Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. It has been a pleasure to be in this House leading the debate on this particular bill, and I do welcome the support from across the Chamber. I think most members here agree that this bill will have a positive impact on our people—particularly, I want to say, our Māori people and our Pacific people, whose smoking rates continue to be high. Another at-risk group, of course, is pregnant women. This bill is but one measure, one step along the way towards the ultimate goal of a smoke-free New Zealand.

I want to particularly thank the Māori Party. I want to acknowledge the previous Associate Minister of Health Tariana Turia, who I think many would acknowledge has led the charge in this area, and not only around the increases in taxation: 10 percent year on year on year for the last 6 years. I also want to acknowledge Marama Fox and Te Ururoa Flavell and their acknowledgment that this must continue, not just here today but into the future.

I also want to acknowledge members opposite, and the Labour deputy leader, as well as Louisa Wall, whom I have had many interactions with on tobacco control. I acknowledge the passion, certainly, and the vigour that they have brought to this debate. I think this is one of those bills where we can agree, despite some of the rhetoric that has gone on in the House this morning, that it will make a difference to all New Zealanders.

I want to say that it is about tax increases, and there is part of me that, ideologically, looks at a bill that increases taxes and thinks “Well, I believe in less government; lower taxes.”, but I know that when it comes to smoking and tobacco control, taxation makes a difference, along with a whole range of other measures. We know the damage that tobacco does in this country—the 4,500 to 5,000 people who die prematurely in this country—and I want to reiterate what I said in my first reading speech: this is still the biggest health problem in this country.

💬 Darroch Ball: Is it?

It is. It is. That is why this measure, along with other measures that this Government has done, I might add, to promote smoking cessation in this country—we have got to be particularly grateful for them.

I also want to acknowledge the officials who have assisted with this as well as with other tobacco control measures. I want to acknowledge our Government and the leadership of John Key in promoting this as, I think, a sensible measure. It will be one of the legacy policies that this Government will leave behind. We know that the costs of smoking are immense—the personal cost to the person who smokes but also the whānau cost, the community cost, of people who become sick and die, and also the relationships that are affected by tobacco and the like.

I just want to say that I welcome the support around this House. I believe that we are doing the right thing here today by New Zealanders. I know that this will make a difference to the health of New Zealanders, and that is why I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to support this bill. Labour has been clear from the beginning that we will be supporting this measure because it is an effective measure to help curb smoking. It helps, I think, to remind all of us that smoking is still a net drain on the health system in New Zealand. Smoking is still a cost that we all bear, both socially and economically, and the excise that is collected by the Government does not yet offset the harm caused to our communities. It does not add up that it is something that is just taking money and not giving back, but our concern remains that the money must get back to those people who are paying the excise. Those people who are struggling with an addiction to smoking must be supported in their efforts to give up. Public health, generally, must be supported. This is $425 million across 4 years, and the Government, in this debate, has not committed to putting that back into public health, to supporting those who would wish to give up, and to supporting people with public health issues like obesity, like diabetes, like smoking, like drug and alcohol issues, and so on. It will not commit to that.

The Associate Minister of Health Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga seems to think—and he said this, pretty much—that money taken from smokers and put back into hip replacements will somehow help people stop smoking. When asked what the public health benefit was from this money being taken, he said it will go into hip replacements. That does not stop smoking, and we need to stress that, lest people cotton on to that and somehow try to understand that contorted logic. It is not worth going there. It just does not work that way. We do not think the money should go into the consolidated account to fund the Government’s pet projects, be it charter schools, which are funded at five times the rate of public schools, or whatever its other corporate welfare priorities are at the moment: Saudi sheep or Skycity deals—whatever it is it is trying to dish money out to people for. We do not think this money should go back into that pot; we think it should be there to help smoking cessation and other public health programmes that are for the well-being of all New Zealanders.

In the debate the Minister has failed to address my question about giving tobacco companies time to adjust to this. What behaviour in the past tells us is that tobacco companies put the additional costs on to their high-value products—their high-margin products, like luxury cigars—and they try to keep their gateway products, the cheap products, as cheap as possible. The Minister has given no assurance that there will be any looking at the range of products available and making sure that this excise tax is applied in a way that actually reduces smoking in the most effective way possible. The Minister has simply not addressed that question in the Committee stage of this debate. He also talked about the progress of plain packaging legislation through Parliament, and as my colleague the Hon Annette King said, it has been sitting on the Order Paper since 2014, in the middle of the year. It is unbelievable that the Minister thinks that is progressing because it is written on a piece of paper that we pick up every day. It is not racing through this Parliament. So we look forward to the progress of that bill, because we want to take seriously your sentiment that you believe this is a measure that is going to help New Zealanders and that it is not just a tax grab.

