couldn’t be in two places at once—but when other Labour members of that subcommittee turned up, not a single National member of Parliament fronted to that community in South Auckland to hear the submissions that those people wanted to make. Not a single member of the National Party turned up to listen to communities. They did not even bother to turn up. I think that is absolutely appalling—absolutely appalling.

So I just think that the suggestion that the National Party will support three of the mechanisms or vehicles is nothing but a low shot and an easy opt-out. When members of this House are not prepared to listen to community members and organisations—people like Catherine Manning, who I see is in the gallery, who has taken time to submit to this process—it is absolutely an indictment on how the National Party view this particular bill and piece of legislation.

I want to just touch on some of the changes that were made as a result of this bill going through the Health Committee. One was a limit to the number of retail premises, and that’s contained in new section 20M in clause 13. Now, initially the advice was a suggestion that the number could actually be set by way of secondary legislation in regulations. We heard overwhelmingly from those oral submissions that they would far prefer to have an element of certainty and that the number or limit should be specified in legislation. That’s one change that the select committee is recommending. That responds to the views that were expressed by submitters and also provides that certainty.

The committee also made some changes in terms of specifying the level that would assist with denicotisation, and that level, based on advice, is 0.8 micrograms per gram in an individual smoked tobacco product. You’ll find that at new section 57H in clause 31.

The issue of enforcement and responsibility for non-compliance is something, and where we landed, in terms of the committee’s report, was at a place which was consistent with other pieces of legislation, including within this space, and also the requirement for the burden of proof of reasonable excuse resting with the defendant and no one else.

One other addition that the select committee turned its mind to was one of reviewing the provisions within this piece of legislation. And so the select committee has recommended inserting new Subpart 7, in clause 52, which would, effectively, require the Ministry of Health to undertake a review of aspects of this piece of legislation to ensure that it’s working as is intended, and there would be a requirement for it to be reported back to the Parliament via the relevant Minister.

I’ll conclude by saying that this is a piece of legislation that will save lives, and I am just dumbfounded that members opposite are not willing to step up and do something in that space. We heard from a submitter from Te Rōpu Tupeka Kore—and I’ll conclude with this. The submitter said that pāua shells are a whakapapa species; they’re not ashtrays, and isn’t it sad that we currently have a community for whom the whakapapa species is known as ashtrays? It’s time that we did something about this, because it is hurting our Māori and our Pasifika communities. This bill will address that. I commend this bill to the House.

Before I call the next speaker, can I just reflect to all the members in this House that the reference to members not being in this particular House also refers to when members do not attend select committee. I call on Harete Hipango.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The debate in the House has been rather enlightening this evening.

I don’t intend it to be any pun, but with the lighting up of this discussion, it’s certainly triggered a lot of memories. My parents were smokers; my mother died of lung cancer. During the course of mum’s lifetime, she attempted to give up smoking, and she did. And she made the conscientious decision to do so without any medical intervention.

Now, I am saying that that was her experience. My father, who was Māori, was a smoker also for most of his lifetime. Intermittent periods of giving up smoking without medicinal, medical support. It was mind over matter for them.

What was the driving factor for them to finally terminate a lifelong commitment to smoking was for them to be around a lot longer for their mokopuna. So what I’m saying is the motivating driving factor for everybody is different.

To stand in this House and speak after sitting and listening to members across the House criticise my colleague Dr Shane Reti—who has been a medical practitioner of a number of decades, dedicated to saving lives—and suggesting for a moment that he doesn’t prioritise the importance of saving lives and also to suggest that the National Party is of that same standing and mind, is, quite frankly, galling.

Also to hear the suggestion that the National Party members did not front to a public meeting. To put it in context, two of my colleagues—only two of 11—sit on the Health Committee. So the expectation that two members can be everywhere when necessary is not an indication.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): If I could just remind the member: before I called her, I did actually say there was a Speaker’s ruling about referring to members of select committee and their absences. Can we please move on. Make a different point.

HARETE HIPANGO: Madam Speaker, noted. In saying that, the committee process—I was not a member of the Health Committee—this bill, which is the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill, was referred to the committee on 26 July, 2022. There were some 1,927—although my colleague Dr Reti indicated 1,965, and if that’s the case, the record needs to be amended in terms of what’s been submitted back to the House—made submissions, and there was oral evidence heard from 84 submitters.

Now, the National Party has filed a minority view, which Dr Reti has spoken to at some detail. Not having been privy to the detail of that select committee, but I am privy and do know that the champion for Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 is a relation of mine, Dame Tariana Turia. And driving this campaign with her at the time—back in, I believe the bill passed its first reading back in December 2010—were champions and continue to be champions.

But I am also aware that there comes a time, too, when: how much does the Government take responsibility for driving these health matters? How much more investment does the Government put into people’s lives in driving and determining what is best for them?

I started this speech by referring to my parents both as smokers. They made a determination, they made a choice—without Government intervention—to decide what was the most compelling factor for them during their lifetime, and it was their grandchildren.

