Marcroft JennyJENNY MARCROFT (NZ First): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and take a call on the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supports this piece of legislation. I'd like to begin as a couple of the previous members have done by acknowledging the vehicles they were in as children. In the 1970s there was a similarity between myself and Michael Woodhouse the member who's just resumed his seat around a Holden Special station wagon and I think ours might have been panel-beater grey. Not only that but it was the norm back in those days to have parents smoking in the car while the kids were in the back. In fact we had a little Mini. My dad had a Mini. It was a black Mini—EC108—and I have fond memories of the Mini. We would pile into the car on a Sunday morning with Dad driving and Mum in the front nursing the baby. My three siblings would be sitting in the back seat with our other sibling on our knees—jam-packed with seven of us in that Mini and no one wearing a seatbelt. It was the norm then but we've changed. We realised how dangerous that was and as a society we moved and we made it click—suddenly we were all wearing seatbelts. This is a little bit like that. The social norm to smoke in the car with children—that'll be a thing of the past very soon as this legislation is passed through. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child—we absolutely as a Government understand our responsibility for protecting our children's health and wellbeing so I'm very pleased to support this piece of legislation. It's a really sensible measure. It's all about ensuring that we are protecting particularly our vulnerable children—our tamariki our rangatahi. You see they have no choice in the matter when they're stuck in a car and there's someone else smoking and we know that more than 100 New Zealanders die every year from the effects of second-hand smoke. This change will bring us into line with other countries like Australia the UK Canada and South Africa as well. This is all about getting clean air for kids and when we have that focus we will ensure that our children will be in a better state of health as a result. There was a great campaign by my former colleague Duncan Garner who had a little bit of a campaign on the telly about this. When he spoke to the Rt Hon Winston Peters he said that the common sense strain of the government" strongly supports the ban. We think we've taken a really common-sense practical approach here and Mr Peters said that actually "children haven't got a choice" and that's really the long and the short of it. A husband has a choice and a wife has a choice in the vehicle so really it should be banned because children don't have that choice. So I'm acknowledging also the Māori Affairs Committee which I was a member of last year. We held a joint hearing with the Health Committee and we were looking at Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. It was really interesting to combine the two select committees and we were reminded that smoking is New Zealand's biggest killer. In fact 5000 people every year are killed because of smoking and smoking-related illnesses. We heard from Hāpai Te Hauora and really I'm hoping that they may come and present to the select committee because they brought some really interesting statistics particularly around Māori and the slight smoking decline in particularly those vulnerable groups. So it will be interesting to hear from them. One of the focuses during that joint committee was on looking at smoking in cars and the submitters were very clear to us that smoking in cars carrying children should actually be banned immediately. The Health Committee under the previous Government in fact recommended that the Government ban smoking in cars carrying children under the age of 18 years. However the National Government declined to do that so we are picking up the challenge and we are moving ahead and taking this legislation all the way through. Overseas we know that this has been passed particularly in Australia in various jurisdictions over there. In Queensland smoking while under-16-year-olds are in cars has been banned and there is a $200 fine there. In South Australia also under the age of 16 it's been banned and in Victoria it's under the age of 18. So there's a little bit of change and discrepancy between various jurisdictions in terms of their ages. Canada has had a ban for children under the age of 16 but in Nova Scotia though they've picked the age of 19. Around the world in Mauritius smoking is prohibited in a car carrying passengers—any passengers actually. In the United Kingdom and particularly in England and Wales smoking in cars has been banned there recently for cars carrying under-18s—just since 2015. There are a number of countries that don't yet have a smoking ban in cars carrying children but they are planning to look at that legislation and it's in the pipeline for them. Finland Greece Ireland and the Netherlands have their bans in the planning stages. I'd just like to make note in conclusion that this Government actually doesn't want anyone in cars with children to be smoking and we also don't want anyone to be forced to live in their cars. You know we are making record investments in terms of emergency transitional and State housing to ensure that all New Zealanders have somewhere absolutely decent to live. This bill will amend the Smoke-free Environments Act 1990 which has never included private dwellings. Now maybe if the National Party is interested in banning smoking in people's homes—well I'm sure that would be a significant shift in their position. There are a couple of clauses that we would like the select committee to take a much closer look at. These are these exemption clauses which are in this legislation. We would like a focus to be shone on that and so definitely New Zealand First will be listening to the experts. We will be taking good consideration of the submissions and the evidence that will come in through the select committee process around those couple of clauses as it goes through the select committee stage. So in conclusion I am pleased to commend this bill to the House."