Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): I do want to commend the previous speaker Marama Fox for her eloquence. It was very important to hear the messages that are coming from our Māori community about smoking. I must acknowledge the work of the previous Māori Party co-leader Tariana Turia because she has been strident and strong and passionate in ensuring that we get to Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. There is no doubt that smoking is definitely something that we should seek to be eliminating from our communities.I had the pleasure of sitting on the Health Committee ably chaired by Dr Paul Hutchison when we were examining this bill. It seeks to do a couple of things. It really seeks to reduce the appeal of tobacco in particular for our young people. But it also seeks to reduce the social acceptance of tobacco products and increase the noticeability of those messages and health warnings that we need to get out into the public arena and keep reinforcing. There is no doubt that this measure alone will not effect the change that we want for Smokefree Aotearoa 2025. But it is part of a range of measures that started with the Smoke-free Environments Act when we looked at ensuring that our workplaces were smoke-free and that our places of gathering such as restaurants and bars were smoke-free so those places where we could suffer significant second-hand smoke harm were eliminated or reduced as far as possible.It is important to note that the emphasis in this is around ensuring that we not only minimise the number of young people starting but also target them as a group that should not start at all. There is no doubt that once you have started smoking it is very difficult to give up. So if we can make our best efforts to ensure that we stop people from smoking in the first place that is the best way to go but our young people in particular need to be encouraged not to take up smoking in the first place. The bill will look at the penalties that are currently in place and look to increase the penalties for non-compliance. The penalties for current offences will be increased as well.This bill also looks at ensuring that the property rights issues that the tobacco companies raised during the submissions are continued so that the tobacco companies can still have their logos on their tobacco products but the idea is that they will be standard across all products. All tobacco companies will have the criteria for their logos on packaging determined by this legislation so that in terms of the percentage or the proportion of the packaging itself the logos of the tobacco companies will be reduced. The packaging itself—and this is one of the issues that is raised in the report from the select committee—is not plain. The packaging is not plain; it is standardised and what will be included on the packaging are health messages. The colour of the packaging will be used as a deterrent and so will the images and the messages on the packaging. What the bill attempts to do is to standardise that across the range of tobacco products and companies producing those products. So the recommendation by the committee is to change the title of the bill from Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill to the Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Standardised Packaging) Amendment Bill.I want to talk about the Australian evidence. The Health Committee did hear from the Australian Parliament. One of things we heard from the Australians was that the daily rates of smoking for people aged 14 and over declined from 15.1 percent in 2010 to 12.8 percent in 2013. Although it was too early to say that there was a direct correlation to the introduction of plain packaging it was certainly something to be celebrated and also out of line with the messaging we had heard from tobacco companies that when plain packaging is introduced smoking rates actually go up. So it was an indication even though it was early days in their plain packaging regime that there was some hope that that could add to the whole continuum of looking to reduce smoking in our communities.I also want to comment on the fact that as a select committee we encouraged the use of the vernacular. We encouraged the terminology to quit smoking" because "quit" is a word that is synonymous with giving up smoking and with the programmes that are associated with giving up smoking such as Quitline. I think I want to credit myself for insisting that we used Quitline. I want to acknowledge the work of all of those quit coaches out there in New Zealand and particularly I want to note my sister Tokerau Williams who taught me a lot about the work that she did as a quit coach for a Māori health provider. I know that using the terminology of the day that is in popular use is unusual in legislation but I think in this case it actually adds to the ability for us to get those messages out into the community.I also want to comment on the fact that we ensured that there is a cultural reference within the bill. When we look at the acceptance of smoking in our communities we must do what we can to ensure that there is a cultural element within the work that we do with regard to quitting smoking. This is because there is no doubt that there are populations and groups that are more susceptible to the message from our tobacco companies—and it is a shame that our young Māori women in particular have taken up the smoking in rates that are the highest amongst our population. So it is important that we do what we can to ensure that we address those cultural aspects.I want to go back to the notion of the way the packaging will look. We heard from many of the submitters—and there were many Māori providers of quit-smoking services and there were some Pacific providers of quit-smoking services—and they talked about having grown up in homes where the red packet for a particular brand of smoking or the blue packet or the green packet was very prominent within the home. They talked about how that kind of subtle reminder of smoking day after day after day really influenced their decisions about whether they took up smoking or not. I can recall when smoking advertising was a lot more prevalent in our media just how cool it looked to have a cigarette in your hand so it is important to ensure that we do what we can to reduce those images and make it as uncool as possible.I should out myself and say that I was a smoker. I was a smoker for 20 years and I started at a very young age. One of the things that we have ensured in this bill is that we restrict the size and the number of cigarettes that we sell. In my day the local dairy used to sell cigarettes singly and I am really pleased to see that this bill will look to eliminate those small pack sizes because it really just encourages young people to continue smoking if it is easy to access cigarettes.Lastly I just want to comment on the transitional provisions. We felt on the select committee that 6 weeks for distributors and 12 weeks for retailers was sufficient time for them to look at the reduction of old stock that does not conform to the plain packaging. We did not buy the argument from the Retailers Association that retailers would have lots of the old stock on hand. In conclusion this is a good bill. I think the select committee did a good job on addressing a lot of the key issues and I commend it to the House."