We need to do more, and we need to do more soon, because people are dying while this Government fails to put money into public health. People are dying from the consequences of smoking. We will support this bill. It is one of the most effective means of stopping smoking, through increasing the price of cigarettes, but we need, also, a comprehensive plan to get us smoke-free by 2025. That is the Government’s stated goal, but health experts say that we are not on track, as 15 percent of adults in New Zealand smoke daily. The Government does not have us in a position, with a convincing plan, to make sure that we are smoke-free by 2025. It can do better, it must do better, and it needs to stop treating this $425 million as a revenue grab. It needs to put the money into programmes that are for the public health of New Zealanders, for anti-smoking programmes, obesity programmes, and other programmes that will improve the health of New Zealanders overall. It continues a pattern in the health sector of underfunding, generally. We are supporting this measure because it is a good step in the right direction, but there is so much more to be done. We wish this Government was ambitious for New Zealand. We wish it cared for middle New Zealand and not just for the few at the top.

It was indeed good to hear Minister Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga, in his contribution to the Committee stage, indicate that the Government was committed to passing the plain packaging legislation in the second half of this year. That will be very welcome because although tax increases on tobacco products are the most effective measure of reducing death and illness from the most preventable cause of death and illness, they are not enough alone; they need to be part of a comprehensive suite of measures. One of those is plain packaging, and the Green Party certainly wishes that the Government was also open to the issue of smoking in cars and smoking in parks, and open to the kinds of restrictions on retail supply such as a register of retailers, as has been recommended. We look forward to further discussions with the Government on that.

I note that the Government intends to review its progress against the Smokefree Aotearoa goal in 2018. At that point, it may well be that New Zealand continues not to be on track for achieving Smokefree Aotearoa by 2025, as we are not now. We are not currently on track. We are for middle-class Pākehā New Zealanders, but not for Māori, not for Pasifika, and not for low-income Pākehā people. If we continue not to be on track in 2018, then I call on the Government to indicate that it is open to reviewing these taxation measures, because at that point we will have demonstrated that they are inadequate. With that, I close this contribution and indicate that the Green Party will continue to support this measure.

I just want to conclude the debate today by sympathising with and acknowledging those who have spoken in the House on just what is wrong with smoking. There is no debate from New Zealand First that smoking is a problem that kills New Zealanders—there is no debate on that. In fact, whom I sympathise with even more is one of the members of the Māori Party, who talked about all the programmes and initiatives we need to make cessation a success. But that is not what we are talking about here today. What we are talking about here today is a taxation measure put on—and everyone agrees—the poorest members of New Zealand’s society. They will suffer the burden of this more than anyone else will. That member over there, Marama Fox, shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head, but it will affect Māori disproportionately and it will affect Pacific Islanders disproportionately. So let us put that into the perspective of the debate we are undertaking today.

This is the measure of the sincerity of this Government: rob from the most needy. Yes, they should stop, but they cannot, and this 10 percent rate is exactly the wrong amount, remembering what the health professionals told us in the select committee. This will not achieve anything in terms of helping to reduce the uptake of cigarette smoking, because people will continue to do so, and, in fact, we will get more revenue, to the sum of $425 million, from those most at risk. What we see—and Mr Lotu-Iiga said it himself—is that this is a stopgap measure where we take from those who can least afford it in order to fill in gaps from the health budget, which is underfunded in the first place. So we have to ask the question—and why is it that I find the cynicism of the Government so unacceptable? It is because it is saying “Let’s tax the poor.”, but what has this Budget done in terms of funding quit programmes? Nothing. Not only has it done nothing but also the funding for those types of programmes has decreased. Where is the logic in that?

Every member in this House has spoken of the need for support programmes and wraparound services, and yet in this Budget the funding for those very programmes is going backwards. Couple that with a rate that does the exact opposite of the intent that it was purported to the House to have and not only will you achieve nothing but also you will achieve the exact opposite of the stated proposition of this piece of legislation. It will go backwards, and it will do far more harm than good. So show me the money? No. Let us actually help people, stop persecuting them, support them, and lift them out of their addiction.

What does this Budget tell us about this Government’s true attitude to the people of New Zealand? “Get stuffed.” More money for cessation programmes? “Get stuffed.” More money actually directed to smoking costs in the health budget? “Get stuffed.” Cannot quit? “Get stuffed.” Not only is the Government not adding more money to the Budget to help people to stop smoking but also it is decreasing it. I say, yet again, to the members of this House that not only will this bill not achieve its stated intent but also it will do the exact opposite. Thank you.

The next call is a split call—Marama Fox, 5 minutes.

