Verrall AyeshaHon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour): I rise once again to oppose this bill. This bill repeals the provision of the 2022 amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act and it's worth canvassing for the purposes of our debate the measures that were in that Act. The Act contains three measures that are crucial to ending tobacco's hold over the health of our people. Firstly it addresses the number of retail outlets. Tobacco despite being the most harmful consumer product there is that kills half the people who use it is not regulated with respect to who can sell it and that means that we do not even know where tobacco outlets are. That firstly means that there is a proliferation of outlets particularly in poor communities in Māori and Pacific communities and that drives greater use amongst those communities. In particular it drives youth smoking in those communities and it undermines people's everyday efforts to quit. Once more targeted enforcement activities are very hard when you don't know where the outlets are and that's why making an approved retailer scheme would have meant that efforts to do controlled purchase operations so as to identify where outlets were selling to people who are say under the legal purchase age would have been beneficial.Secondly the Act sought to denicotinise tobacco and that has been studied in multiple clinical trials from around the world. It is incredibly effective at helping people to quit with the correct dose of nicotine as the studies have shown. The correct dose a very low dose of nicotine in those cigarettes will make sure that people do not compensate in their smoking. Many of them—a majority of them—go on to be able to quit with that. Of course in the context of a safer alternative—not a safe alternative—like vapes there is a way for supporting people with their addiction too.This proposal the denicotinisation proposal was incredibly popular with the National Party when we debated this in 2022. In fact Dr Reti's key concern about the bill if I recall during the debates was that the denicotinisation should be brought in first. The evidence clearly points to its effectiveness.Thirdly the Act does something that you would think all people in this House could agree on which is to create a smoke-free generation to mean that people born after 2009 would never be able to legally purchase cigarettes. It's not prohibition as some have suggested; there is still nicotine available in the form of vapes. Secondly it is not a criminalisation of the people who are underage. The Act says that this will be enforced by fines against retailers who sell to those people; it does not regulate social supply.Those measures together were deemed to be incredibly effective and modelling presented to the Health Committee—that's separate modelling from the one that the Ministry of Health commissioned—showed that this was not only incredibly effective for reducing the costs on our health system and for saving the lives of New Zealanders; that modelling also showed this was far and away the most effective public health intervention of any intervention that the investigators could think of on the books. So on a day when the House has heard so much about wanting to promote better outcomes for Māori this is the same day for Māori health that we are repealing an Act that could have done so much.In fact the modelling also showed that the Act would have eliminated one-third of the life expectancy gap for Māori women—one-third. That is such an important difference. It is not a difference you'll be able to make by speeding up wait times in emergency departments or getting surgeries faster. You cannot make that type of difference as the research has showed any other way. This is such an important thing for the health of our people.I want to thank all of the researchers who put time into coming up with that evidence. Not only did they do considerable work to support the deliberations of the select committee but they also have had long careers in tobacco control which are not the most comfortable careers to have. And there have been notable examples of academics who do this type of research and activists who support tobacco control being targeted for their views and for their work. Kia kaha to my friends who are doing this work. You know we will continue to make sure that your findings are heard in this House.I want to go back to why the Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 goal was set and it's worth remembering that that is a 5 percent prevalence rate across all of New Zealanders but also recognising the inequities—5 percent for Māori and 5 percent for Pasifika. My colleague the Hon Peeni Henare has also already pointed out the work of his whanaunga Tau Henare who was on the Māori Affairs Committee at the time that that goal was set. The Māori Affairs Committee took deliberations up and down the country in the course of setting that goal. They heard from people who had lost their relatives to tobacco. They heard I believe some quite confronting stories and so that's why it was with bipartisan support that they were able to bring the goal for Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. Now the advice we had was that we would miss that goal and we would not achieve it until 2061 without doing something differently and that is why the 2022 amendments are so important.I want to touch on some of the issues that the Minister has raised about what else not just the—our approach to tobacco is never just a regulatory approach. There is also a very important role for quit services in New Zealand and for other supports. I agree with that. In fact that was embedded in our smoke-free approach. We had over $20 million allocated in the recent Budget for supporting those initiatives. I'll tell you about one of them one that is really dear to my heart. I went to visit a service called K'aute Pasifika in Hamilton where they are promoting smoke-free and they explained to me that the types of services that they are running are culturally specific. They're not confrontational; they don't sit you down and ask you why you haven't quit smoking yet. Instead they create a positive environment around people where they do waka ama they are surrounded by people of their culture taking pride in their culture doing physical exercise and smoke-free messages and support are provided incidentally to that. Those sorts of initiatives are really important.Vaping has played a role in supporting quitting as well but I am also concerned that the way in which vaping has been regulated has meant that what is intended as a quitting tool is now far too frequently available to younger people. I was pleased to attend the rally with members of Vape-Free Kids at Hastings in the weekend. We must make sure that our tobacco control initiatives are also making sense in terms of keeping kids away from vapes. I know that group who is present in the gallery desperately want a meeting with the Minister and I hope that that meeting will happen soon because the issues they raise about keeping kids off vapes are very important.This issue is one that is of profound importance to our health system and our health system full of its hard-working staff has struggled in recent years coming out of the pandemic. I think one thing that really cuts to the core of so many health workers is an absolute belief that we have to get rid of the scourge of tobacco from our communities. So I know that many of them are hugely disappointed by the idea that the 2022 amendments are about to be repealed. I think it really behoves the members on the other side to listen to the perspectives of hundreds of organisations that have called out how awful this bill is how shameful it is that such violence and harm is being done to the health of our people.