Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill

on behalf of the Associate Minister of Health: I move, That the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Health Committee to consider the bill.

This bill is, first and foremost, about protecting children. Secondly, it’s part of this Government’s commitment to achieving Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. This bill will help protect our future generations from the dangers of second-hand smoke exposure.

💬 Simeon Brown: What about cannabis?

This bill also supports New Zealand’s responsibilities to protect children’s health and wellbeing under the United Nations Convention—

💬 Simeon Brown: From cannabis?

—on the Rights of the Child.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member will resume his seat. I think we’ll let the member get going with his speech, and we will not have repetitive interjections that are exactly the same. So that’s the warning for the member.

Too many New Zealand children, particularly Māori and Pacific children, are exposed to second-hand smoke in the vehicles they usually travel in. Children are particularly vulnerable to the harmful effects of second-hand smoke due to their smaller lungs, higher respiratory rate, and immature immune systems.

Second-hand smoke accumulates in vehicles, even with the windows open. It reaches much higher levels than in homes. Public education and social marketing campaigns about the danger of second-hand smoke exposure in vehicles, carried out over many years, have had some impact, but the rate of reduction in children exposed to smoking in vehicles has slowed. It’s now time to do more by legislating.

The strong public support for this bill—consistently around 90 percent support—has been shown through multiple surveys for prohibiting smoking in vehicles carrying children. A number of jurisdictions already prohibit smoking in vehicles carrying children, including Australia, most Canadian provinces, and the United Kingdom. Parliamentary consideration of prohibiting smoking in motor vehicles carrying children has previously taken place. The Health Committee recommended a prohibition, but the recommendation was not accepted by the previous Government.

This is a very short and straightforward bill. As the title suggests, the bill prohibits smoking in motor vehicles carrying child occupants—anyone under the age of 18. While this bill proposes that the police will have the ability to issue an infringement fee of $50, it’s important to note that enforcement efforts would focus on public education and changing social norms. Police have discretion to issue warnings or information or referrals to stop-smoking support services.

The 18-month proposed lead-in period will be used for public education and establishing police systems and training. The Health Promotion Agency will run a new and innovative public education social marketing campaign that would be targeted to priority groups, using a range of media platforms.

We saw compliance happen very quickly when bars, cafes, and restaurants went smoke-free. The 2004 law change was successful in achieving very high compliance in workplaces, licensed premises, and other legislated smoke-free areas. Very few prosecutions—under 50—have had to be taken in 15 years.

The bill makes the person smoking liable, rather than the driver of the vehicle. This is to reduce the possibility of driver distraction if they were held responsible for any smoking in the vehicle while children under 18 were present—for example, having to turn around and tell someone to stop smoking.

It’s my intention that vaping and the use of smokeless tobacco products—for example, heat-not-burn products—will also be prohibited in vehicles carrying children under the age of 18. This will be achieved with the Smoke-free Environments (Vaping) Amendment Bill, which the Minister intends to progress through Parliament in 2019. That bill will propose to prohibit vaping and the use of smokeless tobacco products in all legislated smoke-free areas.

Finally, I want to bring the focus back to our children and young people. This coalition Government is putting wellbeing and child wellbeing at the front and centre of our policy agenda. We’re focused on changes that will help New Zealand become the best place in the world to be a child. This is another important step that is necessary to protect children and young people—our future generations—and it’s part of the Government’s continuing commitment to achieving the 2025 smoke-free goal. I look forward, on behalf of the Minister, to the Health Committee’s consideration of the bill, and I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. My dad used to smoke. He smoked at work. He smoked at the pub with his mates. He smoked at home and he smoked in the car, and I vividly remember three kids in the back of the Zephyr—always sick on long trips and throwing up on windy roads. I still think that my dad never put our sickness and his smoking together. He also smoked a pipe at home, and I got to like the smell of smoke. Now I’m absolutely horrified of what our house looked like and smelt like.

But I got to like the smell of smoke, and I got to even think that smoking was OK, because I loved my dad. But things are very, very different today. Every New Zealander now knows that smoking is bad for your health and that second-hand smoke is dangerous for babies and children. Of course, these days most New Zealanders don’t smoke: 87 percent of New Zealanders are non-smokers. Only 13 percent of us smoke daily, and that’s a far cry from the peak smoking years—the 1950s and 1960s, when my dad was around—when most men smoked, and the majority of women smoked too.

Although only 13 percent of New Zealanders smoke daily—and the majority of them tell us that they want to give up—there is a specific cohort of our population who find it almost impossible to quit. For example, 34 percent of Māori smoke, and, in fact, Māori are 2.6 times more likely to smoke than non-Māori. The worst thing is that 37 percent of Māori women smoke, and that’s particularly risky because they’re more likely to be with children and babies, and we know that children are more likely themselves to smoke when smoking is common in the family. Similarly, Pacific communities have a high percentage of smokers, at 23 percent.