I won’t talk further to this bill. My colleague has outlined in the minority view the differing view, and there will be colleagues who did sit on that select committee talk further to it. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, and thank you for the opportunity to also make a contribution on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill tonight at this second reading.

Like colleagues previously, I would like to very sincerely and warmly commend the Associate Minister of Health, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, for being the person who has been bold enough and had the foresight to tackle what is, essentially, a wicked problem. I’d also like to acknowledge the members of the Health Committee, a committee that I’m very proud and pleased to be on, and I thank all of the submitters who took the time to make submissions. Most of the submissions were really informative. There was a wide range of submissions. There were submissions from all over the world. There were submissions from academics who had dedicated their life to looking at smoking cessation and addiction, who were up in the middle of the night to do their five or 10 minutes on Zoom so that they could be part of what they described as a truly innovative and bold piece of legislation, going through our Parliament in a world-first context.

When I think about smoking and the relationship that I’ve had with smoking for almost as long as I can remember, one of my earliest memories is coming home, opening the back door to the cloud of smoke that would fill the family home, stealing cigarettes to the shed and at primary school, and practising smoking because we thought that was just something that everybody aspired to. If you were going to do it, you may as well do it properly and learn how to do that drawback as quickly as possible.

To one of my early working experiences, working at Telecom in the 1980s—it wasn’t the 1950s or the 1960s; it was the 1980s—there was a black ashtray on all of the desks. It was around about that time that at least you had to go to a separate room to have your cigarette break. To flying to Australia when I was 18, my first time going overseas, and the smoking section was roughly in the middle of the plane so that it distributed toxins evenly to everybody throughout that travel. I suppose that the point I’m trying to make is that the world being any different, smoking being any different, to what it was in front of me seemed like an impossibility. It seemed like it would be something that would always be part of our everyday life.

I remember working in a bar when the law was changed so that people couldn’t smoke at bars and we literally had strategic plans in place for how we were going to deal with the downturn, which never happened—absolutely never happened. There’s always going to be those arguments put in front of us to say why we shouldn’t do something that’s bold and innovative, but when we weigh up those arguments against the sheer numbers of lives that are saved and the sheer number of people whose quality of life would be improved, then there simply is no contest.

When we’re dealing with complex behaviours, which we always are when we’re looking at something in relation to addiction, there must be a multi-prong response, and that’s why there’s three pieces to this legislation—three legs, so to speak. Cues and reasons why people do things aren’t the same for everybody.

So the fact that there will be a smoke-free generation, which, again, is revolutionary, the fact that we will be reducing the number of outlets and the supply, all of which provides visual clues for people—and it’s no coincidence that a lot of those outlets are clustered in lower socio-economic areas as well—and the ability to reduce the nicotine in cigarettes all adds up to a cocktail, so to speak, of remedies for tackling what is an atrocious situation in this country, in terms of smoking.

So I’d like to, again, say that this bill represents an opportunity for us, in this House, to do something that’s actually profound. It’s not always often that we get to do something that’s profound. It’s world-leading; it’s something we should be proud of. I commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai, tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. It’s a pleasure to stand on behalf of the Green Party on the second reading of this legislation tonight, and I just want to acknowledge, as others have, the Minister for bringing this legislation before the House. I also want to acknowledge the Health Committee, for indulging me; and also the officials, who were incredible; an impeccable display of—again, indulging many questions from members’ scattergun approach of just canvassing every single thing that came out of submitters and submissions, effectively to ensure that we were getting the most robust and most tested version of legislation possible. And there have been a number of changes that have been made to this legislation throughout that select committee process, and I’ll get to those in a minute, because that select committee process was—as others have alluded to—quite profound. It was incredibly profound to hear from community members who have been directly impacted by losing loved ones as a result of this product of tobacco, but also to hear from many public health experts and advocates, and those who work in cessation treatment—and I want to acknowledge the many who are in the gallery tonight.

But I also really want to acknowledge one of the many tamariki who came in front of our committee—the committee that I was subbed in to—to express her aspirations for the future of Aotearoa. And I promised her that I would read this in the second reading, so here it is, from a few months ago. This is Tiger who came with her mum to submit to us at select committee. And she said, and I read from her declaration to our Health Committee, “Tēnā koutou katoa. My name is Tiger. I really want tobacco to get out of Aotearoa because it is bad for our whānau. It is bad for their lungs and their heart. My nanny died from smoking tobacco. I miss her so much. That’s why I want them out of the shops and out of Aotearoa. No reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.” That’s kind of the point; that’s why we’re doing this.

