Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): The National Party supported this bill at first reading and it did so primarily because of its intention to keep children safe but despite misgivings that at least I had and expressed in the first reading about the degree to which the State becomes a player in the sovereign right of a family to determine decisions for itself regardless of whether those decisions are good or bad. Now the Minister introducing this bill at second reading was quick to remind the House that the National Party has opposed legislation around smoking in the past which is a very interesting reflection on the fact that any decision the National Party has made in past years decades centuries is never forgotten but decisions made by previous Labour Governments and Oppositions are never remembered and I'm going to come back to that. We were looking forward to and I think we benefited from the submissions to the Health Committee by a number of submitters overwhelmingly as the Minister has said in favour of the bill's passage but there were a number of areas that I think warranted serious consideration. While the committee may have done that the Minister and indeed Cabinet were not prepared and the officials could not recommend a single amendment to a bill that we thought had some flaws and the National Party remains of that view. I'll start with the issue of smoking when the vehicle is used as a dwelling. The Minister I believe said that it was stationary or used as a dwelling" and that's not what the bill says. The bill actually says that the vehicle needs to be stationary and used as a dwelling. Otherwise anytime the car was stopped the bill would not apply and indeed I think that was probably just an error in the speech-writing. But it still strikes me as absolutely ludicrous and a reflection on the failure of the Government to fix what they saw as a problem of homelessness and people living in cars to the point where they know that such dwellings are going to be used into the future and they are not prepared to extend this bill to exclude those situations. We think that's a mistake and we will be introducing an amendment to this bill in the committee of the whole House deleting that provision. It is ridiculous it is ludicrous and it should not be in law. Indeed what we are doing is proposing to Government that it removes its admission of failure—failure to fix the issue of homelessness and living in cars. Now I want to also move to the issue that is beyond the scope of this bill that as the Minister said was the subject of quite a bit of the submissions in the select committee and that was the issue of extending this legislation to include what's effectively the modern ingestion of nicotine: vaping and heat-not-burn products. We heard some fantastic submissions from young people who shared their experience of the creeping prevalence of the use of vaping products by our young. Indeed the anecdotes were disconcerting to the point where the committee became concerned at the failure of the Government to meet its own set timetable to introduce a regulatory framework for these products—not even in cars but just as an amendment to the Smoke-free Environments Act. What we heard from those young people was that despite the research and the surveys that people are relying on that say the incidence and prevalence of the use of these products by our young is low actually the anecdotes don't stack up. But I think that makes sense because I don't think even in a survey that might be anonymous that young people would admit to the fact that they are regularly using these devices. Now I'm ambivalent about whether or not this bill be amended to include vaping but I am much much more concerned at the complete absence of any regulatory controls on these devices. We had a court case which may now be three years old that said actually that the Smoke-free Environments Act doesn't apply to these vaping products and it should. It's not a difficult policy decision or conundrum to be solved. The Associate Minister of Health has been lead-footed on this. I implore the Government to get on and get that bill before this House. Now I find it also incredibly ironic and another concern that we have with this bill and that is the use of police resources to police this process. Isn't it outrageous that we have a Government that says in respect of this it becomes law and we rely on police to use their discretion about their position of the law and the upholding of the law but in respect of the Misuse of Drugs Act an amendment to that Act was passed that directed police not to prosecute for possession and ingestion of any illicit substance—from marijuana to heroin and all the bits in between—when it is not in the public interest. So they direct the police not to prosecute but invite the police to exercise their discretion on smoking in cars for goodness' sake! The Minister himself has said that the reason that the bill is not going to become effective sooner than 18 months after Royal assent is because the police need time to upgrade their systems to ensure that infringements and breaches of this law can be recorded in their police database. That is a completely incongruous situation if the police are able and prepared and willing to use their discretion—and I encourage them to do that—that the bill is going to be held up in its enactment while they change their IT systems so that they can do the opposite. It just underscores what a muddle this bill is and how inconsistent the Government is on the direction or discretion of the police. So I am disappointed that not a single change was made to this bill and it does cause us some concern. But on balance we continue to remain of the view that this will at the margins benefit our young by encouraging people not to smoke in very close proximity to them. The evidence of the health harms is unequivocal; the evidence of the benefit of this amendment is actually quite equivocal. International studies have shown that there is some benefit but that those benefits can take several years to be apparent—certainly outside the framework of the Government's goal for this country to be smoke-free by 2025 and frankly that lead-footedness is going to ensure that we fail in that goal. So I look forward to the committee of the whole House because I think there are some technical aspects of this bill that we should debate that the National Party will be putting amendments up to provide sensible straightforward improvements to this bill in the interests of the health of our young. I encourage the Government to be open-minded about that because ultimately this House is about making good laws effective laws evidence-based laws that will look after and protect and improve the health of our young. With that on balance the National Party will be supporting this bill at second reading."