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

Well, thank you, Madam Speaker. It was only last Thursday this bill was first introduced and, as stated at that time, the National Party will be supporting this bill but with some serious qualifications. I’ve got to say that my near-namesake, Michael Wood—if I can revert back to the previous speaker on the last bill—has, I think, a future in stand-up comedy, because he was the guy that said that we in Opposition aren’t doing the work. Well, if there’s any illustration of a Government that isn’t doing the work in Government it’s in this bill, the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. I remember my last words last Thursday were that I was going to speak on the merits of this bill and I can’t find any, to be honest. We are supporting this, but this is a seriously lazy piece of policy work that needs some significant panel beating.

Let me go through why. This was the Government that was going to act with urgency on banning smoking in cars, and the legislation doesn’t become effective for 18 months after the law is passed. Now, probably at the very best, with the Christmas break and a few other things going on next year, we are probably going to see the bill passed into law this time next year, and then it’s going to have an 18-month hiatus. So we are going to go into 2021, the end of 2021, before this has any effect whatsoever. That will only have effect if, indeed, the people that are charged with enforcing it and upholding it—that is, our proud men and women of the New Zealand Police—actually divert resources away from preventing, detecting, and prosecuting crime, and check out whether adults are smoking in their cars.

Now, I talked about the difficulty that I have with this from a philosophical perspective. Where does the long arm of the State end and the sovereignty of the family begin, including the sovereignty for parents to make bad decisions? It’s actually against my, sort of, philosophical leanings that I support this bill. But what’s the point of having the bill if it’s not going to be effective? What we know from any legislative process which involves a sanctions regime is that people’s compliance with it is commensurate with the likelihood that they’re going to be caught and the consequences of getting caught. The answer is that there’s very low likelihood that they’re going to get caught and it’s a wet bus ticket if they do. Frankly, I hope the New Zealand Police don’t give more than a passing nod to this—perhaps when they’re doing, I don’t know, drink-driving checks, or hopefully, in the future, drug-driving checks, but there shouldn’t be an iota of resource diverted away from Crimes Act issues and into smoking in cars.

Then, of course, there is the ridiculous situation we have where one is committing offence by smoking in a car with a child unless the car is a dwelling. Well, now, that says two things to me—the Government have absolutely given up on solving the homelessness problem, which has got worse on their watch, not better. They’re now saying not only will there be people living in cars but they’re allowed to continue to smoke with their children.

Now we had the conversation, Mr Eagle and I. We were talking about our particular childhood experiences—the Pall Mall filters and the Holden Special station wagon, with the window down and the cigarette going out the window, the smoke being blown back into the back of the station wagon, and the children coughing and spluttering. I think I survived it, although, as I said, my growth was stunted a little more than Mr Eagle’s was. But the issue is this: that seems to be illegal now unless you’re actually living in the car, and the smoke won’t blow out the window then, but that’s OK. That’s actually allowed under this.

Now, the Minister introducing the bill said that that wasn’t the intention; it was about holiday homes. Well, hang on, this is the laziness of the policy work that’s been done. That’s not what the bill says—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Oh, hang on, hang on. Mr Wood said we were lazy.

—that’s right—and yet they can’t even tell the difference between a car and a holiday home, and as a consequence, a car now is a dwelling, one where the adult can smoke around their kids. So that has to be fixed. These are things that the select committee will be working on.

The other issue is, of course, it’s unlawful to purchase cigarettes if you’re under the age of 18, but it’s not unlawful to smoke them in your car—that’s fine. That actually sends a real signal to our youth—youth whose prevalence of smoking under the previous Government, by the way, dropped from 15 percent to 3 percent. Only 3 percent of 15- to 17-year-olds now smoke one cigarette or more a day, and the House should be aware that that progress—that significant progress in an important group who shouldn’t even start—was made with strategies other than legislation.

How many times did the National Party in Government hear from the Opposition that education was the answer, not legislation, and that punitive measures were always subordinate to good education and prevention strategies, yet here we are. My colleague the Hon Nicky Wagner described it in her first reading speech as a big bunch of virtue signalling. I could not agree more.

This could be argued to be a complete waste of this House’s time and a busy Health Committee’s time, but I have confidence and I have some optimism that, actually, this can be sharpened up. This can actually be a bit better than it is—a lot better than it is. Frankly, it couldn’t be much worse.

So that will be the task of the Health Committee. I look forward to the submissions. I have no doubt that clauses around allowing children to smoke in cars if they’re under 18, and allowing cars to be used as houses and allowing that to be OK to smoke in front of children is going to eliminated from this bill. It would be quite difficult, actually, to support it in subsequent readings if those improvements were not made, but, in the meantime, we will hold our noses and we will support this interference into the sovereignty of the family for the sake of the children. But in order to be able to do that, it has to be effective and it has to be made better.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supports this piece of legislation.

