Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this very important Smoke-free Environment (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. This bill imposes controls on the marketing, advertising, and promotion of tobacco products, and it is another significant step forward in reducing the harm from tobacco products here in New Zealand. The Health Committee heard 150 submissions, and the committee was in unanimity that the measures taken in this bill were quite appropriate.

I am sorry to see that Iain Lees-Galloway has just entered the House too late to finish off his speech, but he made a very useful contribution during the select committee process, and I am sure he will do in the Committee stage as well. I also congratulate the Hon Tariana Turia and the Māori Party on their consistent approach to tobacco control, and I acknowledge the work of the Māori Affairs Committee during its inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa, and its consequences for Māori. They would have liked to see even firmer measures than are in the bill, but I do believe that the measures taken through this amendment bill are a very important step forward in reducing harm.

I think it is also important to acknowledge that many individuals have been involved in the history of getting New Zealand to the place where it is at now. If one thinks back prior to the Smoke-free Environments Act of 1990, and even 12 to 15 years ago, one could go into public places that were filled with smoke, such as aeroplanes, railcars, and cafes. Most New Zealanders regard it as absolutely wonderful that we have the option of a clean environment.

It is important to remind the House that there are something like 5,000 premature deaths per year from direct smoking and something like 500 deaths from indirect smoking, or second-hand smoke inhalation. There still remains a major problem in New Zealand with smoking. As the honourable Tariana Turia pointed out the other night, something like 45 percent of the Māori population aged between 16 and 65 still smoke, and something like 50 percent of young Māori women are still smoking.

There is a relentless effort by the tobacco industry to sell tobacco by whatever means it can possibly conjure up. There have been a variety of measures put together in this bill to curtail the marketing, the advertising, and the promotion of tobacco products. It also includes herbal smoking products, which had not had the regulations of the Smoke-free Environments Act enforced previously. It is very much the intention of the Health Committee that those regulations are imposed into the future. There was some debate in the committee as to whether some of the new synthetic products, the cannabinoids such as Kronic, would also fall within the measures taken by this new legislation. However, the view 2 or 3 months ago was that because there had been no public debate or submissions around that, that at this stage that aspect would come at a later date. I think the force of view around the country now, however, is that it would be right and proper to ensure that substances like Kronic, synthetic cannabinoids, and the whole variety of them do fall under legislation such as this as soon as possible.

Transition arrangements have been made to ensure that retailers have a reasonable time to prepare. This Government and the select committee very much realise that costs are involved, and consequently appropriate transition arrangements have been made. This bill does affect internet sales, and that is right and proper, and, of course, includes very strong penalties for trying to sell products over the internet to people under 18. It also affects covert sponsorship. Here again the idea is to counter the exclusive availability of a single tobacco brand at an event, including tobacco companies employing people to work at events wearing the brand’s colours. Amendments are appropriately introduced, with some pretty stiff penalties of up to $50,000 for a manufacturer, importer, or distributor who breaches the bans. The penalty regime is indeed increased. There has been great concern that in some of the minor retail stores around New Zealand sometimes it is not the owner of the business who has had the penalty brought against them, but that will be included in the new regime.

All in all, this is yet another step forward to reduce tobacco harm in New Zealand. It is a very realistic step, and a practical step. It comes on the back of previous efforts over several decades, including last year a three-step imposition of a tobacco tax of 10 percent a year over 3 years. Cumulatively this is a practical, pragmatic, and important step forward, and I look forward to the Committee stage. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak on the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. This is one of the first issues that I have dealt with as a new member of the Health Committee, and I would like to echo the comments made by the chair of the Health Committee, Dr Paul Hutchison, that it was a pleasure to deal with the bill in a unanimous way. As the committee went through the submissions, it acted as one and with a unified voice, and with unified questioning, as well. It was a pleasure to be on the committee. Of the 150 submitters on the bill, it is fair to say some inspired me, some really annoyed me, and some outright disgusted me with some of the stuff that they came to the committee with, in terms of what they said about this bill.