Now, back in 2011, the Māori Affairs Committee had an inquiry into smoking. After that inquiry, the National Government, supported by the Māori Party and, in particular, Dame Tariana Turia, introduced the smoke-free New Zealand 2025 goal. That was the aim for this country: to become smoke-free—and the definition of smoke-free is less than 5 percent of people smoking—by 2025. Since then, an enormous amount of work has been done to try and find ways to support habitual and heavy smokers to quit. We’ve increased smoke-free areas, increased taxation on cigarettes, developed advertising campaigns to deter smokers, and provided quit-smoking aids—and these include nicotine replacement therapy patches and gum. We’ve also supported quit-smoking clinics. We even had a district health board health target that focused on quitting smoking, but that’s gone now, of course.

We have made significant progress since 2011, but we’re not quite on track. We need a game-changer—we need a game-changer to make the difference, and, fortunately, that game-changer is already available in our communities. E-cigarettes and vaping are the tools that could get us to Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. But we need legislation to regulate the quality of the products and their use and to inform the public that these products are successful in helping smokers who find it very difficult to quit. We have strong evidence from the Vape2Save programme, run by Rebecca Ruwhiu-Collins and targeted at Māori woman, that vaping works for that community.

We also have significant international evidence about how vaping can help smokers quit. Research tells us that e-cigarettes are 95 percent less harmful than tobacco—and they’ve been sold and promoted in the UK for well over a decade. The British National Health Service says that they are a valuable tool for quitting, and the UK Parliament—their Science and Technology Committee—recently concluded that e-cigarettes should be strongly promoted as an alternative tobacco. The reason that e-cigarettes are such a game-changer is that they deliver much more than the normal nicotine patches or gum. They provide a way for smokers to cope—[Mr Speaker holds up copy of bill] Yes, I will link this to the bill, I promise. They provide a way for smokers to cope with the triggers that stimulate smokers, particularly people who might be driving in their car—the physical activities of the rituals of handling tobacco but also the lips, the mouth, and the drawback activities, and all that with 95 percent harm.

Now, we need to make sure that people stop smoking, they stop the craving, so that they don’t have to smoke in their cars—and vaping does stop that craving. It also helps quitters manage those habitual behaviours, but also without the long-term satisfaction that keeps them vaping. We know that the majority of people vape temporarily. In fact, I’ve only ever met one person who says they expect to vape for life, and he says that’s because he was a constant smoker since the age of 12 and smoked up to 100 cigarettes every day for years and years, even while he was driving the car.

💬 SPEAKER: The member gets to it every now and again.

But what’s interesting about vaping here is that the UK has confirmed their research that vaping, and I quote this, is “Almost entirely confined to those who have smoked”, and almost one in eight UK ex-smokers vape—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I am going to ask the member to—

—OK—compared to less than 0.5 percent—

💬 SPEAKER: The Minister made a passing comment about vaping, but not an ad for it.

OK; back to the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. Actually, I think we’re wasting our time debating this bill. We’re wasting our energy and our resource, because it just nibbles around the edge of the issues. It’s about virtue signalling, and it doesn’t do any real action. I was particularly interested to see the Minister for housing opening this, because, of course, in the bill it allows people to have an exemption to smoke in their cars if they’re living in their cars. I wondered if that’s the way he was going to get his KiwiBuild numbers up. There’s a direct correlation between the amount of smoking in cars, and the number of people who smoke. So I think we should be tackling the issue head-on, and actually getting people to quit smoking so that they don’t smoke in their cars.

We’re debating the wrong bill here. We should put our energy into dealing with the real problem, helping people quit rather than punishing them for what they do while they’re addicted. This bill will actually fine the people who we know are the most vulnerable and who we know have the least ability to pay those fines. There’s been considerable debate among social scientists about whether this bill will actually do the job, and, even in the regulatory impact statement, it said, “While this evidence for the health impacts of changed behaviour is strong, the evidence for the likely impact of legislation is limited”. I have met with Minister Salesa, who’s responsible for the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 goal. She says all the right things about legislation, but it’s now been 18 months. She’s heard the calls from the health sector to pass legislation for e-cigarettes and vaping, and still nothing has come of it.

My member’s bill, the Smoke-free Environments (Regulation of Electronic Cigarettes) Amendment Bill, which was developed while I was the Associate Minister of Health, and which was ready to be introduced—I had planned to introduce it after the 2017 election—provides the regulatory framework to support vaping, and in turn to support—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! That is enough. This is now the final warning on vaping.

OK. Unfortunately, this bill will not make a difference to people smoking and smoking in their cars. If, however, we could have legislation that would do vaping and e-cigarettes, people would have an alternative so they didn’t have to smoke in their cars, and the children would not have to put up with second-hand smoke.

I think it is time that we dealt with this problem head-on, that we dealt with the issue, that we stopped people smoking in their cars by giving them an alternative so that they quit smoking. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I seek leave to introduce and set down for first reading forthwith the Smoke-free Environments (Regulation of Electronic Cigarettes) Amendment Bill—a member’s bill in my name.

Leave has been sought for that. Is there any objection? There is objection.