I’d like to begin as a couple of the previous members have done, by acknowledging the vehicles they were in as children. In the 1970s, there was a similarity between myself and Michael Woodhouse, the member who’s just resumed his seat, around a Holden Special station wagon, and I think ours might have been panel-beater grey. Not only that, but it was the norm back in those days to have parents smoking in the car while the kids were in the back.

In fact, we had a little Mini. My dad had a Mini. It was a black Mini—EC108—and I have fond memories of the Mini. We would pile into the car on a Sunday morning, with Dad driving and Mum in the front, nursing the baby. My three siblings would be sitting in the back seat, with our other sibling on our knees—jam-packed with seven of us in that Mini, and no one wearing a seatbelt. It was the norm then, but we’ve changed. We realised how dangerous that was, and as a society we moved and we made it click—suddenly, we were all wearing seatbelts. This is a little bit like that. The social norm to smoke in the car with children—that’ll be a thing of the past very soon, as this legislation is passed through.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—we, absolutely, as a Government understand our responsibility for protecting our children’s health and wellbeing, so I’m very pleased to support this piece of legislation. It’s a really sensible measure. It’s all about ensuring that we are protecting, particularly, our vulnerable children—our tamariki, our rangatahi. You see, they have no choice in the matter when they’re stuck in a car and there’s someone else smoking, and we know that more than 100 New Zealanders die every year from the effects of second-hand smoke. This change will bring us into line with other countries like Australia, the UK, Canada, and South Africa as well. This is all about getting clean air for kids, and when we have that focus, we will ensure that our children will be in a better state of health as a result.

There was a great campaign by my former colleague Duncan Garner, who had a little bit of a campaign on the telly about this. When he spoke to the Rt Hon Winston Peters, he said that the “common sense strain of the government” strongly supports the ban. We think we’ve taken a really common-sense, practical approach here, and Mr Peters said that, actually, “children haven’t got a choice”, and that’s really the long and the short of it. A husband has a choice and a wife has a choice in the vehicle, so really, it should be banned because children don’t have that choice.

So I’m acknowledging also the Māori Affairs Committee, which I was a member of last year. We held a joint hearing with the Health Committee, and we were looking at Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. It was really interesting to combine the two select committees, and we were reminded that smoking is New Zealand’s biggest killer. In fact, 5,000 people every year are killed because of smoking and smoking-related illnesses. We heard from Hāpai Te Hauora, and really, I’m hoping that they may come and present to the select committee, because they brought some really interesting statistics, particularly around Māori and the slight smoking decline in, particularly, those vulnerable groups. So it will be interesting to hear from them.

One of the focuses during that joint committee was on looking at smoking in cars, and the submitters were very clear to us that smoking in cars carrying children should actually be banned immediately. The Health Committee under the previous Government, in fact, recommended that the Government ban smoking in cars carrying children under the age of 18 years. However, the National Government declined to do that, so we are picking up the challenge and we are moving ahead and taking this legislation all the way through.

Overseas, we know that this has been passed, particularly in Australia, in various jurisdictions over there. In Queensland, smoking while under-16-year-olds are in cars has been banned, and there is a $200 fine there. In South Australia, also under the age of 16, it’s been banned, and in Victoria, it’s under the age of 18. So there’s a little bit of change and discrepancy between various jurisdictions in terms of their ages. Canada has had a ban for children under the age of 16, but in Nova Scotia, though, they’ve picked the age of 19. Around the world, in Mauritius smoking is prohibited in a car carrying passengers—any passengers, actually. In the United Kingdom, and particularly in England and Wales, smoking in cars has been banned there recently for cars carrying under-18s—just since 2015. There are a number of countries that don’t yet have a smoking ban in cars carrying children, but they are planning to look at that legislation and it’s in the pipeline for them. Finland, Greece, Ireland, and the Netherlands have their bans in the planning stages.

I’d just like to make note, in conclusion, that this Government actually doesn’t want anyone in cars with children to be smoking, and we also don’t want anyone to be forced to live in their cars. You know, we are making record investments in terms of emergency, transitional, and State housing to ensure that all New Zealanders have somewhere absolutely decent to live. This bill will amend the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990, which has never included private dwellings. Now, maybe if the National Party is interested in banning smoking in people’s homes—well, I’m sure that would be a significant shift in their position.

There are a couple of clauses that we would like the select committee to take a much closer look at. These are these exemption clauses which are in this legislation. We would like a focus to be shone on that, and so, definitely, New Zealand First will be listening to the experts. We will be taking good consideration of the submissions and the evidence that will come in through the select committee process around those couple of clauses as it goes through the select committee stage. So, in conclusion, I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to speak to this Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill, that I—and that we—will be supporting. I want to thank the last speaker, Jenny Marcroft, for her traverse of the international scenarios. I thought that was particularly good. I wanted to initially cover just very briefly Part 1 and Part 1A, and then talk to a part of this that particularly interests me.

