Mallard Trevor: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
Mallard Trevor: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10596] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 I will make a brief contribution to the debate and I will start off on a line that a number of members have taken—that is to congratulate the Minister in charge of the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill Tariana Turia. It is not a secret that we disagree on a number of things pretty strongly but we are seeing in the House a degree of unanimity about the dangers of tobacco. I think that this Minister has pushed this Government as far as it can go on price. At this time I congratulate her on that. 
I am not someone who believes in a single-faceted approach. I think we have to keep on trying different ways to reduce smoking in New Zealand. Now that we have made some progress with this approach we have to look at other ways as well. I hope that when we get the recommendations back from the Maori Affairs Committee the committee will have some other suggestions that can be picked up in the House and developed. 
I am going to sound a bit like an old fart but I have to say that things have changed around here a bit. When I was first a member of Parliament— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: “When I was a boy.” 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: No no. When I was first a member of Parliament and invited into the Speaker’s Office sitting there were cigarettes. There was a cigarette case which was opened and cigarettes were offered to people. In fact I had quite a shock the first time I went to Government House for a function. I do not know whether functions were more regular then. I think they were and I think—I will be careful how I say this—that the Beatties at the time were rather more social than Governors-General since. But as well as people circulating with drink and food there were people who circulated with trays of cigarettes and lighters. So I think it is fair to say that times have changed and that the acceptability of smoking is nowhere near what it was. Therefore I think that it is easier for groups such as ours to make decisions that are relatively hard. 
Members who have been monitoring their emails looking at their Facebook pages or whatever will know that there is not unanimity on this issue. Certainly some people who are smokers but not drinkers have questioned the decisions of the last couple of days and the quick dismissal of the Law Commission’s recommendation on increasing the excise duty on alcohol. They have compared that situation with the provisions of this bill. I think it is fair to say that those people have a point. I think that giving proper consideration to the other tax would have been good as well. 
But I do not want to take anything away from what the House is doing today. I think that the vast majority of us know that we are doing the right thing. I will conclude in the way that I started by saying congratulations to Tariana Turia. She has led this House down a path that it was very important we travelled. Thank you very much.