Inquiries — inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the consequences of tobacco use for Māori.

I move, That the House take note of the report of the Māori Affairs Committee on its First of all, I will do what is not done these days and congratulate and thank my Northland colleague and relation Hone Harawira on bringing this inquiry to our select committee. I also give thanks to the Māori Affairs Committee for agreeing on the terms of engagement. I also thank some people who have assisted me in my deliberations as chair: Amelia Abplanalp, Anna Duggan, and Penelope Forrest. I thank them for their sturdy work.

Just today I received letters from the New Zealand Dental Therapists Association, Smokefree Nurses Aotearoa / New Zealand, and also the Health Sponsorship Council—Te Rōpū Whakatairanga Hauora in Wellington. These are three letters of support for our committee and for our report.

This report is far-reaching. It outlines in graphic manner what the tobacco industry and smoking have done to the Māori population and, I suggest, to the whole of the population who smoke. I was one of them up until 160-odd days ago. In fact, throughout the inquiry I smoked like a chimney. Just as we were coming to the end of it, I nearly came to the end of it. I fell over and had a heart attack and it was because of nothing other than my smoking. I decided that I wanted to live a wee bit longer. I decided the day after my heart attack that I would give up smoking, and I have been smoke-free ever since my heart attack.

I am not what one would call a zealot. I am not a person who goes out, bashes people over the head, and tells them that they must give up smoking. That is Hone’s job. But I can tell members that there are a lot of good people out there in Aotearoa, whom we saw in front of our committee and who gave us their special personal stories. As the days went on, as the weeks went on, and as the months went on, we heard from people who have lost loved ones: who have lost fathers, who have lost mothers, who have lost brothers, and who have lost sisters. If we were to go over the number of people we met and heard from in the committee it would tally up to hearing about quite a number of people who have departed this world who really did not need to depart this world.

The great sorrow is that most of us smokers—I think the vast majority of us smokers—know that it is bad for us, know that it is bad for our communities, and know that it is bad for the people we share so much with. We continue to smoke, and that tells us something about the addiction that is nicotine and that is tobacco. It is time for the tobacco industry to realise in a meaningful way that the product it sells, although legal, is an abject danger to our whole community.

I end on this note. I asked the tobacco industry whether its product was safe. I asked that question twice. It is pretty obvious from all of the submissions and from what those in the industry said in reply that the product is not safe. Kia ora.

inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the consequences of tobacco use for Māori, a report which Labour, of course, supports. A whole lot of presenters came to the committee. Smoking certainly has a long history in Māoridom. To hazard a guess, over many, many years young Māori, and Māori families overall, have been addicted to cigarettes. I can recall in the 1960s that for my parents and everyone else it was more common to smoke than not to smoke. There are international developments, writings, and scribings in relation to those in the low-income brackets and those people on the fringe of society who participate in smoking. I have seen relations in my own whānau who have passed on only because of cigarette smoking. One of the things I never did in all my life—I did a whole lot of other things—was to smoke. But through my wife, whom, sadly, I lost 16 years ago to lung cancer, and through other members of the family, I have certainly seen up front the results of smoking. I am a strong advocate of trying to stop smoking. The tobacco industry’s advertising campaign, which has continued for years, is something that needs to be broached. The presenters certainly told us that.