I recall in 2016-17 being lobbied by one of the Northland schools who eventually brought a petition down here, and I’ll come back to that shortly. But Part 1 clearly just says, “Look, with our other pieces of legislation, workplaces, employee and passenger vehicles—this bill applies to children in those environments as well.”

It’s Part 1A that’s kind of interesting, what I’ll call the application criteria. First, we note it’s relevant to children under 18. Secondly, the vehicle needs to be moving or stationary. And, thirdly, it needs to be on a road, which got me looking through, this afternoon, thinking, “Crikey, what is the definition of a road?” Well, it turns out it actually picks up car parks, beaches, wharves, river beds, bridges. So I think most of the definitions of a road—there is some difference between a driveway and a road where driveway meets a road, but maybe that comes into the part that my colleague was talking about, about where we start to encroach on the sovereignty of the home and the sovereignty of the individual. The Hon Mike Woodhouse also commented on the odd parts to this bill, the clauses that talk about a lack of application to those under 18 and the only occupant in a car, and where a vehicle is used as a dwelling. I think my colleague covered that off. This bill doesn’t take the opportunity to comment on vaping and the opportunities that might present. I think it could and might have, and maybe this select committee will reflect on that also.

The regulatory impact statement clearly identified the health benefits: decreased hospital admissions, decreased asthma, and decreased glue ear—otitis media with effusion. We know that there’s a relationship between smoking and the glue ear that children get, which prevents them from hearing. The regulatory impact statement also talks about the evidence, which they call “medium”, and I’m aware there’s some level of controversy around whether this is really strong or whether it’s anecdotal almost, but it’s referred to here as “medium”, which in my view is probably a good summary. I was particularly interested in page 8, where they talk about the degree of harm. They comment here that smoking in a vehicle, even when the vehicle has the air conditioning on or where the window is halfway down, still has a significant amount of contaminants in it, and they reference a New Zealand Medical Journal article saying that where the smoking has occurred in a car it’s similar to being in a smoky pub.

I think what interested me was some of their references, because a situation that particularly sticks in my mind from the school children in Northland in 2016—they were coming from a Blue Light enterprise with the Relay for Life, and, as part of that, their mission was to get signatures and survey views from the audience in Relay for Life around second-hand smoking in cars for children. They presented that to me, and, in fact, I brought that here to the Prime Minister of the day, as I recall. The part that really stuck in my mind, that they pointed out to me, was third-hand smoking or residues. The regulatory impact statement refers to that and refers to a 2008 paper, which I think is particularly interesting, because what this paper did was look at vehicles that smokers had been in and smokers hadn’t been in—second-hand vehicles—and they did surface wipes, they did an assessment of the dust and air samples, and clearly found a difference in all of those in vehicles where there’d been smokers and non-smokers.

If they looked at where a vehicle had been a smoking vehicle and the person had banned smoking, not smoked in it for a number of years, they didn’t get the air contaminants but there were still significant residual nicotine and other contaminants on the surface wipe and in the dust. This is the third-hand smoking, if you like, or the residual contaminants, making the case that when you smoke in a car it permeates the leather, it permeates the seats, it permeates the seals round the windows, and you may stop smoking in that car but those contaminants will continue to leach. I think this is a really, really important area of second-hand smoking in cars. Clearly, the primary firsthand effect and the second-hand effect we’re aware of, and this is referred to as the third-hand effect.

So those are some of the things that we’ll explore in select committee. Again, I want to acknowledge the petition from the Northland school that came towards the House of Parliament in 2016, was received here in 2017, and I look forward to this going to select committee for further exploration and, hopefully, our support. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It is simply not good enough. I think all of us here in this House agree that it’s simply not good enough for children, who don’t make the choice or the decision, to be exposed to second-hand smoke while in a vehicle. So the Greens stand to support in this House the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill.

The part of the bill at the core of what we are debating tonight is new section 20D in Part 1A, inserted by clause 9, where it says very clearly, and this goes to the brief but clear intentions of the bill, “Smoking prohibited in motor vehicle carrying child. (1) A person must not smoke in a motor vehicle, whether moving or stationary, that is on a road and has a child occupant.” Of course, there are definitions spelt out around “child occupant … a person under the age of 18 years who is in a motor vehicle” and so on and so forth. But I think at the heart of everything we are trying to acknowledge here is the problem of children being exposed to second-hand smoke.

Now, the Greens support this bill as part of our smoke-free Aotearoa by 2025 vision. We agree with, because it is in keeping with the Green kaupapa, and we’ll support this approach. We’ve had conversations, and it has been talked about here in the House tonight, about the methods of how we change behaviour. I’m pleased to see a focus in this bill on changing behaviour as opposed to a punitive action. There is a fine. There is a fine of $50 or a fine imposed by the court not exceeding $100. What we will hope to see, and it is mentioned in the bill somewhat, is a direction, a good clear direction for police, to be able to make referrals to health support, to cessation support, to be able to refer on to support organisations and smoking cessation organisations as well.