And I also want to acknowledge some of the good-faith interactions that I think have been demonstrated by some members of the Opposition. However, I would like to see them extend that same logic that they throw out around evidence-based approaches and concerns about the black market to other substances that they’re very happy to hand control over to the unregulated black market. Because when we’re talking about substances, whether they be cannabis or alcohol or tobacco, you’re, effectively, provided with a spectrum of different regulatory opportunities which we in this House have the opportunity to legislate for. On one end, you have a complete commercial free market, and, on the other end, you have complete criminal prohibition. And at both ends of that extreme, without interventions for harm reduction and recognising the fact that we aren’t going to completely eradicate some of these substances from planet Earth—because by God, we’ve been trying for the past few decades and ratcheting up penalties as a result of that trying, throwing more and more people in prison and not getting any better outcomes. At both ends of that spectrum, what you see is the maximisation of harm. That can really be whittled down to an equivalence of—whether it is in the complete, free legal market or under complete criminal prohibition, you have entities, whether they are commercial entities or criminal entities, who are operating from an incentive to exploit vulnerable communities in order to make a quick buck. How do we draw back from those extremes? Through regulation, through sensible regulation of supply and dealing also with the reality of that demand and no meaningful regulation to reduce that harm is going to be able to not grapple with either side of that equation.

So to speak to some of the things which we did end up chewing through in that select committee process—and I’d here refer members to my first reading speech, where I also spoke about a sense of unease with some of the untested provisions in this legislation. We really did kick them around and pull them apart, and it’s why I feel particularly stoked about the introduction of the review clause—which the chair, doctor Tangi Utikere, has mentioned—because that review clause was really important to us in the Greens to make sure that we ended up with ultimately looking at whether these novel measures were having the efficacy that they were promised to with regard to reducing smoking rates and getting us towards that goal of Smokefree 2025. So too, it was really important for us to look at penalties, because we did not want to see those structurally marginalised communities—who happen to be the exact same communities who are suffering the brunt of harm as a result of tobacco—to be those who end up criminally prosecuted or penalised or in trouble or experiencing even further harm as a result of our criminal justice system with the introduction of new penalties. So I think it’s really important for people to know that there are no new criminal penalties in this legislation; there are civil fines. And that, again, is a really important mechanism when it comes to drug harm reduction.

However, still outstanding as others have canvassed in their speech—and I think it’s actually acknowledged in the select committee report and I think many members of the Health Committee, even on the Government side, will be completely upfront about the fact that there’s still so much more work to do on vaping. You know, it wasn’t until last term when we finally introduced, Madam Chair, with some of your leadership—some controls around vaping. I don’t think most New Zealanders recognise or understand or know that, until that point of that legislation last term it was entirely self-regulated. That’s why we had the proliferation of advertising in YouTube advertising and storefronts and billboards and everything else. It is a really hard process to bring things back under control after that genie is out of the bottle. But again, there is still more work to do. There’s some important provisions in this legislation for testing vaping products, and that may go some way, particularly for making sure that consumers know what they are getting. But again, there’s still more work to do there.

There’s also more work to do in the space of education and cessation support, and this is a point made particularly by Māori and Pasifika advocacy organisations. My understanding, and what was put to us in the select committee, is that while we’ve seen across demographics a reduction in smoking rates for pretty much all groups, we haven’t seen that same reduction in smoking rates amongst Pasifika. There is a real need to ensure that we are supporting those at the coalface, at the grassroots who are doing that work to support people and understand their experiences and how to get them out of that trap of addiction—again, that’s a basic tenet of drug harm reduction.

Finally, this is just a funny one that I think I picked up on as a Green, which is cigarette filters. I did not know that cigarette filters are pretend drug harm reduction. Cigarette filters do not make cigarettes safer; all they do is make cigarettes more palatable for the people who are consuming them. They are a faux drug harm reduction device, which tends to make consumers think that smoking is safer when in fact it is not, but makes the product nicer and easier to consume and therefore something that is all the more addictive—and then they end up in the ocean, eaten by the fishies. So, obviously, as a Green, interested in evidence-based policy and also wanting to save the fishies—acknowledging my colleague the Hon Eugenie Sage—we need to be acting on this. It’s daft single-use plastic which is being taken by consumers to be making their product safer when it’s not; it’s just making cigarettes nicer to smoke. And, frankly, that’s daft. We shouldn’t be enabling that.

So, finally, I just think it’s also really important for us to reflect on the pace of progress and how both structural and cultural norms—structural being kind of the laws that all of us in this place debate, the framework or the blueprint of how we’re supposed to run our society, but culture really being the thing that validates those laws but also kind of brings them to life. It was only in 2015, seven years ago—it was only in 2015—when smoking was no longer allowed on the forecourt and the lawn of this Parliament; it was only 2015. And as other members have spoken to, I remember, growing up, going to restaurants and to cafes with my family and particularly in restaurants, experiencing being in those smoke-filled rooms. And obviously as the research continued to develop; obscured really intentionally by the industry—and once again, that points to the real challenges and the problems when it comes to drug harm reduction: being that profit and that commercialisation. But that change has happened inside of my lifetime, and it’s happened inside of all of our lifetimes. And, obviously, as all of us have spoken to, the reason that we’re doing this is for future generations, and is for our tamariki, who will grow to be our rangatahi who will grow to be our rangatira, who will grow to be the leaders of this country.

So I just want to acknowledge Tiger once again in my closing remarks, her mum, who obviously inspired her to be in that place and to give that submission to the Health Committee. And I want to commend the House and commend the select committee for really, really pulling this bill apart and seeing the best that we could possibly do with it, because while there are novel and untested measures in this, the fact that there is a review and there will be the opportunity for reflection is important.