With 700,000 Kiwis smoking at this stage, I think it is pretty clear that smoking in New Zealand causes significant social impacts in terms of people’s health. Labour supports this bill because our position is to encourage New Zealand to be smoke-free by 2025. I want to paint a bit of a Pacific picture here, if I can. Some Ministry of Health figures from 2008 show that the New Zealand average for male smoking was around the 26 percent mark, and for Pacific Island males it was around the 35 percent mark. For females the reading was not much better: on average, around 22 percent of females were smoking, but for Pacific Island females the smoking rate was around the 28 percent mark. So Pacific Islanders are disproportionately represented in the smoking statistics in New Zealand. It is well recognised that smoking is either a risk factor for, or a cause of, cancers, respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular diseases. Some research from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) in 2008 also showed that in the Pacific Island community there were 30 deaths from cancer, about 102 deaths from cardiovascular disease, and 23 deaths from strokes. Smoking, in terms of the Pacific Island community, is obviously a very significant issue, but the community is dealing with it.

Smoking is also an issue within my own culture. The ASH study in 2008 showed that 42 percent of Tokelauans registered themselves as smokers, which was by far and away the largest percentage in a Pacific grouping in New Zealand. I congratulate the Tokelauan health community. They have recognised that this is a large problem within their people, and they are taking strong steps to try to counter that, and to ensure that members of the Tokelauan community are quitting smoking as much as they can.

I will go back to the submissions made during the select committee process. I will congratulate a number of Pacific organisations that submitted to the select committee. In particular, I point out one organisation that the select committee heard from in Auckland, I think, which was Tala Pasifika. Its programme manager, Stephanie Erick, basically said the thrust of this bill was on the money, and that “Addressing the issues of tobacco accessibility to youth and at-risk populations in New Zealand is a major step towards protecting current and future generations who would have otherwise been vulnerable to the deadly and addictive tobacco products that currently enjoy promotion in retail settings across the country.” She also went on to say “To protect our Pacific children and the wider community from being initiated into smoking, the removal of tobacco retail displays from sight is an essential and urgent requirement.” I congratulate Tala Pasifika on making that submission to the select committee, and I acknowledge the important role that Pacific health practitioners play in making sure that they get as many Pacific Islanders as possible to quit smoking.

The health of the Pacific Island community is also a very topical issue today, because this morning out on the forecourt of Parliament there was a 200-strong protest, I will call it, of people from the Pacific communities of my own electorate of Mana—predominantly from Porirua East. They came to Parliament to protest against cuts in the health budget. I point out that it was commendable that the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Georgina te Heuheu, addressed the group of people that formed on the forecourt, but it was a bit on the nose that she called it a celebration of Pacific health. It was not that, at all. It was a hīkoi, and it was a protest. It was a hīkoi and a protest, and I think it was a bit on the nose for those people who turned up—the 200 people from my electorate who are worried about the level of Pacific health funding—that the Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, although she took on board the comments and the petition from the 200-strong protest, called that protest a celebration. It was nothing of the sort; it was a protest at the Government’s cut to funding in the Pacific health sector.

One of those services, Pacific Health Service Porirua, has a very strong smoking cessation programme. It is very concerned about what the cuts to the health budget will do to that programme. It is not the only Pacific health provider in Porirua that has a strong smoking cessation programme. I guess I am trying to say it is great to have the will to try to make New Zealand smoke-free by 2025, but if we are to achieve that goal we have to back up that commitment with funding. In the communities where it will make a big difference—and I mentioned before the overrepresentation of Pacific Islanders in the smoking statistics—we have to back up the commitment we make in legislation with the resources to make sure that if we want to get people from the Pacific Island communities to quit smoking, we have people in those communities who can encourage that.