That, we believe, and know from evidence, is the way to be able to support a change in behaviour—and to be able to hear from the Minister herself that this is what this bill is essentially about; it is encouraging a change of behaviour. We have seen compliance and positive behavioural change happen, particularly around smoking laws before. Actually, there’s been a bit of a theme of the smoky Holden. I mean, I too, as a child of the 1970s and 1980s, remember exactly that. Particularly for me, Māori women have a disproportionately higher rate of smoking still, but especially back then in the 1980s. So that’s very much a memory for myself, and it is unpleasant.

But how do we want to be able to support enduring behavioural change? We did see some good compliance has happened. The 2000 law change was successful in compliance in workplaces. Gosh, I remember not having to come home from a nightclub with hair that smelt like a smoky hedge on top of my head.

💬 Angie Warren-Clark: Ha, ha!

You remember, I know. Sorry, not you, Madam Speaker.

💬 Matt Doocey: It never happened to me.

Ha, ha! Now, there’s a bit of denial going on here in this House tonight. But we all know clearly how unpleasant that was, especially as a child. So what we’re going to be interested in is some data—and I understand that this will kick into place, 18 months following royal cessat—assent; ha, ha, royal cessation!—so that we can get the public education and awareness campaign out there. And that’s critical actually. It’s really critical that we don’t just go straight into a punitive approach but that we get the public information awareness campaign out there so that we can also encourage people to change their behaviours and let people know. Actually, Dr Shane Reti picked up on some of the actual health impacts. I’m sure other speakers that I missed did as well, which is the point—which is the whole point.

The Greens will want to see how this law stacks up some time further down the road once it’s put in place. We’ll want to see a bit of a breakdown as to how many fines we actually end up putting out there, how many referrals to smoking cessation support, who ends up being fined and punished by this law, whether there is an imbalance in terms of what families end up being impacted on by this law. So we’ll be very clear that, you know, we want to support the intentions of the bill and we’ll be clear about following up and monitoring some data as to how it actually plays out.

The final point in my short call tonight that I think I’ll pick up from, and others have talked about it, is I’m looking forward to the benefits for Māori children, for all children including Māori children, given that they are 2.6 times more likely to be exposed than other children. And so I look forward for the benefits for all children and assisting Māori communities and Māori families in a way that is enduring to be able to change behaviours and set a different direction for the understanding of what our tamariki should be able to breathe when they are in all of our cars.

So with that, we look forward to hearing back from the Health Committee and further changes that might help this to be a really good piece of law. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to talk to the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill at its first reading.

We support this bill. It makes sense. It makes common sense. It’s a shame sometimes you have to make laws around common sense, but you have to. I was really quite surprised when the Action on Smoking and Health survey, which came out in 2016, said just how many children had been in cars in the previous week: 12 percent of Pākehā fourth-formers reported being in a car where people were smoking the previous week and 29 percent of Māori fourth-form students reported being in a car where smoking was going on.

As the previous speaker, Marama Davidson, has indicated, with a Holden—we had a Humber Hawk. My old man was like Andy Capp—you know, those roll-your-owns, and the cigarette was in the bottom of his mouth and you’d think it couldn’t possibly ignite. He’d puff away and away it would go again, and the place was full of smoke. He said they were much less dangerous, incidentally, roll-your-owns, because they didn’t have those added toxins and cobalt in it, or something to make it slow down or saltpetre or something. Anyway, lung cancer got him in the end—may he rest in peace. But over all of those years where he refused to not smoke in the vehicle, I don’t know anything that might have really changed his mind. A heavy fine and imprisonment might have got him there, but a piece of legislation like this is still necessary, because there are still people who are addicted and who don’t think it’s a problem “because it’s always been that way and why would we want to change it?”

But the police need the extra powers. They need to be able to, if they see something like that occurring—and it may not just be tobacco. If cannabis is legalised and there’s reefers being smoked in the confines of a car, that would be obviously extremely undesirable for young people or second- or third-hand smoking, and Dr Reti introduced us to a whole new horror of these toxins, and what have you, still being present in a vehicle for a long period of time.

I think there were a couple of misses around this bill; you know, vaping. Why leave that out? It’s been examined on every level. You can’t vape in a plane, you can’t vape in a lot of public places, so why in a closed place? I noticed that vapers have a ridiculous amount of smoke around them. It’s the kind of thing that’s alarming when you see it down the street. It’s as if they have combusted. But no, it’s just the vape. But imagine it filling up a car. It could be a hazard to driving—who knows. But that is one of the things, no doubt, that will come out at the select committee.

