Stewart BarbaraBARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill. I think that in this House today all of us are in agreement as to the damage that smoking can actually inflict on one's health. We all know somebody who has been affected in some way. Whether it is cancer whether it is heart disease or whether it is lung disease we know someone who has been affected. However as New Zealand First has said all along we are opposed to this bill. From the very beginning when this legislation was first introduced back in 2013 New Zealand First voiced our concerns about the lack of clear evidence to demonstrate that plain packaging itself was effective. We also talked about the unintended consequences we could foresee that were likely to happen when this bill comes into law. We are quite perturbed at the expenditure that is being directed towards a legal product. We have to remind people that $1.6 billion in excise tax is going into the Government coffers every year and this is due to rise to $1.8 billion in 2020. There is a clear ulterior motive here and it is not public health as it should be. Those dollars could be invested into smoke-free programmes. In New Zealand First we remain unconvinced that plain or standardised packaging is effective in reducing the level of tobacco consumption. The evidence from Australia which introduced plain packaging in 2011 indicated that there has been a steady decline in tobacco use over a long period of time and basically that plain packaging has no real effect on that. A survey that I read showed that four out of five states had actually increased rates of tobacco use in the year immediately following the introduction of the legislation: Victoria Queensland Western Australia and South Australia all showed increases. South Australia's tobacco usage rose from 16.7 percent to 19.4 percent. What they found over in Australia was that there was a different way of using tobacco. People's tobacco use continued but rather than buying packs of cigarettes people were purchasing roll-your-owns. Basically they were purchasing based on price. So we do not believe that the evidence is sufficiently there to support this bill. Additionally we are concerned about the potential increase in illicit tobacco which is currently estimated to be about 8 percent of tobacco sales. We believe that it is likely to increase as a result of this legislation and the continued increases in excise tax. In all the time that we have spent in this House looking at this legislation we believe that we have underestimated the intelligence of smokers here in New Zealand. Many of them will go out and buy their cigarettes; they will also buy packages to put them in. I myself know of people who go out and repack their cigarettes into something that is different from the cardboard packet. From the smokers' point of view it is easily solved—I know this as I have already been told it. I cannot say that I have seen it so I will not be saying that. We also know that these cigarette packets carry very graphic health warnings—horrible pictures with the adverse effects of smoking. However over a period of time people do not even notice these pictures. Therefore making these images a little bit bigger is not really going to have the effect that it should have. Education on the harms of tobacco smoking is what is really required in this particular instance. So if we are doing it for cigarettes why are we not doing it for other products that are causing New Zealanders harm? We know that there are a lot of them: alcohol sugar fat and salt. Many of us can be considered to be obese in New Zealand and that actually costs the health system a conservative $868 million every year. So why are we not targeting some of these other products? We believe that it is an area that demands attention before it is too late. We owe it to our health. We owe it to the health of Kiwis and we know that the health system is already struggling to cope. In New Zealand First we are very concerned about the harmful effects of alcohol on our society. We know that it is hazardous. We know that the hazardous rate of drinking is actually increasing year upon year and it is alcohol that causes so much more harm than tobacco. So why is the Government not focused on this as well? If the Government is so concerned about our health as New Zealanders why did it not support the introduction of a complete ban on sunbeds earlier this year when it had the opportunity? We have heard supporters of this bill say that tobacco companies use packaging to make their products more desirable. Yet when we go into a shop—into a dairy into a supermarket or even into a petrol station—we do not see any packets of cigarettes or any packets of tobacco because they are in a locked cabinet away from the public's view. I understand that people say that a few cigarette packets left lying around may entice young people to smoke but if they are going to smoke they smoke anyway because most of them—and I have seen it myself—do not smoke the packet; they smoke what is inside the packet. That is what is attractive not smoking the actual packet. We were quite concerned—Hon Simon Bridges: You don't want to smoke the packet Barbara.BARBARA STEWART: No we will not smoke the cardboard. We put through two Supplementary Order Papers to try to ensure that there was reasonable lead-in to this legislation for the manufacturers and for the dairy owners but of course that got voted down. We know that many of these businesses are quite dependent on the sale of tobacco products and it is difficult to estimate the quantity that is required. I will emphasise for Mr Bridges that we are not in the back pocket of the tobacco companies or in any pocket. We sought to introduce common-sense measures to ensure a smooth transition when this bill comes into force. I would like to conclude by saying New Zealand First does not support this bill. We know that smoking is a huge issue here and around the world. We know too that the goal of a smoke-free New Zealand in 2025 is just about impossible. We know that we sell a lot of cigarettes at the border and that we depend on tourists to come in. Will they follow our law in this area? We do not believe they will. We will be following this legislation and its introduction very closely and we will be looking at the subsequent smoking rates and also looking to determine whether or not this legislation is going to slowly creep into other products that are harmful for all New Zealanders. Thank you.