Street Maryan: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Street Maryan: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5722. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour) 
: 
 Part 2 of this Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill is what is currently under debate at the moment in this Chamber and I need to raise some questions about Part 2 because my colleagues have raised some significant points in previous contributions but I am not sure that everybody watching this debate understands what the significance of Part 2 is. 
Part 2 of this bill excludes the price increases on tobacco—these ones that happen the 10 percent increase on 1 January every year for the next 4 years. It excludes that price increase from the basket of goods that are considered when calculating the Consumers Price Index. When calculating how much the cost of everything has gone up this year and therefore what the Consumers Price Index should be in order to bring up people who are on benefits whose benefits are CPI indexed people go out and they work out what people spend their money on. What do people spend most of their money on? Well they might spend most of their money on food they might spend some money on petrol they might spend some money on childcare they might spend some money on clothing they might spend some money on alcohol and they might spend some money on tobacco. And so in this legislation the basket of goods whether it is fruit and vegetables chicken or meat or all those other things that are put together in order to calculate what the Consumers Price Index should be will leave out the expenditure on tobacco. And who for? For people who are receiving payments under the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act—payments to the people or organisations that are providing care for children—so that is the caregivers. It will take out anybody who is on a student allowance. It will take out anybody who is getting Working for Families entitlements. It will take out anybody getting New Zealand superannuation. It will take out anybody who is receiving any of the main social security benefits. It will take out anybody in long-term residential care and it will take out people whose income comes from veterans pensions. 
So the point of this if I understand it correctly—I am just looking in the direction of the officials for a moment—is that the CPI basket of goods that is assessed on what most people spend their money on and how much that has gone up compared with last year will exclude tobacco for people on benefits those benefits I have outlined and those other payments and entitlements I have just described. In other words if you spend a lot of money on tobacco or if people generally spend a proportion of their income on tobacco that will not be taken into account for the purposes of calculating the CPI and thereby raising people’s benefits. 
This is a device. It is something that could be excused that could even be justified but my question to the Government is where is the consistency? Where is the consistency? If tobacco is bad for people and this is a health measure then why not exclude it from the CPI indexation across everything not just the benefits that people are going to have to live on in order to survive? 
The CPI is important for wage negotiations. Unions go into wage negotiations on behalf of their members wanting to compensate for the Consumers Price Index and the increase in prices that have happened in the previous year because unions do not want their members’ incomes—wages and salary—to fall behind prices. Therefore the Consumers Price Index is important. It is important to wage and salary earners as well. So why is this tobacco provision being applied to beneficiaries only? I ask the Minister in the chair Anne Tolley if it is a good thing to do then is it not a good thing to do for everybody? If this is a health measure would it not benefit everybody’s health? 
I can understand the import of excluding it from the CPI calculation but what I cannot understand is simply targeting benefits in that respect. That to me does not make sense. If any member opposite says that I am wrong about this that I have got the wrong end of the stick would they please get up and take a call because it needs explaining. I ask whether the Minister who moved this bill Tariana Turia could get up and make some explanation as to why only beneficiaries are going to have this item excluded from the basket of things that go into a CPI calculation—in other words their benefit will go up by the CPI but not by as much as it would if it were taking tobacco into account. 
So I can see that the Government saves money in the process but why is this being applied only to beneficiaries? This is the kind of discrimination that I thought we were not tolerating in this country but now perhaps that the gap between the rich and the poor in New Zealand has become so pronounced and the people on benefits are so much at the bottom of the heap these days the Government has decided that it does not really matter how they are treated any longer. All we hear about is social obligation; all we hear is what people ought to be doing for themselves. When their lives hit some rough patches the Government’s expectation is that they will pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and correct their own circumstances which is not always possible. 
However the Government is blind to that kind of consideration and simply makes this exclusion of the price increases from the required CPI indexation related to social assistance. In fact those are the words on the page “related to social assistance”. If a member opposite can contradict that for me please get up and tell me I have got it wrong but that is what I read on the page. I see all the members opposite studiously looking down and busy doing work so that they do not have to look as if they are responding or listening. I would like somebody a Minister any Minister— 
Hon Judith Collins 
: Are you voting for or are you voting against it? 
Hon MARYAN STREET 
: —Mrs Collins—any Minister not just the Minister in the chair although I would welcome her participation but also the Minister interjecting I would welcome her clarification around this as well. It seems to me that it is discriminatory. It is not fair. It is bashing the people at the bottom of the heap again and somehow this Government is going to turn it into a health measure. When you are at the bottom of the heap and you are struggling to survive on care payments or benefits then quite frankly the health inequalities that descend upon you are insurmountable and they become almost the last thing you are able to contend with as you are busy trying to make ends meet. 
I would welcome the intervention of any National member here to correct me in this respect. If I am not wrong then this is discriminatory. This is not reasonable and it is simply another example of this bill being a tax grab and not a health measure. Thank you.