I guess the other contradiction which did strike me as being a bit peculiar is to allow smoking in a vehicle that is a dwelling, like a camper van. As long as it’s stationary you can smoke in it, and I don’t think that that’s worthy of an exemption. I think, again, it sends odd mixed messages. You might as well go the whole hog on this one. I guess at the select committee this will be teased out, and if people are living in their cars and they don’t move very often, what does that actually mean? But I think exempting people who are under 18 by allowing them to smoke in a vehicle as long as they are the only person under 18 in a vehicle, to me, does seem rather counter to the spirit of this bill and a bit contradictory.

So there are a number of things that we support, and we will support the bill at least till it goes through to select committee. I believe that changing behaviour can be the carrot and the stick approach, and also the fear factor. If you fear that you are going to give your children secondary smoke that might cause cancer in later years, those are the kinds of things that might just kick in and make people think a couple of times extra, but to have this backing it up and to have the police able to make sure that people are aware of the safety and the health aspects and, “Oh, by the way, if that doesn’t work, you’ll get a fine.”—I don’t know whether that is going to be determined at the select committee.

I think there are a number of really good aspects to this bill, and I won’t take up further time in the House this evening by going into them in more detail. I’m sure there’ll be other opportunities to talk about it. So, with that said, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It is a real pleasure to rise and speak to—and I’m going to read it out also, because it’s so very long—the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. It is a real pleasure to rise as a member of the Health Committee and to recognise the Hon Jenny Salesa for putting in place some changes—changes that the Opposition failed to do when they looked at this issue. Nevertheless, I take and accept that the members across the House are happy to support it at this stage.

Now, this bill is what I would consider a small but significant change. As we say, ahakoa he iti, he pounamu—it is small but precious—just like our little people.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Like me!

Ha, ha! And like Kieran McAnulty. So this bill seeks, very simply, to remove smoking from cars when children are present, and children are defined as “18 and under”. I am like everyone here, and I have my own story as well. I grew up in a smoke-free car, but the smoke-free car that I grew up in had no seatbelts. We had a Triumph Mk II with overdrive, and it was a pretty racy car. It would zoom around. We’d go up and—

💬 Jonathan Young: Racy?

Well, it was racy. It was fire-engine red, too. And one of the things was that we kids would be in the backseat completely—there were no seatbelts at all. And, of course, that has changed now, and I think the member Jenny Marcroft said this as well: it was perfectly normal, back when I was a young nipper, not to have a seatbelt on—absolutely normal. And that is what I particularly like about this bill. This bill seeks to change the norm—the norm that it’s OK to smoke in a car when you have children—and it is not seeking to instantly change that norm. There will be an 18-month period of media campaigning, etc., which will support this change. So it’s about letting people know the harm that is done, and it is important to do that, because, as the members across the House have said, a $50 fine may not be significant enough to change, but it is part of the picture of that change.

Now, why is this important? Why is it important to ban smoking in cars? I did write this down. So these are some of the health effects, and the member Shane Reti has mentioned them. It increases serious infections affecting breathing to our children. It increases croup, bronchitis, pneumonia, and it increases the likelihood of catching colds, coughs, and wheezes. It dramatically increases the risk of cot death for infants—dramatically increases the risk of cot death for infants. It increases glue ear and middle ear infections, and one that was very surprising to me: the instances of meningococcal disease. And I think that that is something that the Opposition would be very interested to know. And there are about 15,000 asthma attacks in children under the age of 16 years per year that are attributed to smoking in cars. So these are some of the things that people may not realise or understand.

The other thing that I particularly like about this bill is that, with this transition period, those officers will also have the option to give people smoking cessation as opposed to an infringement. This will not be a criminal conviction, and the person who is smoking will get the infringement, not the person who is driving. I think that that it is really important and quite sensible, because sometimes we do not have the option, or we are unable to ask people to not smoke in our cars, and those people will be the ones that will be fined for that. So, with that, I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on behalf of the National Party in support of the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. I’d just like to start by pausing and reflecting on the poor, old smoker! It’s not much fun for them these days. I consider myself a former smoker—that means I haven’t had one today. The poor smokers get a bit of a kicking these days, and you can probably understand that, yes, in this situation that we’re debating tonight, it makes a lot of sense—vulnerable children in cars. Really, we shouldn’t have adults smoking in cars. So I think this is a logical next step. When you think about it, we used to smoke in buses, planes, and pubs. Now, there are towns in my part of the world, in North Canterbury, like Hanmer, which are going smoke-free as a town. So it’s all a logical next step.

But I would like to point out—and I was sort of trying to gear myself up to speak tonight—that it’s all a bit underwhelming, really, isn’t it? The whole bill is just a bit—well, underwhelming. I mean, this Government came in to be one of the most transformational Governments we have seen. We’re 18 months in, we’re six months into the “year of delivery”, and what are we debating tonight? A bit of a nice to have, a bit of a stocking filler, really—that’s what I’d call it; a bit of a filler. If it was really transformational, they would have embraced the technology that has developed, even since the last Government, and now that they’re in charge, they should’ve taken on the technologies of vaping and really made a difference. Why are we tinkering around the edges, saying, “Oh, we’ll pass a piece of legislation. It’ll take 18 months to come in, and even the regulatory impact statement says, in fact, legislation is probably not going to make a difference. But, hey, we’ll do an education plan in parallel, and we’re not actually expecting those who are going to be the ones we are targeting to actually take any notice anyway.”?

