Craig LizDr LIZ CRAIG (Labour): 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."