There’s so much more to do, but the Greens, on balance, have come to the conclusion that this is a really important first step for continual tobacco harm reduction in this country, so I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to be here on behalf of the ACT Party tonight in opposition to this piece of legislation. The ACT Party is standing opposed to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill. I firstly want to acknowledge the hard work that was put in by my colleague Toni Severin who was sitting in on the Health Committee while this bill was being taken through select committee. I know it took an awful lot of work from the committee staff, and I also want to acknowledge Toni’s role in the ACT Party on this bill.

But I want to start by getting out of the way many things that I believe that Government MPs and other people across the public may wish to say about the ACT Party not supporting this piece of legislation. So I want to make some statements to make it perfectly clear that personally I don’t smoke. That is not our reason for not supporting this. In fact, I’ve never had a cigarette. And secondly, I don’t condone smoking. I don’t take a huge step in either direction; it’s not our reason for opposing this bill. But what is really important is that we’re bringing laws to this Parliament that are actually good public policy and they’re based on principles and they’re based on putting in place legislation that will actually see better outcomes. When I look at this piece of legislation I don’t see better outcomes. There are many actions that people take in life that I wouldn’t personally do myself. I take another example, here: I think about a year ago I stood in this Parliament saying that I would support the drug pill testing legislation. You know, personally I’ve never had one of those either. But that doesn’t mean that we should be putting in place legislation to ban those types of drugs. And I take Chlöe Swarbrick’s point before—and I’ll come back to it later in this speech—that it’s good public policy that should define the laws that we make in this House. So when we look at this law, the ACT Party cannot support it because it’s bad public policy, plain and simple. Whether it’s tobacco law or drug law, we need to be based on principle and we need to make sure they will make New Zealand better off, and this does not do that.

So let’s go into it a little bit further in detail. So the Government has a goal of reducing smoking in New Zealand. Well, what else do we already have to reduce smoking in New Zealand? Well, we already know that we have public information campaigns to promote the risks associated with smoking; we know that we already collect taxes from smokers to help pay for the added burden that smoking can have on the health system; we also know that we have cessation treatment supports and smoke-free environments. But after all of these measures—after all of these measures—some people still smoke or they choose to smoke. And the Government, here, is deciding that even though there are some people that can know the risks and willingly take them, and some people who are willing to pay the extra costs to pay for their own burden to the healthcare system, they have to be stopped at any cost by the Government.

So what is the Government doing on top of all of the other measures to stop smoking in New Zealand? Number one, they say that they’re going to “reduce retail availability by significantly limiting the number of retailers able to sell smoked tobacco products”; two, “reduce the appeal and addictiveness of smoked tobacco products by enabling limits or prohibitions to be set on the quantity of nicotine and other constituents”; and three, “prevent 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.”

I’ll go through these bit by bit because I believe all three of these will make New Zealand worse off. Number one: reducing the retail availability. It’s a bad policy because it’s anti-competitive. Essentially, what we’re putting in place is allowing one person in New Zealand, the Director-General of Health, the ability to pick and choose retail businesses and decide which ones will survive and which ones will completely fail. And, you know, I’ve spoken to so many small retail businesses up and down New Zealand, people who have come out to ACT Party meetings, people that we’ve met in the community who are really, really struggling. They’ve been struggling with ram raids, they’ve been struggling with robberies, they’ve been struggling feeling safe even going into their facilities. And on top of all of the hard work that they do to be a cornerstone to our local communities, the Government is now, on top of that, saying that if you are not the retailer that the Director-General of Health will pick as the winner in your neighbourhood, you could potentially go under. Forget all of the hard work that you do, all of the work that you try to do to support the community, the Government will intentionally be anti-competitive and stop you being able to trade. You know, people don’t just go in to a dairy to get cigarettes. They go in to buy their bread, their milk, their butter, all of their small convenience goods alongside it. So a lot of retailers will take a huge hit. The committee is proposing that of the 6,000 retailers, only around 10 percent of them will be allowed to stock and supply tobacco products. So that’s around 600 retailers that would be allowed to continue.

I would question whether it’s acceptable that a Government would create policy that is so blatantly able to hurt and be anti-competitive to small businesses. I don’t believe that is acceptable, and we really feel for the small retailers who will be harmed, on top of the robberies and the ram raids and the cost of living that people are going through, but now with the Government being anti-competitive. But on top of all of that, this in some ways will make a bigger target for the dairy owners who will still supply tobacco. Because, you see, now we have robberies, we have ram raids, we have people in our community harming dairy owners, but there’ll be fewer of them and they’ll be easily picked off by criminals and those cigarettes will end up on the black market as a result of this law. And so I really feel for the target that will be on the back of those small retailers who will, in fact, be allowed to survive.