Mr Speaker, thank you, and it’s a real pleasure to be speaking on this amendment bill, the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. Can I acknowledge Minister Twyford for introducing it. It is straightforward, it is short and simple, and let’s keep it that way. I mirror your frustrations, Mr Speaker, with an attempt to try and turn this into something that it wasn’t. What I want to say to the previous speaker, Nicky Wagner, is we didn’t have a Zephyr, but we had the old gold Valiant, the V8, and I do remember—in fact, we’re not allowed to drive those in Wellington any more because we’re about electric vehicles, walking, cycling etc., but I do have that memory of the old V8 going from Auckland to Hāhei there in the Coromandel and dad just not being able to help himself. But we don’t talk about that any more, because he stopped, we don’t smoke, and we know a whole lot more than we did back then.

I do want to just put it in the context of that 2025 smoke-free goal. Again, the previous speaker talked about what that was in terms of a percentage. In Wellington City here, I’m really proud to have been on the city council where we put in lots of initiatives to help really get to the 5 percent mark and under for males: 9 percent in Wellington City, that’s pretty good, but we know that females—

💬 SPEAKER: Right, the member’s had his introduction period. He will now speak to the bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. So look, I’m really, really proud, but I think, in this context, it’s fairly simple. This is about changing a social norm: smoking in vehicles, as simple as that, and we’re saying, “No, that’s no longer acceptable.” We’re getting a public campaign under way, and the health promotion agency’s been charged with doing something with a little more impact. I’m not saying that what’s happened previously hasn’t; what we’re saying here is that we’ve got a specific initiative. I know with anything in the social marketing area that a silver bullet doesn’t work. You need a range of initiatives; a range of things tied up into a comprehensive and cohesive campaign, and targeted to send that message.

I sometimes think about—and I don’t want to digress—the cellphone bans for driving and the work that’s been done there. The Minister talked about those surveys in terms of where the public were at. The public is on our side with this. I’m saying both sides of the House should be fully supporting this. We know back when the previous speaker, Nicky Wagner, was the Associate Minister in 2017, she had the chance then to say “Hey, look, let’s do this.”, and we didn’t, because you said that people would—sorry, the previous speaker said that people would flout the law. I don’t think people will do that. I think the time is right, and it was probably right then, to make just a small adjustment to ban smoking in vehicles.

I won’t talk about vaping, Mr Speaker. You were quite allergic to conversations around that, so I’m not even going to go there, but I am glad that there is an 18—

💬 SPEAKER: The member just did.

Oh, sorry. Ha, ha! No laughing. But on a positive note, I do want to talk about that transitional period. I think it sends a good signal, particularly to those who are impacted when we are saying you’ve got some time to make that change. Some would want a much heavier hand, but there is that 18-month time period. We know that in other countries—Australia, South Africa, most of the USA or parts of it, and most of Canada already had this, so it’s already got some traction. We can learn from that, and I’m sure when they put together that social marketing campaign, they will take those learnings from there.

I said it was a short and straightforward bill. I do not want to take too much longer, other than to finish off by saying this is part of this Government’s focus on children and young people. I’m proud of that. I want to send the right signals to my 3½-year-old. I certainly don’t want to encourage him and have people who he frequents with, caregivers, mums and dads that he goes and socialises with from here on in—to know now that people will definitely not be smoking in vehicles is something that I’m a real champion for, and that’s why I proudly commend this to the House. Kia ora.

In the spirit of the theme of the introduction of the speeches on this bill, I can only say: Pall Mall filter and Holden Special station wagon. Unlike the previous speaker who’s just resumed his seat, the very good Mr Eagle, my exposure to and subsequent taking up of cigarette smoking probably stunted my growth—it didn’t appear to have too much of a negative impact on that speaker.

Look, I am a little bit conflicted on this piece of legislation. Good legislation requires two things, certainly for a party to support it. One: the evidence is there that the bill will make a difference, and I’ll touch on that, but I think there is a deeper philosophical question here about the degree to which the sovereignty of the State ends and the sovereignty of the family begins. This is a really difficult one, because what we are talking about is the health of children. Normally, I and my colleagues would be very reluctant for the State to enter into the realm of the family to say, in those areas that are the domain of the family, the assets owned by the family—and the two biggest assets of most families in New Zealand are the house and the car. That’s where the State’s intervention should end.

I’m not even sure my colleague the Hon Nicky Wagner disclosed the National Party’s position on this, but there is no doubt that we mulled for a considerable period of time over this particular piece of legislation before deciding that we will support the bill at first reading. I look forward to it coming to the Health Committee, because I think there are a number of really important questions about the degree to which the way the bill is written is going to have the effect that Mr Eagle just described at the end, welcoming the bill because it’s going to result in the end of people smoking in cars. Oh, were we a society that was that compliant with laws like this, because we never said that about the use of cellphones in cars, and, indeed, while we saw a material drop immediately after the bill was passed into the law, we did actually see an uptick and an uncomfortably high number of people who are still distracted by devices in their cars. That was another philosophical question about whether safety should override the sovereignty of an individual to do what he or she likes in those things.

Nevertheless—and I will continue this after the adjournment—I think there are some merits to this. I will talk about them next week.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.