I will turn back to some of the other issues raised at the select committee. Another submitter—a tobacconist, I believe he was, from Dunedin; I will not mention his name—claimed that 95 percent of his sales came from tobacco. That is obviously the case. He claimed that he sold $150,000 worth of cigarettes or tobacco per week through his store in Dunedin. He basically claimed that most of his customers became friends, and he had been selling to them for decades. I asked him during the hearing, given that he said he had been selling to these “friends” for decades, how many of those people, those customers, he believed would want to quit. I think, if I recall correctly, he said it would be about 70 percent. I think that although we are passing this legislation, there is also a bit of an onus on retailers, too. Although New Zealanders have the freedom to buy tobacco whenever they like if they are of the right age, there is a responsibility upon retailers to make sure that they are doing the socially right thing, and not necessarily feeding the habits of the people who buy tobacco from them. In that case, someone who is selling $150,000 worth of tobacco per week over his counter through his store, and who thinks that about 70 percent of his customers want to quit, might need to think about some of the social responsibility that he has, too.

I will pick up on some of the earlier comments that Dr Paul Hutchison made, too, about some of the details relating to herbal products. I think it is good that the same restrictions on herbal smoking products will come into this legislation. The same restrictions that apply to tobacco sales will be placed on herbal products. Also, the fines regime is to increase for both tobacco and herbal products. I believe that the maximum fine for a proprietor for selling to someone who is under age will now increase to $10,000. I think that is a positive move, in terms of trying to make sure that we crack down on retailers who continually flout the rules and sell cigarettes to those who are under 18 years of age.

I finish by saying we welcome and support this bill. It was a pleasure to be on the select committee. As I said, it was one of my first issues to deal with on the select committee. To sit on that committee and work on a bill such as this, which had unanimous support from all parties, was a pleasure. I also commend the Minister in charge of this bill, the Hon Tariana Turia, for her work to make sure that action was taken on this issue. The last Labour Government took some real steps, the first marker steps, to make sure that we make New Zealand smoke-free by 2025. The Minister needs to be commended for her efforts to make sure that the Government made this legislation a priority, even though it took some time for National to do so. The Minister pushed it as hard as she could, and it is a pleasure that the bill is at this stage in the House. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak.

It is a pleasure to stand in support of the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. I think it is one of those occasions where—I am not sure about the ACT Party—pretty much everyone in the House is likely to be voting for a bill. Indeed, we may well all be giving more or less the same speech in this debate.

I commence in that tradition by joining other speakers in expressing our appreciation of the work undertaken by officials from the Ministry of Health in assisting the Health Committee in its work on the bill. This is a complex area of legislation, surprisingly, but the officials were diligent and provided good quality advice, I felt, to the select committee. I also acknowledge the good heart and spirit with which the committee considered the bill. As others have mentioned, the distinctions between the parties on the Health Committee on this issue would not have been obvious to anyone coming into the room, because the members of the committee worked as a single unit, and it was a pleasure to be part of it.

The submitters were an interesting bunch. I will comment about them in a moment. There is one person I will single out for some praise at this point in my remarks, and that is Iain Lees-Galloway. I single him out not for his role on the Health Committee, but for having advanced to this House in the first place his member’s bill to ban the retail display of tobacco and tobacco products, which was drawn in the ballot. I suspect that that may well have been the spur that brought this bill to the House, and I commend Mr Lees-Galloway for that.

As I said, the submitters were an interesting bunch. I think it would be fair to say that broadly speaking, with very few exceptions, the submitters said that they supported the legislation or supported its general thrust. From that point, they broke down into two broad categories. The first of those was a category of submitters who said that, yes, of course they support the goal of New Zealand being a smoke-free country, and, yes, of course they support the broad thrust of this legislation, but there are some really specific reasons why the time frame in this bill will not work for their particular organisation or business, or why the particular way that the bill applies its restrictions to retail displays will not quite work for them, and therefore they should be exempted from it. I particularly recall an example from a submitter on behalf of the duty-free retailers at Auckland Airport who said that although they were broadly supportive of this legislation, it could not apply to duty-free retailers because of the inconvenience that that would cause to travellers, and because the efficiency of airport operations required that passengers were able to make their duty-free purchases as quickly as possible. Covering up the displays of tobacco products and requiring a further step of uncovering those tobacco products in order for passengers to be able to make their purchases would impede the efficient operation of airports. I did not have a lot of time for that argument, or, indeed, for the other flimsy excuses that were advanced by the submitters in that group. I am very pleased that the select committee resisted any temptation that may have existed to succumb to such arguments.