Number two: the limits on the quantity of nicotine. This bill will limit the amount of nicotine to 0.8 milligrams per gram to reduce the appeal and addictiveness of cigarettes. I believe this will have two consequences. Number one, people who are addicted will simply smoke more cigarettes to get the same hit that they would have originally. Number two, they will find they will find the quality of the cigarettes that they’re wanting on the black market. I sincerely hope that Customs is ready for the huge amount of illicit tobacco that will come through the border on containers, in imports, because people know that they want these products and they will get them. But they won’t get them in the retailers; they’ll get them in the criminal economy. This legislation will only help the gangs and fuel criminal activity and illegal activity in our communities.

Number three: prohibiting the sale to anyone born after January 2009. Now, if there’s one thing that we know from the drug prohibition laws, it’s that not allowing young people drugs doesn’t mean they won’t get them. Young people still will want the ability and the choice for these types of products. Just trying to ban them and saying anybody under a certain age can’t have one legally does not mean that people won’t get them illegally. So I believe that this will once again go to increasing the illegal trade of tobacco in our communities. It will see criminal activity increase; we’ll see more ram raids, we’ll see more robberies, we’ll see more people taking nicotine illegally from shops. But importantly, we will see a huge increase in the amount illegally coming through the border into the black market, into the criminal economy, into the hands of young people. So we oppose the bill.

Mālō ‘aupito, Madam Speaker. I rise as the MP for Takanini in support of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill at its second reading.

I totally disagree with the last member’s assertions that it won’t make a difference. It will make a huge difference, and I would invite that member Brooke van Velden to come to South Auckland and hear the submissions that we heard from the people on the ground that are exposed big time to the amount of outlets and retailers that sell tobacco in our neighbourhoods. I was also cringing when Dr Shane Reti was saying that he opposes this bill, because he’s my medical colleague. To have the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall here as well, it was very upsetting, I guess, to hear a clinical colleague say that they would oppose this bill.

This bill will make a huge difference for our people: 4,500 people are dying per year in New Zealand because of smoke-related harms or second-hand smoking. That is 12 deaths per day—12 deaths per day—that this bill will make a huge difference in reducing that, and who gets affected? It is our Māori, Pasifika, and vulnerable populations—our communities. So it is about helping our community members to stop smoking and helping to provide an environment where it is easier to do so. This is about their health, their wellbeing, and also their whānau.

I also want to acknowledge the submitters who have presented to us in the last few months. Again, reiterating that there were almost 2,000 interested groups and individuals, and we heard about 84 submitters at hearings in Auckland and Wellington, and also over videoconference. It was so important to hear our community members say their bit regarding this bill and how much it affects their whānau as well.

What this bill does—and I want to reiterate why it is so important. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in Aotearoa. Yes, we can say that smoking rates are continuing to drop by 8 percent for the general population, but it is our Māori and Pasifika families that still have high smoking rates, and eliminating smoking would definitely make a huge difference for them in addressing the inequities in health as well.

I was so glad, with one of the venues being in South Auckland, to have our submissions and submitters heard there in the beautiful Fale o Samoa in Māngere—the land of the 6-Bs, as Minister Aupito William Sio would say. I would say that it’s the land of Toa Samoa, as they recently came second place in the Rugby World League Cup. It was a huge honour to see all our Samoan flags running around in Māngere. But it was so great because we had our community members. We had our Māori and Pasifika organisations come through and submit to the three Labour members who were there, and no other members that were there—but I won’t say too much, Madam Speaker—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order!

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA: —I’ve already heard.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Yes, I’ve already—

Dr ANAE NERU LEAVASA: But I want to acknowledge organisations such as Health Coalition Aotearoa, Tala Pasifika, Hāpai Te Houora, and also I want to especially acknowledge this member of the community who comes from Māngere, who sees the burden of disease there: Leitu Tufuga. She was so involved that she presented under different organisations, but also presented herself on what she saw in her community. She said that there is three to four times more exposure in South Auckland, in Māngere, because of the amount of retailers in that neighbourhood, compared to our leafy areas in Auckland as well. She spoke about the burden that she sees in her own whānau. She spoke about the youth getting involved—and, yes, we did speak about vaping as well. That was one of the issues that was brought up.

But to hear our Pasifika members of the community say their bit was huge for us. We were getting real-life stories, and to hear other members here say that it won’t make a difference, that is simply rubbish. This will make a huge difference, and I want to say that Māori are three times more likely to be daily smokers, but, not only that: lung cancer—lung cancer being the leading cause for our Māori women and the second leading cause for our Māori men.

I want to make a special mention of our Hashtags crew—our youth. Our youth, who came and spoke about what it means for them to be in a smoke-free generation. They also spoke about having a nicotine-free generation as well. Just to see them, their leadership, and their boldness to speak in front of us and to have that leadership at such a young age—I give it up to The Hashtags. Well done, and it’s awesome. They’re current leaders now, and they’re going to be our future leaders of Aotearoa as well.

This bill—I’m so happy that it’s going to be passed tonight in terms of the second reading. I hope that other members take note because all our submissions and all the modelling that has been done show that it will make a difference for our communities. I commend this bill to the House. Fa’afetai.

The next call is a split call. I call Maureen Pugh—five minutes.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I stand to make a short contribution to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill tonight, in its second reading.