And I come back to that point: transformational Government—or so they espouse—18 months in, six months into the year of delivery, and we have this stocking-filler bill that is tinkering around the edges, when what they could have done is embrace the latest technology—vaping. What does this bill say about vaping? Silent. Because, if we’re really honestly aiming for 2025, we’ve got to do a lot better than this, surely? A lot better than this. Why are we not bringing a bill into the House that focuses on 2025, resources all the latest technology on vaping, getting people off cigarettes and into vaping? I mean, are we going to say that you can vape in cars, because the bill doesn’t say anything? Are we going to say that, once the referendum comes in, you can smoke cannabis in cars? I mean, it really is short-sighted, and for a Government that came in and said that they were going to be transformational, I think people tonight listening and watching will be—well, like me—quite underwhelmed.

I’m on the Health Committee, and I’d like to say—I’ll take a bit of a sweepstake tonight—I think we’ll get about three submissions. Two of them will be because people made a wrong submission to the wrong select committee, and we’ll probably get about one. And we’ll change nothing to the bill, and then we’ll bring it in—

💬 Michael Wood: Put something up! Will the member put his money where his mouth is?

Well, how about you? You told us you were going to be a transformational Government. You’re the Government. Why don’t you put a bill in that will be transformational, that’ll really make New Zealand go smoke-free by 2025? All we’re doing is tinkering around the edges—underwhelming. I’m betting—and I’m not going to bet a pack of cigarettes but I’m betting—that we’ll get three submissions. Nothing in this bill will change. We’ll come back out of select committee for the second reading and we’ll say all the same words—“Children are our future. We need to protect them.”—and then we’ll get to the second and third readings, we’ll pass the bill, and 18 months down the track we’ll say, “Hey, legislation didn’t make much difference, but we ran a good educational campaign.”

Order! The member’s time has expired. Can I remind members again that, if you use the pronoun “you”, you are bringing the Speaker into the debate. So we have 1 hour 15 minutes to go. Let’s not have to do that again.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, usually, that’s a hard act to follow, but in this case, let’s do something a bit more upbeat.

Thinking about last Saturday, last Saturday was the shortest day of the year, and down South, last Saturday was marked by a number of midwinter swims by people in very strange swimming togs. And also associated with it is chipping that ice off the car every morning. But the problem we’ve got is also that midwinter is associated with our emergency departments being absolutely packed full of wheezing and coughing kids. I remember going on post-admission ward rounds and just seeing whole rooms full of kids hooked up to nebuliser, oxygen, kids getting intravenous antibiotics because they had pneumonia. What this bill will do is make a big difference in that space, because what the research shows is that if kids are exposed to second-hand cigarette smoke they’re much more likely to get respiratory tract infections, they’re much more likely to get otitis media middle ear infections, and they’re much more likely to get asthma attacks. So it has a huge impact on children’s health.

I remember talking to quite a few parents of kids coming into hospital, and they used to say, “Well, we always smoke outside. We don’t smoke in our homes.” But I don’t actually ever remember having a conversation about smoking in cars. And yet, what the research shows is that if you smoke in cars you can get much more intense concentrations of that cigarette smoke pollution, because research shows that, even after one cigarette, you can get really high levels. It can be incredibly high if you’re in a stationary car with all the windows wound up, but even if somebody is sitting there with a cigarette just by the open window, you can actually get quite high levels of that toxic cigarette smoke. The problem we’ve got is that babies and little children can’t actually speak up and say, “Can you please stop smoking in my car?” So what this bill will do is allow us to do that on their behalf.

What this bill does is it says that we’re going to amend the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990 to prohibit smoking in motor vehicles with children and young people under the age of 18 years. And it will be the person who is actually smoking who will be held liable for that breach. And so what we do say is that if somebody is by themselves in the car and they are under 18, that prohibition doesn’t apply, or if they are smoking in a car where everybody else is over that age but they’re not. But, basically, what this bill does is it allows the police to issue an infringement notice, which is $50. And then, if that’s not paid and it does end up in the courts, the maximum fine is $100. What we still will have is that the police can have discretion. So they can issue warnings, they can provide information, or they can refer to stop-smoking services, because the point of this legislation is not to issue lots and lots and lots of fines; it is actually to create a culture change so that it’s not a norm for people to smoke with cars with children.