There has been a small compromise made on the commencement of the measures. I think that was a sensible change to make, but that in itself was counterbalanced by another change that the committee made, which was to greatly increase the fines. Some other speakers have already spoken about that.

The other broad category of submitters that I would refer to are submitters like Action on Smoking and Health, the Smokefree Coalition, and some of those others that Kris Faafoi, for example, just spoke about in his contribution. Those people were excited about the fact that Parliament was taking this step. They were very strongly supportive of the goal of a smoke-free nation, and of concrete steps being taken towards that goal. Those submitters in general were saying that what this bill does is fantastic, but there are other things that the bill could also do at this time. For example, they spoke about the need for a register. One of the practical problems that is being encountered by people who are out there in the field, trying to enforce New Zealand’s smoke-free environments legislation, is that it is very hard to keep track of who actually is selling tobacco and tobacco products. They argued very strongly for the need for a register of people selling those products. They were supported in that by the agencies—regional councils, public health providers, and the like—that do that enforcement. I think the case for a register is extremely strong, and the provision of a register would have indeed been an extremely sensible addition to this bill. It is a matter of some regret that we did not take that step.

The other area that those submitters were suggesting the committee could advance in the bill—to advance the cause of smoke-free environments legislation—was to pick up some more of the recommendations of the Māori Affairs Committee. I have very considerable sympathy for that point of view. We were presented with a rare opportunity of an extremely well-founded and thorough investigation by the Māori Affairs Committee. We know that the committee travelled the length and breadth of the country. In an extremely thorough process, it heard from the tobacco industry as well as from all of us who strongly support that goal of a smoke-free nation.

On the basis of that very thorough inquiry, which was supported by all parties, the committee came up with a comprehensive set of regulations—plain packaging for tobacco products, for example. I believe that there was an opportunity to incorporate more of the recommendations of the Māori Affairs Committee into this bill. The public will reasonably say that, for goodness’ sake, this perfect vehicle—the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill—is going through Parliament, so why on earth does Parliament not take this opportunity to advance that programme of actions so that we can move at a faster pace towards the goal that pretty much everyone shares? That is a reasonable question: why on earth have we not taken that opportunity?

I have no doubt at all that the denormalising of tobacco products that will occur as a result of this bill being passed into law will be an extremely positive step forward. Other speakers have referred to herbal smoking products and to the changes that were made and those that were not made. I think Paul Hutchison may need to check the officials’ report, because I am not sure that his characterisation in his second reading speech of what the bill does and does not do is entirely correct. I think sellers and producers of herbal smoking products should be on notice that the expectation of the select committee is that at some point in the future we will consider changes in order to bring those products in line with tobacco products.

In closing, I join others in praising Minister Turia and, indeed, those other members of the House who were involved with the inquiry by the Māori Affairs Committee: Tau Henare, as the chair; Hone Harawira, a former member of this House; and the other members of that committee. This is a good bill. It could be better, but the Greens certainly will be supporting it. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ka nui te mihi ki a koe i tēnei ahiahi. Today is not a bad day—today is not a bad day.

I thought I would start by just asking a few questions—not of you, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy; I do not want to bring you into the debate. I will just check in with the Hon Hekia Parata to see whether she has been following the debate. I am sure she has, because today is a good day for the Māori Party, I think. Let me just check. If I was to ask which party contributed to a Māori presence in the debate on the Telecommunications (TSO, Broadband, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, I ask what the Hon Hekia Parata would say.

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: The Māori Party.

OK. Right, we have one answer from the Minister; that gets her to Fiji. The second question is which party promoted the second reading of the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill.

💬 Hon Members: The Māori Party.

Oh no, stop it. Do not do that. Stop it. Let me ask the Minister another question, which will take her from Fiji to Hawaii. Who is the sponsor of this particular bill right now?