I haven’t been a member of the select committee that has looked at this legislation, but I think most of us have had some form of experience in our lifetime with smokers. I grew up in a house where both of my parents smoked, and I clearly remember the family trips in the car. For those who don’t know, sometimes it rains a bit on the West Coast, and when you go on a drive you’ve got the windows up, and so driving around in the car with two smokers—it still makes my eyes water. I can also remember spending quite a lot of time with my grandparents when I was much younger, and they too were very heavy smokers. Sometimes it was almost difficult to see across the room because of the amount of tobacco smoke. So I think that cured me of ever wanting to be a cigarette smoker myself. I’ve never had one. I did try it once as a teenager, but I can’t understand how people push through that first inhale. I certainly couldn’t.

But this legislation impacts on two pieces of legislation. One is the Customs and Excise Act 2018, and the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990. As other speakers have pointed out, there are three main pillars to the legislation: that is around limiting the number of retailers in any particular area—so that is going from 6,000 retailers nationwide down to 600. As my friend and colleague Dr Shane Reti pointed out, there was no rationale put forward for where that number came from or what was the information or the science or the advice that informed that decision to reach 600.The next part of this bill looks to control the amount of nicotine within cigarettes and other components of cigarettes. I understand that that will be limiting it to 0.8 of a gram per cigarette. And the third pillar is around preventing young people from taking up smoking by prohibiting the sale of cigarettes to anyone born after 1 January 2009. So if you are 13 years old or younger now, you will be unable to purchase or use smoked tobacco products.

But I do go back to the contribution that was made by the Green member over there, and just the irony of it did amuse me, so enthusiastic about this piece of legislation because it reduced the drug harm from tobacco. And I thought the irony that this member, who is the same member driven in the legalise cannabis debate—what a double standard that turned out to be. It’s OK to be really enthusiastic about banning this drug over here, but then we turn over here and let’s legalise cannabis on the other side of the debate. That’s great—what a great double standard! Fantastic.

I want to come back to the point about the number of dairy owners, because even as a person that worked in a gas station, you know that there’s very little money made out of pumping gas and selling gas. But then we have—[Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order! Order! Go ahead.

MAUREEN PUGH: So in those retail outlets, it’s not the fuel that the retailer makes his money from, it’s all the other incidentals: it’s the candy bar and the ice cream and it’s the packet of cigarettes. So those dairy owners and those gas stations that have all of those other products that they sell, that’s how they actually make a living. And then the dairy owners, it’s the same—people go in there to buy a packet of cigarettes, but that’s what brings them in. It’s the incidentals that they buy as well is where they make their profit. So what we are doing is a sinking-lid policy on the number of retail outlets, but also a sinking lid on the revenue that they can earn. So, the National Party does not support—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Order, Order. The member’s time is up.

Fa’afetai tele lava, Madam Speaker. It’s a privilege to be able to take a call on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill.

I’m not on the Health Committee, but—

Chlöe Swarbrick: Great committee!

BARBARA EDMONDS: A great committee, I understand. But I do want to bring you into this debate very shortly, Madam Speaker, because actually you set a lot of the standard that is within the current Act around making sure that cars and children in cars are smoke-free. So I acknowledge your contribution for that work.

The reason why I’m standing to take a call is because I am a mother of eight children who are all under the ages of 18. I’ve just come back from the New Zealand Tag Football Incorporated Junior Tag Nationals—45,000 people walked through the grounds of Bruce Pulman Park in Papakura this weekend. I also managed to see the Condor 7s, which was held—the National Secondary School Rugby Sevens competition that was held at King’s College in Auckland as well.

Right throughout these two heavily attended events—which was littered with children under the age of 18—there were really strong messages around, “This is a smoke-free environment. Tobacco and vaping is not welcome within these grounds. If you want to participate in that, you have to leave the grounds.”

And to be fair, I didn’t really see many people outside of the grounds smoking or vaping, because they were missing out on their children’s activities and were not wanting to leave the fields or the grounds.

Now, I want to acknowledge, as part of this bill, The Hashtags. Some of The Hashtags are actually within Wainuiōmata. They are a group of wāhine toa who play for Ngā Hau e Whā, which is a rugby league team based in Wainuiōmata. In September, I was due to accept their petition on strengthening the vaping regulations—on the vaping amendments. I was due to receive their petition but I was unwell with the flu at the time, so I acknowledge Ginny Andersen, who did accept that petition. What they were asking Parliament for was to strengthen the vaping regulations.

So it is such great news for me to be able to pick up the bill off the table today, to flick through to get through the back of the bill, in Part 1B, clause 20M, that those regulation-making powers are now within this bill. That’s exactly what The Hashtags asked for; that’s exactly what a number of young people, even throughout Porirua, have asked for. So I commend the Minister for putting that future-proofing, regulation-making power within this bill. That is what will strengthen this for future generations.

The failure to support this bill from the other side of the House is disappointing, because what it fails to recognise is that the generation coming through wants these changes. They want to strengthen the vaping laws; they want to be a smoke-free generation. I’m so proud of the side of the House and the members from the Green Party who are also commending this bill to the House, and I commend this bill to the House.

