Hague Kevin: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
Hague Kevin: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10587] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 I say to the previous speaker John Boscawen that the membership form is in the mail. I want to start my contribution by thinking about the groups in our society that have higher than average rates of smoking. We have heard a little bit about some of those groups tonight. For example we know that Maori have much higher rates of smoking than the population average. We know that Pasifika people have higher rates of smoking. We know that in general the poor have higher rates of smoking. We know that people with mental illnesses as Ruth Dyson pointed out have higher rates of smoking. In my own community the gay community there is a higher rate of smoking than there is in the population as a whole. What on earth could explain that pattern? What on earth could explain the distribution of smoking behaviour? Could it be that information about what is unhealthy about smoking only reaches other groups? Is it somehow not getting to these groups? That explanation does not hold water. 
Over the last 24 years since 1986 we have increasingly come to understand that a model to explain the patterns that we see of health and illness that is based on information simply fails. It is not an adequate explanation of what we see. Instead we have to look at the marginalisation of communities and adopt a socio-environmental model of health that says there are risk environments that surround particular communities. Those risk environments are things like poverty racism prejudice and violence. Those risk environments themselves create the psychosocial risk factors that predispose people towards particular patterns of illness. 
In the health promotion model which is the model we use to explain how to counter that pattern of ill health we talk about five action guidelines in what is called the Ottawa Charter. Those are: to promote healthy public policy; to create supportive environments and by that we mean not only physical environments but social environments also; to strengthen community action; to develop personal skills; and to re-orient health services towards prevention. That means that when we look at the pattern of health and disease in relation to smoking we see that that is also the pattern for pretty well every other disease we can think of. When we look at those Ottawa Charter guidelines we see that it is not adequate to do just one of those things. We have to do all of those things. That is the kind of holistic thinking that the Green Party typically brings to this kind of debate. 
In relation to tobacco control we are talking tonight about price control because we know that that works. But we also need a comprehensive suite of controls. We need to look at how tobacco is displayed where it can be bought from what is in the product and where tobacco can be smoked but we also need to look to community empowerment. By that I mean providing communities with resources in the form of expertise and also the dollars that they need to develop their own solutions to this problem. It also means tackling racism and tackling prejudice wherever it exists. It means taking measures to address inequalities in our society measures to create a fair society where all New Zealanders have a fair go. Those are the things that will make the big difference in dealing with the pattern of disease that we see in this country. 
One of the measures to tackle inequality is tax. As Iain Lees-Galloway has said already in tonight’s debate tax is one of the areas where we are able to take some initiatives that address the inequalities in society. This Government has a policy in relation to tax that will widen those inequalities. The truth is that that pattern of widened inequalities will drive increased disease and it will drive increased smoking rates. So we need that comprehensive pattern of interventions. Yes we will vote for these price increases tonight because we know that that will be helpful but we also need to address those wider psychosocial risk factors those wider socio-environmental risk factors that create disease in the first place. 
As Ruth Dyson has commented a number of members have spoken about their personal smoking history. I have never been a smoker. I did try it once but I could not get it close enough to my face so that never happened. But I did have a particularly powerful experience in Los Angeles a couple of years ago when I went to the Body Worlds exhibition put on by the German anatomist Gunther von Hagen. Very much as Paul Hutchison has described tonight one of the things von Hagen does in that exhibition is provide actual lungs that have been preserved and plasticised. It was a very creepy experience. The contrast between the lungs of a lifelong non-smoker and the lungs of a person who has smoked is such a stunning example that nobody could go to that exhibition and come away still a committed smoker. Next door to the exhibition of the lungs was a big rubbish bin. The idea was that smokers would put their packets of cigarettes in that rubbish bin. When I went through the exhibition I saw it was pretty well full. 
Although we will vote for this measure tonight the Green Party seeks a comprehensive suite of measures that are focused not only on tobacco control but are ones that address those risk environments: racism poverty and marginalisation of every sort. As Michael Joseph Savage put it: “What is there more important in Christianity than to be our brothers’ keepers in reality?”. What is there more important to us in our society than to take collective responsibility for the welfare of all? I again congratulate the Hon Tariana Turia and the Maori Party. This is a fantastic victory and I wish her well.