Lees-Galloway Iain: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
Lees-Galloway Iain: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10593] 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 It is again a pleasure to speak in support of the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill. I again congratulate the Hon Tariana Turia on introducing and progressing this very important legislation. She must be immensely pleased with the vote on the first reading of 118 votes to 4 which as I suppose we have gently canvassed this evening is a slightly different vote result from that when legislation like this last passed through the House. 
My colleague on the Health Committee Michael Woodhouse put his finger on the button when he said that there has been a path of enlightenment since the last time legislation like this passed through the House. I remind Michael Woodhouse that that path for the most part occurred under a Labour Government because it happened during the last 10 years. 
It is pleasing to see that this issue has not been quite as contentious tonight as it has been in the past. The reasons for so much support for this legislation have been thoroughly canvassed this evening. Parliament has a deep understanding of the effect that tobacco is having on our society. No doubt I will cover some of those issues again but first I would like to discuss some of the arguments that have been put up against the legislation. Those arguments came from the Hon Sir Roger Douglas and other members of the ACT Party. 
Essentially they seemed to cover a couple of areas. One argument related to the fact that ACT members are opposed to tax increases. That is their ideological position this is a tax increase and therefore they cannot support it which is understandable. The ACT Party also argued that it is people’s personal responsibility to decide whether they take up smoking and how they try to quit smoking; that decision is over to them as individuals and is not a public issue or even a public health issue. Obviously I disagree with both of those points. Firstly it seems to be a shame to put ideology in front of a measure that clearly works. All the evidence indicates that this measure will have an impact on smoking prevalence. Every time it has occurred in New Zealand in the past it has had an impact and every time it has been done overseas it has had an impact. That impact is measurable and the research tells us that it is the right thing to do. So to put ideology in front of that evidence although understandable I think is unfortunate and a bit of a shame. 
Jo Goodhew touched lightly on another area of personal responsibility. It relates to nicotine which is the addictive substance in cigarettes and tobacco. As soon as people become hooked on an addictive substance of any kind their ability to demonstrate personal responsibility and to make logical rational choices is utterly diminished. I again acknowledge Jo Goodhew for touching on this point. When I sat in on the Maori Affairs Committee I heard representatives of the Nurses Organisation make their representation. They pointed out exactly the point that Jo Goodhew made: that nurses are one of those groups that have a higher prevalence of smoking than the rest of the general population. It was discussed at length. We discussed the fact that people who—I think the phrase was—“should know better” have a higher smoking prevalence for all manner of reasons. Let us not go into why nurses might have a higher smoking rate than the rest of the population but absolutely health professionals should know better. They have all the evidence in front of them they see the effects on a day-to-day basis and they have to nurse people who are in their last days and going through the painful effects of smoking-related disease yet nurses continue to smoke. To me it is an indication of just how strong this addiction is. With all of that evidence in front of them that group of people still find it very difficult to give up this terrible affliction. I think we have to bear that in mind when we are thinking about personal responsibility. 
Where does that personal responsibility lie? Indeed where does our responsibility as a nation lie in trying to assist people who want to make this decision? Hone Harawira said that 80 percent of smokers want to quit so it is important that we in Parliament and we as a nation support those people to make the right choices and to make that decision and that we give them the opportunities to follow through on that decision and quit smoking for ever. 
I have discussed ACT’s position and I acknowledge John Boscawen. I think it is absolutely fantastic that Mr Boscawen has voted in favour of this bill and I thank him for his kind words about my member’s bill. I hope that if my bill is drawn from the ballot—or if indeed the Government proposes a similar bill that would achieve the same ends—more members of ACT might get behind it because it does not lie in the same ideological position as a tax increase. I have a lot of hope from what Mr Boscawen said that the next logical move—the banning of tobacco displays however that comes about—might actually have a little more support. There is so much support from Parliament for this measure which is absolutely being done in the right way: we are seeing increases year on year and we are seeing greater increases to the excise tax on loose tobacco to bring it in line with that on tailor-made cigarettes. I think this is absolutely the correct way to go about it and that is why it has achieved so much support. 
So what do we do next? This bill has something of a whakapapa. There have been a number of incremental steps over a number of years: other increases to excise tax; the amendments to the Smoke-free Environments Act which have seen smoking removed from pubs restaurants and the workplace; and going right back to where it started the ban on smoking on airlines. These days we take it for granted that one would never light up on an aircraft but of course there once was a time when one could. There were smoking sections on aircraft just like there were smoking sections in restaurants. I am sure Mr Bridges and I remember those days; we are not quite so young that we do not. 
We have had an incremental step-by-step path and this legislation is another step along the way. So where do we go from here? Well a number of anti-smoking advocates have made presentations—particularly at the Maori Affairs Committee—and have said that they would like to see the end of tobacco smoking in New Zealand by 2020. That is a bold and audacious goal and it will require something a little bolder than the incremental steps that have occurred over the last few years. There are a lot of different ideas about how we might achieve that goal and the most obvious one when we are thinking about trying to remove something altogether from a culture is prohibition. I do not think there is an awful lot of support out there for prohibition. We have seen prohibition used in respect of other substances in the past particularly alcohol and it did not have very much effect. But we do not have to go as far as prohibition to achieve this goal. 
When the Health Sponsorship Council which was actually set up as part of the Smoke-free Environments Act made its presentation to the select committee it talked about a suite of proposals a package that would achieve a step change. I alluded to that presentation a little in the first reading but I will go over it again. It said that in addition to increasing taxation on tobacco products rather than the incremental changes we need “further restrictions or bans on point-of-sale tobacco displays; introducing requirements for plain packaging on all tobacco products; increasing support for cessation attempts; licensing of retail outlets that sell tobacco products” and “developing end game strategies such as a Tobacco Control Authority.” All of those ideas I think are open for debate. Let us not try to position anybody at the moment but let us start the debate on all of those measures and start really talking about a step change and trying to achieve some of those audacious goals. It is worth it. It is absolutely worth it. 
Tobacco smoking costs this country $1.7 billion a year and it is increasing. It is far more than the taxation that is already taken. It costs immeasurable amounts in terms of lives lost health lost productivity and the social impact on families of nursing ill relatives and having family members die at an early age. This is a great bill. It is a step in the right direction but I hope that in the near future we will see a considerable step-up of action so that we can really tackle this problem. I commend this bill to the House.