It’s a real pleasure to be able to rise and take a call on this bill. It’s the second reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill. As a member of the Health Committee, I do want to acknowledge Minister Ayesha Verrall, but also the members of the Health Committee and those who had to sub in and out of our committee at the time of our meetings.

The bill, as we have heard from a number of other speakers, has three arms and in particular the reduction of retailers. I have heard a speaker on the other side of the House mention that she’s not aware of how it has arrived at just 10 percent of the retailers, in terms of the proposals. That is a bold move, but it is required because smoking has become a normalised behaviour.

We’ve heard our speakers on this side of the House who are really concerned with the goals that we are leaving our future rangatahi, our future tamariki, and certainly we want a smoke-free environment. In fact, when you go out to the service industry, many of the retailers, many of the businesses now have smoke-free environments, which are healthier. We’ve heard our colleague Barbara Edmonds talk about the sporting arenas where smoking behaviour is not acceptable. So when I hear other members of this House, I want to challenge them that as parliamentarians we want to give good bills and legislation that help preserve the health of Kiwis.

Now, I’ve heard other speakers talk about their concern for retailers. We have to decide as parliamentarians: is it the economic wellbeing or is it the health and wellbeing of our rangatahi and tamariki and our current generations? And I want to acknowledge all of the members from this side that are really promoting and providing the summary as to why we are supporting this bill.

We understand from the evidence that smoking rates for Māori are now at 19 percent, down from 22.3 percent just a year ago, 18 months ago, and that’s got to be a good thing. And one of the drivers of this success has been about the co-design of the Quit programmes and the amount of people, 56,000, that are no longer smoking and adhering to that because they’re getting the right supports.

I also was one of the members who attended the hearings in South Auckland and I do want to acknowledge whaea Catherine Manning, who’s up there and has been for a long time a strong advocate for our community with Māori and also strongly supporting Pasifika. I want to acknowledge all of the submitters that came along that day. We’ve heard that we had nearly 2,000 written submissions, over 80 oral submissions. They ranged from the elderly, the people who have families, and it was really gut-wrenching when you heard the tamariki talk about their previous māmā, their previous uncle, their previous pāpā, who no longer had the quality of life, and the effects of tobacco. We have the goal of becoming free of the devastating harm caused by tobacco and this bill is a step closer to smoke-free environments.

I do want to acknowledge, like my other colleagues have acknowledged, The Hashtags. You know, when we had the young people who came to Māngere, and you’ve heard my colleague, who’s a very proud member of Māngere, even though he’s the member of Parliament for Takanini—we heard really loud and clear from those young people, the 6-Bs, as we’ve heard from Minister Aupito. They were bold and they were brown and they were brainy and they had a very clear message that it’s got to be about smoke-free environments, because Māori and Pasifika communities, we suffer. We see that suffering week in, week out when we go back to our homes and we see those who are absolutely addicted to tobacco.

I also want to commend the Minister. Tobacco is no good for our communities. Smoke-free is actually a really good thing, because many of our people who do not have that voice are trapped by tobacco harms. And on that note, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill. I am not on the Health Committee any longer but I am pleased that my previous colleagues, who are on there now still, spent considerable time listening to and reading a number of the submissions.

I also listened with some amusement to Maureen Pugh talking about her days driving along in a car full of smoke. My father also smoked, and, I can assure her, it was worse when the window could be opened and you were sitting in the backseat and the ash and the smoke just came directly to you. So, I think, either way, being in a car with smokers was not much fun to young kids.

National absolutely supports a smoke-free agenda, and I think it is really important that we are really clear on that, and we are proud to have established the 2025 smoke-free targets. However, we don’t support the bill because of the timing and the prioritisation of the initiatives within the bill.

Now, the significant parts of the bill are the limiting of the number of retailers able to sell smoked tobacco products, and that being the first initiative that is implemented. This poses considerable risks to retailers, both from a safety perspective and a viability perspective, and I’ll speak a little more about that later. It also aims to prevent young people from taking up smoking by prohibiting the sale of smoked tobacco products to anyone born on or after 1 January 2009. Of course, Dr Shane Reti showed that there were some limitations to that approach and wanted a little bit of caution to that approach because, in other jurisdictions where it had been implemented, it wasn’t showing high success rates. The bill also aims to make smoked tobacco products less appealing and less addictive. Again, Dr Reti has done a lot of the work around this, and we particularly agree with this initiative.

So the National Party certainly agrees with the intent, it agrees with the 2025 targets and the initiatives, just not the timing and the prioritisation of the initiatives.

So reducing the retail availability by limiting the number of retailers down from 6,000 to 600—it has been spoken about earlier that there is no science to this. It is a figure that has just been plucked out of the air. There are some real concerns around what will happen and the unintended consequences of making this the first initiative. In making this the first initiative, there are concerns that a number of dairy owners will go out of business, and that the safety of those that are within the 600 will be compromised.