The Hon Dame Tariana Turia, in 6 years as Associate Minister of Health, made remarkable contributions to reducing smoking in New Zealand. She introduced no fewer than four pieces of legislation, including the annual increases to tobacco excise rates that began in 2010, which will now run to 2020. She was also responsible for banning retail displays of tobacco products, reducing duty-free allowances, and introducing the plain packaging bill to Parliament. As a result, adult smoking rates fell from 21 percent in 2006 to a record low of 15 percent in 2013. Her tireless and relentless focus in the face of constant criticism and challenge is testament to her leadership. There is no doubt that she achieved more in terms of reducing the smoking burden carried by Māori than any other politician ever.

Some 15 percent of adult New Zealanders, or 550,000 people, smoke daily. This is a record low, but it does not tell the whole story. You see, the problem is that the smoking rates are still 35 percent for Māori and 22.4 percent for Pasifika peoples. That is hundreds of our whānau dying needlessly every year, so we must carry on and do more. We can all bemoan the increases to cigarette prices, but the greatest price we all pay is seeing too many of our whānau go to their graves early through the harmful effects of smoking.

In fact, I cannot remember a time when I have been to a funeral of one of our old people or young people where the death was from natural causes. In 27 years—because that is how old I am—of going to funerals of my whānau over and over and over again, not once can I remember someone dying of natural causes. The majority of them died from smoking-related illnesses, and for the rest of those who smoke, half of them will die—half of all people who smoke will die from smoking-related illnesses—and the rest will be sick.

We must do something to halt the decline, because this is about whakapapa. This is about retaining our whakapapa for our future, for our tamariki, our mokopuna. We are losing our people far too early. The disparity for Māori in the death rate is 8 to 10 years. They die 8 to 10 years earlier than non-Māori. My entire family of in-laws died before the age of 70, and half of them died before the age of 60. It is not good enough. For most of them, it was all from smoking-related illnesses. We must look after ourselves and each other. We must do all we can to support whānau to thrive, and having our urupā overflowing with whānau who have died from smoking-related illnesses is wrong.

This is not about having a crack at the smokers. The Māori Party kaupapa is manaakitanga, and it extends to smokers, too. Tariana’s focus was as much about having compassion for smokers as it was about preventing rangatahi from starting to smoke. We have no option but to carry on the legacy. It is a legacy piece of legislation—four pieces of legislation. I look forward to the day that we put the nail into the plain packaging legislation and get that back into the House and see it through. I commend this bill to the House. It is a start, but we must do more.

I call David Seymour—5 minutes.

I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in favour and support of this bill, even though I regard it as a regrettable piece of public policy, because—as I have said in earlier stages—of the wider context of a need to support this Budget and to keep these people over here and keep those people over there, except for Phil Goff, who will soon be joining us in Auckland on a more permanent basis.

I just have a question for the Minister and for the proponents of this bill, and it is this: what do they say to the 15 percent of New Zealanders and the 35.5 percent of Māori who now pay $2,800 in tobacco excise tax every single year and, under this bill, will soon pay $3,800 of excise tax every year because they smoke? I presume what the Minister and his supporters would say is: “Well, they should quit.” There is one small problem with that, and it is that they have not. The regulatory impact statement for this bill vastly overestimates how many people will quit for the amount of tax taken from the poorest households in this country.

I saw one such example of this not so long ago in a Countdown supermarket in Auckland. I saw a mother with a very young girl. The mother was buying a tin of milk and a packet of Winfield 25s—three-quarters of the cost of which was tax. I cannot presume to know all of their circumstances, but, by the look of it, from the way they were dressed and from the expression on their faces, the little girl was fixated on those cigarettes as if to say: “That could have been dinner.” A 7-year-old girl could work out what this policy is doing. It is having minimal effect on smoking cessation, but it is literally taking food out of the mouths of some the poorest children in this country.

I would say to my colleague from the Māori Party that Dame Tariana Turia is a woman deserving of the greatest of respect and the intentions are extremely noble, but policies must not be measured by intentions. They must be measured by outcomes. This policy will take the tobacco tax on the average smoker from 2,800 bucks per year up to 3,800 bucks. That is not an enlightened policy. It is a highly regressive tax, and the costs imposed in terms of poverty and deprivation on the people most in need far outweigh any possible benefits that we have been able to observe from the first 5 years of this policy.

With that, I support this bill because it is part of a broader Budget that I think is good. But, make no mistake, it is a highly regrettable policy that will do far more harm than it does good. We have to support it, in spite of the fact that it is not good policy whatsoever.

Let me just sum up the contributions to this bill from the different parties. We have had David Seymour ignoring all the evidence that actually shows that an increase in the tobacco price stops people from smoking. So when he says that every single person who smokes is going to be hit with $2,000 a year, that is actually wrong. The academic, peer-reviewed evidence shows that an increase in the price will stop a number of those people from spending significantly more money on tobacco than they are at the moment.

