Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill

I move, That the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

There has been quite a lot of emotion and debate around this bill. That is understandable; smoking is an emotive subject. People have spoken of their personal experience with family members dying from effects of smoking tobacco. I sympathise, and I’ve lived the experiences. Smokers, their families, communities, and our health system all benefit from a reduction in smoking. I want to see a reduction in smoking, this Government wants it, and members opposite want it. What we disagree about is how.

I want to set out some facts for people listening to this debate. As I said, this is an emotive subject on which we feel passionately, and there have been some emotional statements, so it is important that we are very clear about what this bill and this Government is doing. There are three key facts. Firstly, this bill does not change a single regulation around smoking, around the sale and use of smoked tobacco products, that is in place today. Labour had plans to cut the number of retailers, introduce a low nicotine limit, and ban sales to all those born after 1 January 2009, but they were plans. One of those things was to happen later this year, one was to happen next year, and one was to happen in 2027. I reiterate: those changes are not yet in place. This bill reverses those plans and maintains the regulatory regime that is in place now and that was in place throughout Labour’s term. We are not stopping anything that is currently helping to drive smoking rates down.

Secondly, New Zealand’s smoking rates are falling rapidly. New Zealanders are quitting smoking. That is great news. In the last three years, 229,000 people have stopped smoking, and more than a third of those who quit were Māori. I mention the three figures because Labour’s plans and all the modelling that they keep talking about were based on figures from 2019 to 2020. Back then, the smoking rate was 11.9 percent, and the youth smoking rate was 10.3. The latest New Zealand Health Survey figures show an overall smoking rate of 6.8 and a youth smoking rate of 3 percent. When that survey started in 2011 to 2012, there were 119,000 young smokers. Last year, there was 19,000.

What that means, and the third point I want to make, is that smoking rates are falling because what we are doing is something that works. The regime that this bill keeps in place has seen smoking rates reduce, and we’re going to build on it. Our commitment is to provide smokers a range of tools, like vaping, that will help them to quit smoking. We will ensure the continued provision of effective stop-smoking services and supporting marketing campaigns, and we will ensure initiatives are targeted at those who need it the most. This will include Māori and Pacific peoples, who have higher smoking rates. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

I repeat that tonight we have really passed through the looking glass to a world of unreality. For me personally, the most unreal thing about this debate is that as someone who came to this Parliament as an epidemiologist, to be told on multiple occasions that my request for facts, my demands to have a debate based on the actual policy, that the desire to have statistics and modelling actually answered are emotional contributions.

I could not have been more of a scientist when I brought together the three items that were in the 2022 bill that that is being repealed tonight. To remind the House what those are, we used the evidence from multiple scientific studies, multiple clinical trials to denicotinise cigarettes, because this is one of the most effective tools for helping people quit, and yet we are told that these interventions are not effective enough and that there are other effective alternatives.

It was our colleague Dr Reti who told us during the debate on the 2022 bill that this was so outstandingly effective that it should be brought in on its own. The bill included a well-studied initiative to reduce the number of retail outlets, because we know the number and density of retail outlets promote youth smoking and they undermine people’s ability to quit. And we brought in a smoke-free generation, a truly ambitious piece of law that would mean that the people who are young today, born after 2009, would never be able to legally purchase tobacco—

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Even Rishi Sunak liked that.

—and that all the harms we heard about tobacco would not be part of their future lives. As my colleague Grant Robertson is adding, this is not radical law; in fact, the Conservatives in the United Kingdom plan to bring this in. We used evidence in bringing that together.

We brought up modelling, and that modelling was done by international experts in modelling. It told us not only that the smoke-free goal wouldn’t be reached until 2061 without our Act; it also told us that it would take away a third of the life expectancy gap for wāhine Māori. On a day where we have done such harm to the ambitions and aspirations of Māori health, and have been told that that Government over there is focused on Māori health outcomes, the single thing that could be done to improve Māori health outcomes, they’re not going to do it. This would be the most powerful thing, and they’re not going to do it.

We’ve asked about Treaty obligations, because that is a factual element of how we should set law, and we haven’t had adequate answers on that. We’ve asked about the health consequences of this bill, and we’ve not had adequate engagement. We’ve had, “Yeah, there are problems, but these things wouldn’t be effective.” We’ve not had adequate answers on the financial costs of this bill. Instead, because there are no financial consequences of this bill, because there’s been no regulatory impact statement, we don’t know if the Government has been properly advised on the impacts of this bill on the health system, but I know from the advice that I got that it’s likely to cost the health system $5 billion.