Now, I’ve spent some time talking to dairy owners about this. Just last week, I asked one of the dairy owners that I visited to outline for me what she felt she would have to do in terms of security if she was one of the 600 that would be able to sell tobacco or sell cigarettes, and the cost and the safety aspects of this were considerable. We know that the dairy owners have said they are not opposed to this long term; they’ve just said if they could have a two-year window in which to turn their operating models around, they would find it acceptable. And given that these dairy owners are the people that have been suffering most under the current situation of ram raids and blatant thefts—and, in fact, that was one of the reasons I was visiting a dairy owner at the end of last week when she was talking about the blatant theft that goes on now with the soft-on-crime approach that Labour has had and the emboldenment of those that come in and just will take goods from her dairy. So there are issues around the viability of these dairies and the safety of the dairy owners.

I also spent some time talking with the Cancer Society when I was collecting for the Cancer Society earlier this year. Obviously, they are very, very positive about changes to the legislation, but I was trying to explain that, while we agreed with the intent, it was the order in which it was going to occur that we were concerned about. Talking to a number of smokers—and, yes, I do still have some friends and family members who are smokers—I think we have to be very, very careful that we don’t get too smug and self-righteous about this. For a variety of reasons, people are carrying on smoking, and so we have to be very, very careful that we are not demonising them, that we are showing a degree of compassion to them.

So I was concerned at the way in which the Minister spoke disrespectfully of Dr Shane Reti and his approach to this legislation. I think it was disingenuous of the Minister to have been so scathing of the National position when the National position has been very much that we agree with the intent, we agree with the targets, and, therefore, Dr Shane Reti had taken a bipartisan approach and wanted to progress a much more scientific driven model, a model which had picked up on what has been successful in other jurisdictions. So I felt it was incredibly disrespectful that the Government were not prepared to consider what he was putting forward.

I think it’s very regrettable that they were not prepared to consider just a change of the timing of the initiatives so that dairy owners would not bear the impact of the initiative which was considered to have the greatest weight of evidence, being the denicotinisation, being by far and away the most effective. And we were certainly very, very supportive of that being rolled out first, and we felt that might well have done 80 percent of the heavy lifting of the reduction that we wanted to see, particularly when the Minister herself had said there was much uncertainty to the initiative around reducing the number of retail outlets and, really, it was being picked as the easiest one to do. That does not seem to me like a very good reason to have put people’s whole dairies and livelihoods at risk, when the change in prioritisation could have made a great difference and could have brought in the support of the National Party.

So there has been, I believe, considerable virtue-signalling, as this Government is wont to do, around the timing of what they are wanting to bring in first out of the three main initiatives in this. Had they gone with the evidence, had they gone with what had been most successful in other jurisdictions, had they taken the time to consider, perhaps, the least harm to those dairy owners who are doing it incredibly hard at this time because of their soft-on-crime approach, this could have been a much more generally supported piece of legislation.

I just reiterate that National absolutely supports a smoke-free agenda. We support the 2025 targets. We just do not support this legislation because of the unwillingness to try and be flexible with the prioritisation and the timing. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you so much, Madam Speaker. It’s with enormous pleasure that I rise to speak in favour of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill at the second reading. I want to join some of my colleagues in sharing praise for our chair, Tangi Utikere, and, of course, to our enormously courageous Minister, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, who has brought this legislation into the House, which is going to be an extraordinary move that will be a world-first in reducing smoke harm. I also need to thank the clerks and officials, who worked so incredibly hard, and, of course, my colleagues on the Health Committee, a very hard-working committee, as we’ve heard.

In part, I’d like to begin by acknowledging the 1,956 written submissions that we received. We heard 84 of those as oral submissions. They broadly fell into two categories, both of which I actually have a great deal of sympathy for. The first, primarily, were submitters that spoke extraordinarily bravely about loved ones they had lost to smoke-related harm, whether through direct cigarette smoking or second-hand smoke exposure. Extraordinarily moving—we heard submitters who brought members of the committee to tears—and they brought home to us the realities of what we are, in fact, talking about here today. To quote Professor Hoek, “Tobacco is the only product that kills people when it is used as intended.” It kills 12 people every single day in Aotearoa New Zealand. So you’ll forgive me if I agree with the position of the Minister, the Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall, that we need to do something and do it swiftly. Twelve people’s lives are hanging on this decision. The second category of submitters were people whose businesses would be significantly impacted by this legislation. We heard nine submissions from the tobacco industry, who, unsurprisingly, expressed a negative view of the bill, except for the manufacturer of low-nicotine products, who supported it.

Now, submissions of evidence presented to support arguments are, in fact, an exercise for us in assessing credible research. One of the most important factors, when we’re considering whether research presented to us is credible or not, is bias. You always have to ask yourself who stands to benefit—who stands to benefit? Minister Verrall stands not for corporate profits but for the 12 people every day who die from entirely preventable causes. The bottom line is that you can come back, you can reframe a business model that relies on a product that kills 50 percent of its users—it is no small thing; it is not a small ask; it is challenging and difficult and we acknowledge that, but it can be done—but there is no coming back from the dead. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the amendments recommended by the Health Committee by majority be agreed to.

I declare the House in committee for consideration of the Natural Hazards Insurance Bill.