So what the real focus is on is shifting that public perception. I remember when I was younger going to pubs and, basically, you used to come home that night and your clothes and your hair absolutely reeked of cigarette smoke. We managed to change that. We managed to get smoke-free bars, we managed to get smoke-free restaurants, and if we can do it in that space, we can do it for kids in cars.

Talking about the timing, the bill comes into force 18 months after it receives Royal assent. The issue that the Hon Michael Woodhouse was talking about—he was worried that the whole world would fall into a hiatus in that 18 months. But, actually, during that 18 months we’re going to be incredibly busy, because what we’re going to be doing is putting in place that whole regime, making sure that the police can make changes to their processing systems, and also making sure that they’ve got staff training in that area. It also allows us to run a really decent public-health education and social-marketing campaign.

What we’re aiming to do, as I’ve said, is we’re actually aiming to change the norm about smoking in cars with kids, and so during that time the police will be active. What they’ll be doing is they’ll be going out, they’ll be issuing warnings, and they’ll be talking to people about smoking in cars and the impact that has on children. So that will be quite a huge time to be able to think about how we how we shift that public perception.

But I think there’s already—talking about public perception—a lot of support in the community for this bill. Back in 2015, the Health Committee actually received a petition that was asking them to look at smoking in cars. Back then, what the select committee recommended was that we introduce legislation, or other measures, to ban smoking in cars carrying children under 18 years. So this very bill was recommended under the previous Government. But they, basically, declined to do so, so we’re picking up that ball and running with it right now.

I think the other thing is that surveys have consistently said that there’s a lot of support. In general, over about 90 percent of people are supportive of prohibiting smoking in vehicles with children. A lot of other countries have just gone on and done it. In places like Australia, England, Scotland, Ireland, and South Africa, they’ve already got legislation or measures in place because of smoking in cars with kids.

So this is a really good bill, and it’s going to protect a lot of children from second-hand cigarette smoke; in particular, those babies and children that can’t themselves say, “Look, can you please stop smoking in my car.” This is the bill that will do that for them. It’s a really important bill that creates that shift in the thinking that it’s actually OK to smoke in cars with kids, and so therefore I commend this bill to the House.

Good evening, Mr Speaker. I’m happy to be able to take a call on the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. The bill supports New Zealand’s responsibilities under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It seeks to protect children and young people from the risks and harm caused by second-hand smoke. It’s all very good. As New Zealand journeys to Smokefree Aotearoa 2025, anything that that can be done to achieve this target should be helped. We strongly recommend, however, that a few little issues be dealt with at the select committee.

The purpose of the bill is very commendable. It is to prohibit smoking inside an enclosed space where there are young people. Mostly, those who will be doing this would either be family members or parents, so we have another main reason for this problem, which is irresponsible parenthood, which is another discussion altogether.

We have heard members talk about their own younger experiences in cars where parents had smoked. I had that myself. My father was a heavy smoker. We had a bigger vehicle. It was a Kombi, a Volkswagen—a big van—and so we had a little bit more space. But he stopped. He stopped smoking in the car, and it wasn’t really because a law was passed where he was afraid that a policeman would spot him and fine him. The change that occurred with him happened because he had learned of the consequences of what he was doing. He had figured it out, and he became responsible and decided to stop.

Smoking in cars has been a persistent problem, but the Ministry of Health itself found that the decline of smoking in cars was directly related to the decline of smoking in general. That seems to indicate that the root cause is the smoking in itself. In fact, we would probably all be aware that many, many smokers would not be smoking with their own children in the car most of the time. Essentially, I was just thinking that despite that finding of the ministry and despite their having confirmed that the possibility of a high number of people stopping smoking because of this change cannot be predictable, maybe the solution should be something more related to a health-based approach, an approach where a strategy could be focused on the stopping of smoking. This is why my colleagues have mentioned vaping, which actually would reduce the amount of smoking in itself.

So I would like to propose and strongly recommend that the select committee take a closer look and check out whether, really, the bill’s purpose can be achieved when even the ministry has already said what they have said—that it is smoking that needs to be cut down in numbers. Apart from that, I commend this bill to the House. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. As the chair of the Health Committee, I’m very much looking forward to the deliberations on this, the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. The history of this legislation actually goes back to 2004, when doctors globally, and medical professionals, highlighted the issue. Essentially, they said that no level of ventilation will eliminate the harmful effects of second-hand smoke in cars.

The discussion here in Aotearoa on the relevance of that research actually happened in 2010-11, under the auspices of the Māori Affairs Committee in their inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the consequences of tobacco use for Māori. So I want to acknowledge the members of that Māori Affairs Committee for bringing this kaupapa to the House, because, in fact, one of their 42 recommendations was to look at our smoke-free environments legislation. In certain areas that they said that we should be looking at, the prohibition of smoking in vehicles carrying children was in fact one of those contexts. That was reinforced last year by the Health Committee and the Māori Affairs Committee, who wrote a joint report which was about achieving our smoke-free 2025 goal for Aotearoa New Zealand. And, again, a recommendation of that process was that we should look at vehicles carrying children.