We have seen multiple contributions to the previous Act from people up and down the country. Thousands of people came to the Health Committee and told us about the misery that tobacco causes in their lives. My colleague Tangi Utikere took some of those hearings throughout the country and really took the time to engage and learn from our community. And that opportunity, the opportunity to comment on the laws that we have to live by, was denied to the community, because this bill resulted from a dirty deal that’s been run through under urgency.

We’ve had a Minister in the chair tonight who has not really been able to answer questions but has just referred that the reason for the policy is the policy. It has been extremely frustrating. So if the Minister wants to describe that frustration as emotional, then perhaps she could take some responsibility for it by being able to give some proper answers.

The questions that we have about this whole policy area and the influence of tobacco lobbyists on this policy have not been adequately answered. We’ve been transacting with the Minister at question time, for multiple weeks, the issue of how a mystery document seeking tax breaks for the tobacco industry turned up in her office, and there’s been no good enough answer.

This stinks—it stinks. All of you need to think about the harm you are doing to our communities. All of the Government needs to think about that. I know Dr Reti is thinking about that, because I can see him over there. What’s he doing all the way over there? He’s been so quiet. I can barely see him in the distance. He’s sitting very far from the rest of his colleagues. I wonder what Dr Reti thinks. He hasn’t taken a call on this bill. Well, I just wonder if it’s shame.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: I think it will be.

Yeah, I think it will be, because he’s a man who’s taken an oath to uphold health, and look what’s being done, which reminds me of all the people who support this initiative. It’s worth reminding ourselves who they are. The 45,000 New Zealanders who signed Hāpai te Hauora’s petition—we’re not listening to them tonight, are we? The more than 60 percent of New Zealanders who support the bill in its original form; they don’t support your repeal—we’re not thinking about them tonight at all. We’re not thinking about the hundreds of medical and health organisations that signed an open letter to the Prime Minister condemning the move to repeal this bill. The action that the Government is taking is deeply unpopular. It is unpopular because everyone in the country knows it’s wrong.

I want to finish my speech on a more positive note. I want to tell my colleagues that it’s been such an honour to work with them on smoke-free. I want to thank the people from cancer societies up and down the country who work tirelessly for smoke-free. I’ve had amazing meetings with cancer societies—those in South Canterbury and Palmerston North more recently are just some that stand out in my mind.

I want to remind all of the colleagues I met at marae up and down the country, including my friend from Te Pāti Māori on Manukau Marae, who have been activists for this cause for a long time. I want to thank all the health charities like the Stroke Foundation and diabetes groups who have worked for smoke-free for so, so long.

I want to thank the researchers, including those that have contributed so much to the debate about this bill and to the original piece of work that we passed. I want to acknowledge those, including those at the Public Health Communication Centre, who have put out evidence showing how so many of the arguments from that side of the House match up exactly with statements from the tobacco industry.

I want to particularly thank Health Coalition Aotearoa for their tireless work for this cause, their bringing together of activists and experts in this area; the health unions Association of Salaried Medical Specialists and the New Zealand Nurses Organisation, who organised rallies that we had up and down the country opposing the step this Government is taking; and the activists who have worked on this for a long time. There are too many to name, but they include Hone Harawira, Shane Bradbrook, Anaru Waa, Skye Kimura, and many others I have met up and down the country. On the weekend, I went to Hastings and met with Vape-Free Kids, and they’ve been in the gallery tonight. Minister, they still want a meeting with you.

I want to thank the medical students who have also campaigned on this issue and, in particular, the many, many young people who the Government has ignored tonight because of a politically convenient transaction. You are the people this Government has failed by bringing this Act through. You are the people who deserve a better go. You are the people who should be free from smoke. You should be free from corporate interests trying to steal your healthcare away from you. You should know that you could grow up in a community where if you had a disability or a chronic medical condition, you’d be more likely to get treatment for it, because we would have saved $5 billion of health costs if this bill hadn’t been repealed.

Those young people deserve a better future, not just the track that we’re already on. They deserve a new smoke-free generation. I know that all our collaborators and colleagues and allies inside the House and outside it will continue to work for that future. In particular, I am so proud to say that we will support a citizens initiated referendum to overturn this terrible move.

Debate interrupted.