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Is it Te Urur—

No. The Minister should hurry up; I have only 10 minutes. It is Tariana—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Turia.

Tariana Turia; that is right. The Minister is very good. She must be Ngāti Porou; I can tell. The fourth question is who is the co-leader of the most high-profile, dynamic, effective, small, but stunningly good-looking—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Agile.

—and agile political party? Who is the co-leader of that party?

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Dr Pita Sharples.

He is one of them. Who is the other one?

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: Te Ururoa Flavell.

No, he is not.

💬 Hon Members: Tariana Turia.

That is very good. I thank the Minister very much. I have one more question for the Minister, just to check that she is not reading the answers. Which party does the Hon Tariana Turia belong to? She sponsored this particular bill and is a part of that other legislation passed today, for which the Māori Party has provided an energetic—

💬 Hon Hekia Parata: The Māori Party.

It is the Māori Party. The Minister is the winner. That is why she is a Minister: because she and some of my other colleagues over there know the importance of having the Māori Party beside them. I can see that you are grinning, Mr Assistant Speaker Roy. You are smiling because you know that is the answer. I thank the Minister.

I am really pleased to follow up from and commend the Hon Tariana Turia, co-leader of the Māori Party, for the amazing, amazing—I will say it again—amazing efforts she has made in terms of tobacco control, and in paving the foundation for the health and well-being of all tamariki in this nation. Is the Minister nodding? Yes, she was. I am sure she was nodding to agree that this bill is important for all tamariki of this nation.

On a little bit of a serious note, I say that the party’s tobacco campaign to rid our shores of tobacco has resulted in a number of landmark milestones, a number of which are included in the Smoke-free Environments Act. It is a bit of a history tour. There are things in the Act such as increasing the tobacco tax, and now we have the introduction of legislation to ban displays and to keep tobacco out of sight and out of mind. The past 12 months have been the most rapid in the history of making policy on tobacco control that this country has seen. Just over a year ago, in response to Māori Party advocacy, the Māori Affairs Committee announced that it would carry out an inquiry into the tobacco industry—in particular, into the consequences for Māori of tobacco use. In March the Hon Tariana Turia initiated a public consultation on the proposal to ban tobacco displays in retail outlets, specifically announcing that the Government would ban retail displays of tobacco. This policy has long been sought by health campaigners in order to denormalise tobacco, to help smokers quit, and to reduce the number of young people taking up smoking.

Already these early steps are proving to bring about success. The 2009 Tobacco Use Survey showed that the current smoking rate for 15 to 65-year-olds has dropped to 21.8 percent. In real numbers that is about 60,000 fewer smokers. Of those 60,000, in real numbers again, about 10,000 are estimated to be Māori. Those are pretty good statistics. As I say, these are fantastic results, which demonstrate that people are starting to recognise the serious harm that comes from smoking, and they are basically saying that it is not worth it. Therefore the Māori Party is absolutely overwhelmed and privileged by, and stunningly supportive of, this bill.

The amendment bill aims to remove tobacco displays from outlets, and to include harsher penalties for the sale and purchase of tobacco products to children and young people. The bill makes it much more difficult for companies to enter into covert sponsorship arrangements. This bill makes significant progress in achieving the Māori Party goal of making Aotearoa a smoke-free nation by 2025.

The Māori Party is pleased and proud to support this bill right through to the end—which will be soon, I am sure—as part of our goal to rid smoking and cigarettes from our nation, and to therefore have a healthier nation across the board. Today is a good day, when the Māori Party says: “Yeah—we’ve done it!”. Kia ora tātou.

I fully support all the things that were said by both the previous speakers I have heard since I came into the House. I have noted that old expression “no man is an island”, but I have just taken the opportunity to ask not the multi-choice questions that Te Ururoa Flavell put but instead a rather more direct question of my colleagues who were in the Chamber when I arrived. I asked them whether they had ever smoked. I was astonished to find that very few have that and those who have smoked did so very little. I am sure that Mr Assistant Speaker Roy will not mind my saying that when I asked him he said he had never ever smoked and that that accounts for his fine complexion, youthful appearance, and high levels of energy and intellectual capacity. We do not wish to bring the Speaker into the debate, so that will not be debated.