The other thing about the ACT member is that he stands up here and calls this bill an abomination and a disgrace, says how terrible it is, and then he votes for it. Mr Seymour should actually stand for something. He should actually stand for something. I know that the Prime Minister has given him a mandate to vote against a bill that he does not agree with, so Mr Seymour does have the mandate to vote against this bill. He despises this bill, but he is voting for it. In Labour, when we do not agree with a piece of legislation we vote against it.

We have had the Associate Minister of Health Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga ignoring our calls to get it right, and turn this into a real success and a piece of legislation that will work—a piece of legislation that can be backed by academic, peer-reviewed research, as well as by community groups that are dealing with this issue every single day. What I would say to the Minister is that I disagree with his last speech. Do not take our Yes vote as unqualified support for this bill, because we have a number of concerns about the money that is being collected, the $425 million that is being collected, on this—that it will just go into the consolidated account. There will not be more cessation programmes. There will be less help for people who want to quit.

What we would really like to see, as Louisa Wall and I have talked about numerous times, is more programmes targeted at those in the early education programme, so that it is absolutely uncool, at any stage, to smoke. We have got to turn that peer review round, from “OK, my peers are smoking. Hell, I’d better be cool.” to “It is very uncool to smoke.” We need a decent chunk of this $425 million to go into education and smoking cessation programmes. I think the Minister could have got a lot of political capital if he had come out and said that this policy is going to be backed by good public policy in terms of cessation programmes and education programmes.

We have had New Zealand First members stand up, ignore the evidence, and say “Get stuffed.” to any measure that will reduce the harm caused by smoking. I am a little bit surprised, actually. I thought that New Zealand First members were on the right track, took an evidence-based approach, and really drove outcomes. To stand up and say “Get stuffed.” to—10 percent of all deaths in our health system are from smoking. Ten percent, and they are saying to any measure that addresses that: “Get stuffed.” I think that is the wrong message.

Then you have Labour. Labour has tried to take a balanced, evidence-based approach to this. We would have liked to see a greater increase in the excise tax, to 20 percent, as recommended by University of Otago researchers. We would have liked to see a whole lot of this money—not all of it, but a lot of it—put into programmes that help people to break that nicotine addiction, which is an incredibly powerful addiction. We would have liked to see a chunk of this money stuck into education programmes that actually stop people smoking before they start.

We all agree that a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025 is an admirable target. We all want to get there because it is right. It is right for this country and it is right for the people who live here. But what we do not agree on at this point in time are the measures put forward by this Budget. They could have been better. They should have been stronger. We will support this legislation, but we just think it could have been a lot more powerful and sent a much stronger message. Thank you very much.

I know that everyone wants to go home—I do too—but I do want to say a few things just in terms of the kaupapa that we have debated now all morning. Actually, I want to say to Minister Lotu-Iiga that I think there are many of us across this House who want to work with you on a strategy that makes New Zealand smoke-free by 2025. So I am asking you to allow those of us who are passionate about this kaupapa to work with you to get some of the other initiatives that need to be prioritised to complement this specific initiative that is, as we have all identified today, one of the most effective initiatives in reducing the numbers of smokers.

For those people who may not have seen some of the earlier debate, I just want to highlight that we are talking about 550,000 New Zealanders who smoke. Of these, 155,000 of them are Māori; 55,000 are Pacific people. We have 5,000 deaths a year, we have 350 people a year die from second-hand smoking, and 70 of our babies die from sudden unexpected death in infancy, so this is an incredibly important kaupapa. I know that many of us have been affected. I had a father who passed away from over 20 years of chain-smoking two packs a day. It means a lot to many people, and so hopefully there is an opportunity for us to come together and work collectively. It actually could be something that everyone across the House could collaborate on, so that is what I am saying to the Minister.

Just before I conclude, I would like to say that next week it is World Smokefree Day, on 31 May. World Smokefree Day is about raising awareness and contributing to the achievement of New Zealand becoming smoke-free by 2025. So, Minister, you have got something to be very proud of next week, and to stand up and talk about. The theme for this year is “It’s about whānau”. What we want to do is encourage more people to seek help if they want to give up smoking. What we have realised through the research is that people cannot give up by themselves; they actually need the tools to support that. They need whānau around them who support it, they need the patches, they need the gum—whatever tools they need to realise that aspiration of being smoke-free. All that we have tried to highlight on this side is that access to tobacco is one thing, but, actually, if you really want to address the addiction, then we have got to invest a whole lot more in the tools that are going to be effective.

Finally, I too would like to honour Dame Tariana Turia. This is her legacy. I would also like to acknowledge Hone Harawira because he was a then member of the Māori Affairs Committee that pushed the inquiry through, and the Māori Affairs Committee itself, which spent a lot of time and actually produced a really good report that gave us, I think, a lot of hope about Māori willingness to become smoke-free. It provided a lot of recommendations to the Government, and I know that the Government has responded to that particular inquiry. Many people have been incredibly passionate about this kaupapa, and will continue to be. Kia ora.