I want to take the opportunity to acknowledge Associate Minister Salesa and also our coalition partners, New Zealand First and the Greens, for actually bringing this piece of legislation to the House. It for us is about putting children at the centre of legislative reform, so if people want to question why we’ve done this, and belittle it, actually what they’re doing is belittling the fact that we’re prioritising children.

In terms of an international context, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended the implementation of comprehensive smoke-free legislation in 2005, when they established the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. We are one of 180 countries to ratify that convention. What they did was highlight that we had to protect our citizens from exposure to second-hand smoke by introducing comprehensive smoke-free legislation. And why? Why did they want us to do that? Because, essentially, 600,000 deaths per year and 11 million disability-adjusted life years per year are a consequence of second-hand smoke. It means 166,000 child deaths each year, and in Aotearoa New Zealand, that’s 350 deaths per year. So if anyone wants to belittle the relevance of this piece of legislation, I seriously think they should look at the rationale and the international imperative for countries like ours to join the UK, to join Canada, to join South Africa, to join Australia, to join Puerto Rico, to join states like Ontario and Nova Scotia in Canada, and to join Maine, California, Arkansas, and Louisiana. So this initiative is a global initiative that helps all of us reduce the impact of second-hand smoke.

What I want to highlight is that this piece of legislation isn’t looking at criminalising people. The reality of a $50 fine is that we don’t want to criminalise people. So I want to acknowledge that the police are going to be arbiters of that process. They are our enforcement agency. So what we are asking them to do is be part of a conversation that we want to have with New Zealanders about how important it is to protect our children within a context that now we know causes serious harm. That harm leads to cancer; it leads to asthma, as my colleague Dr Liz Craig highlighted; children who develop respiratory tract infections; emphysema for those later in life. But the reality is children have smaller lungs, they have higher respiratory rates, they have immature immune systems, and people who smoke in contexts where there is no ventilation are actually killing our children.

So we’re here collectively as a Parliament to ensure we do everything to prevent what is the most preventable death and illness in the world. Smokefree, actually, is a concept that I think as a Parliament we bought into. I want to take the opportunity to also, as my colleague Shane Reti did, acknowledge the people of Northland, because it was the people of Northland in 2015 who signed a petition—over 2,000 Northlanders. They were mobilised to do so because they undertook a piece of research by the Northland District Health Board that found that 26.72 percent of Northland’s year 10 students were travelling to school in cars where someone was smoking. So this is community action. You know, this is what we should respond to as a Parliament—not only the voice of those academics, and the World Health Organization, and the fact that we signed this international framework convention, but also real people living in real communities, and, for this particular piece of legislation, the people of Northland.

The person who collected that petition, and I want to acknowledge her, was Marama Fox, who travelled to Kaitāia to do so. I know our colleague Shane Reti was involved when they brought that actual petition to the House. But what I also want to acknowledge, actually, is the leadership of Māori: the Māori Affairs Committee initially, as I highlighted, who undertook that inquiry; the Māori Affairs Committee with the Health Committee who, again, chose to undertake an assessment about where we are in terms of Smokefree 2025; and the Māori members of the Northland community, and the greater community. This isn’t just a Māori issue, but, actually, the Māori in that community were motivated to bring the kaupapa to the House.

I’ve heard that there are issues that some people have about some of the sections and clauses in the bill, and, you know, what I know about our Health Committee—and I have to acknowledge my colleagues in the House who are on that committee, particularly from the Opposition, the Hon Michael Woodhouse and Matt Doocey. I do want to acknowledge that we are incredibly collaborative and we will work diligently to make sure that we produce a piece of legislation that I hope the National Party will actually support at the third reading. That’s the goal. I know that there will be more than three people who submit, Matt, because there are communities that are incredibly passionate about making sure that the legacy of smoking—which, actually, if you know a little bit about Māori history, is a continuation of colonisation. We didn’t smoke—it was introduced to this country—but we seem to be the most disproportionately affected by it.

So I guess this is an opportunity, and I’ll put it out there. You know, we want to hear from communities about how relevant this is. We want to hear from communities about how important it is that this Parliament prioritises children. We want to hear from young people themselves. I know Children’s Commissioner Becroft has spoken about the relevance of this bill. He said it affects over 100,000 Kiwi kids. So Mr Becroft, let’s put the message out there, and let’s provide this context and this opportunity for young people themselves to tell us as politicians how relevant and how important this piece of legislation is to them. I think, actually, the select committee have to be really serious about how we advertise the bill. I’m also recommending that we use channels that young people are engaged in and try and encourage as many of them as possible—at intermediates, at secondary school, and, actually, maybe at primary school—to take the opportunity to participate in this piece of legislation, because the reality is we’re doing this to put children at the centre of policy. Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Health Committee.