I stand as, I guess in one way, a little bit of an oddity, in that I first smoked when I was 11. I used to nick my mother’s cigarettes, one at a time. I progressed to getting a job, and I started to buy my own cigarettes. Members can picture if they will a 19-year-old Auchinvole in New Zealand, gazing with admiration as he watched the classic Kiwi roll his own cigarette with one hand, put it in his mouth, light the match with one hand, and take a puff. Eventually I perfected that art. I was mostly in the rural sector and I perfected that art of rolling my own cigarette, sticking it in my mouth, lighting it with a match, and then I would take a puff and take off half my lip because the cigarette would get stuck to my mouth.

I remember that for social occasions when we were young bucks we used to smoke Sobranie Black Russians. They were very, very special and very expensive cigarettes. People like Tim Groser will remember those. But mostly it was roll-your-owns, then tailor-mades, and then pipes with pipe tobacco such as Erinmore Mixture. I can smell it now. I can smell it now.

We used to go to conferences. I was a member of the livestock improvement movement. We had national conferences and everybody smoked. I can remember, I think it must have been in the 1970s, when someone moved that smoking not be permitted during the conference. There was a stunned silence and then roars of laughter. The next year it was put to a vote. The following year it was not even mentioned; there was just no smoking and that was that.

I used to go to political conferences. At the National Party regional conference in Auckland my Erinmore tobacco used to be nicked by Kennedy Graham’s brother, and we would share a good pipe of tobacco. We had a debate at the divisional meeting about whether we should smoke. I was one of the strong proponents. I can remember using phrases like “Have some sympathy for smokers; they are a dying breed, and they are dying at a faster rate than the rest of us.” One could make quite a light-hearted speech about that.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when I was going through adolescence, almost everybody did smoke. If we look back at the films in those ages we see that there was an awful lot of promotion of tobacco. I gave up when it became more difficult to smoke. My children have never smoked, and my wife has never smoked, although my wife has never objected to my smoking. I have now not smoked for about 13 years because it became harder and harder. The children would oblige me to smoke outside the house, and they did not like me smoking in the vehicle—that sort of thing.

I still smoked my pipe—I was comfortable with it—but when a friend of mine asked me why I smoked and started to explain, much the way that Mr Assistant Speaker Roy did, that it impaired one from certain functions compared with not smoking and that I would have much fun in life if I did not smoke, he gave me a little bit of a challenge. I was ordering a wrought-iron gate from him for my mother-in-law’s 100th birthday, and he could not make it in time because he was too busy. So I said “Gosh, I thought I’d heard that you could do anything, you’re such a brilliant fellow.” And he said “So I can, and can you stop smoking?”, so I said “Probably.” He said “All right, you send me the design of the gate. When you send me that, get rid of your pipe, all the tobacco that you’ve saved up, cigars, and that sort of thing, get rid of them all, and don’t smoke ever again, then I’ll get your gate finished.” So we did a deal. We had just moved across to the Coast. I had a complete change of habit, lifestyle, and everything else. It was a good time to stop.

I have never ever smoked since other than a puff of a cigarette that a colleague gave me. I thought “No, I don’t want to go back to that.”, and I never have. The question, though, is what have I learnt from it? If one speaks to people and asks about their experience of smoking, one learns that there are not very many who have a good experience. There are not very many people who want to maintain smoking. I have never ever had any experience with drugs, other than those administered in a hospital. This story would perhaps be different if I had asked around about drugs. Drugs just have not happened in my life. I have had no exposure and no opportunity, and I have never sought them. So, on the one hand, I have smoked cigarettes but, on the other hand, I have had no other drugs. People who work with druggies tell me that they all want to give up. They do not want to persist with them. Nicotine and other drugs like that are very hard to kick, once they get hold of someone.

