SpeechGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. Talofa lava. While we're all sharing our childhood stories in the House tonight you know I was raised with smokers as parents and I remember we had an orange Datsun and then a red Ford Escort. And we've got footage of me as a child: Dad's got a cigarette in one hand ashtray balanced on the knee and I'm balanced on the other knee. We've all got stories like that because history is a different place and luckily for us social norms have changed. But sadly these stories aren't always just lovely snippets of history. I lost my mum to lung cancer last year and I have got no doubt that a lifetime of smoking from a very early age was the factor. This is why this is so important tonight to be another step on that pathway. I tautoko the comments acknowledging the campaigners including Dame Tariana Turia on this pathway to get to a smoke-free New Zealand. So I acknowledge the Minister for pushing this through.Look we think it's good legislation. We know that early on there were some debates around the size of what the penalty should be. We think $50 is a reasonable amount. Some of the people who will be affected by this—much higher fines would have a much more detrimental impact on them. So we think they've settled on a very reasonable figure. We note the Cabinet paper also talks about the responsibility for warnings for referral to health authorities and of course we think these are really good suggestions. We're not going to see cops out there dishing fines out willy-nilly. What we are going to see is a pathway towards changing social behaviour in New Zealand for the better. I'm aware the most recent stats in 2012-2013 showed that 5 percent of kids were exposed to cigarette smoke in cars—2.5 percent higher for Māori kids—in New Zealand. That's simply unacceptable. Hopefully those figures today are slightly smaller because we have seen the decline of smoking rates in New Zealand. But still we know the impact of tobacco and we know the impact of second-hand tobacco smoke. I do want to pick up on the last comment from the Hon Alfred Ngaro though about the—to his mind—apparent contradiction between cannabis legalisation versus the vision for a smoke-free New Zealand. Now I don't believe they're in conflict at all because what we know—we've now got decades and decades of experience—is prohibition for cannabis has not worked. Of course we've tried this experiment in the past when we had prohibition for alcohol. It did not work. In fact all we simply brought in was a vibrant criminal element and much worse social harms. I challenge the member: if we banned tobacco smoking tomorrow I think we would have huge problems in this country and huge new criminal elements would prey on vulnerable tobacco smokers. What we know is all this evidence stacks up that prohibition doesn't work. In fact we've got a hole on the other side of the ledger—voluminous examples internationally of how regulated health-based safe market approaches actually decline consumption. That's our vision. We do want to see a smoke-free Aotearoa. I don't want to see kids growing up smoking cannabis in New Zealand but the way we're going about it is totally wrong. So that's why I fully reject those comments. But I do want to just quickly return to this bill and acknowledge what a positive step it is for Aotearoa New Zealand. I thank the Health Committee. It's wonderful they really did listen to youth and children's voices in their deliberations. It's a good day to be passing positive legislation. Kia ora koutou.