Would I go back to smoking now? I guess if someone produced a box of Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes, I would give one a go. Former smokers are always vulnerable. Alcoholics are never cured, they tell me. Formers smokers are never completely cured. It is a matter of opportunity. As I say, if someone showed me a packet of Sobranie Black Russians or if I went into a shop and saw them, I might have a go. I think the proposals in the bill to remove the visual temptation and to take away the opportunity from people can be only a good thing.

I had the privilege of attending several sessions of the Māori Affairs Committee as it interviewed the tobacco suppliers, which I spoke to. As a large contributor to their fortunes, I felt entitled to have a fairly aggressive approach to them. I asked whether they really still believed in that wonderful old adage “cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild women”. Largely, tobacco suppliers are there to generate money—profits—for their organisation and their shareholders. They will fight extraordinarily hard to maintain that profile.

I was very supportive of the work done by the Māori Affairs Committee and was very impressed that it almost went out on a limb and fought the issue—perhaps against the wishes of some of their own members—but fight it the committee did. I raise my hat, of course, to the—

💬 Te Ururoa Flavell: Hon Tariana Turia.

—Hon Tariana Turia and her associates in the Māori Party. The tobacco industry can do without us, we can do without smoking, and we should strive to achieve the purposes of this bill. Thank you.

I will take a very brief call on the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. It is one of those bills with an aspiration for New Zealand. It aspires for New Zealand to end smoking by 2025, which is a wonderful aspiration.

I also praise, as others have done, the work of Tariana Turia and my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway in pushing this bill through. As other speakers, including Kris Faafoi, have said, the bill builds on a lot of the work that Labour did while it was in office to outlaw the smoking common in restaurants and bars, where it is now no longer common.

The bill brings into force measures that I think, as others have said, will decrease drastically the incidence of smoking. Te Ururoa Flavell talked about there being 60,000 fewer smokers, and that is a fantastic statistic. If smoking rates continue to go down by that amount, then that is something that we can be really proud of, and is something that New Zealand can be happy about in terms of what this Parliament is trying to do.

The word “happy” brings me to the point Mr Flavell was talking about, in terms of today being a happy day. It is a happy day and we should enjoy that fact. I think he should enjoy it too, before Saturday, which will probably be a less happy day. I was contemplating, as he was talking with National members, my hope that voters in Te Tai Tokerau were watching and seeing that a vote for the Māori Party is ultimately a vote for National.

With that final remark, I commend this bill and I pledge, once again, Labour’s support for it. Thank you.

I am proud to say my father’s name was Kelvin Robin Tremain. He was an All Black through the late 1950s and 1960s, and back then was possibly, one might say, the Michael Jones of the 1980s or the Richie McCaw of this century. He was a member of an All Black team at a time of greats, whose names still decorate the walls of many rugby clubs and museums around the world—names such as Colin Meads, Brian Lochore, and Waka Nathan.

The All Blacks in those days were serious smokers. I know that my father was a smoker right throughout the period that he was an All Black. He smoked right through his adult life. I am not proud to say this, but in fact at his peak my dad smoked two packets or more a day. Unfortunately, Kel died at 54—19 years ago. He died at 54. Can members believe that? At 54 years of age he passed away. He died of cancer. The thing that I want to reflect on tonight is not the fact that he died—he was a big boy; he made his own decisions—but it is what he missed out on. What he missed out on is the last 19 years, and I just want to make quite clear the poignancy of what that means to my family. What that means is that, yes, he knew Ange, my wife, but he did not know my brothers’ wives, Jan and Hetti, and he never met his 10 grandchildren. So he has never met Sam, Will, and Lily, who are my kids. He has never met Jan’s kids, Anika, Jack, and Greer, or Hetti’s children, Anouk, Edu, Mela, and Kully. I think that is the real loss.

I know why members on this side of the House and around the House support this bill so much. Yes, my dad was a big boy and he made his own decisions, but his life was taken early. I totally support anything that brings about a change to the way that we smoke in this country. This bill makes it more difficult and reduces the opportunity to smoke. Thank you.