Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National—Whangarei): Thank you Mr Speaker. We will be supporting this bill through its final stage here and I'd like to thank the Health Committee who it was a pleasure to work with to progress to this stage. The member who has just sat down the Hon Dr David Clark commented on the vaping bill being close to maybe conclusion. Can I point out that in the regulatory impact statement of 2019 end of 2019 the comment was made—in fact it was the departmental report from September last year—that the vaping bill will be introduced shortly in the next few weeks. Wow. Six months ago we were told it was only going to be a few weeks away when the departmental report for this bill came out. Unbelievable. Yet here we are now. That's a long time to get to this stage.So I want to just focus initially on the cause of the damage that we're talking about here today and then speak briefly on the health consequences as well. Can I reach out first of all to part of the genesis of this bill from a child's perspective which was actually some of the schoolchildren in Northland in 2016 who were the Northland branch—the Whangārei branch actually—of the Cancer Society. They had a Blue Light enterprise with the Relay for Life and they surveyed those who were participating in the relay and asked them around their position on second-hand smoke in cars for children formed that survey put it on a big board and came to my office and presented it to me and asked if I'd bring it to Parliament which I was pleased to do of course. So it's a reach-out back to some of those children. It's 2016; four years ago now. They'll have left the intermediate school as I recall that they were at but I want them to take a little pat on the back here today because part of their work gets us to where we are tonight.If we look at some of the statements around how second-hand smoking in cars is damaging—not quite what it's going to do; I'll come to that in a moment—we have a large amount of evidence showing us that in a vehicle where there's second-hand smoking even if the window is halfway down even if there is air conditioning on the New Zealand Medical Journal tells us that it's still as if you were in a smoky pub. Absolutely. You might think just winding the window down or turning the air conditioning on will make a difference but still: significant second-hand implications.I think what I found interesting—what I've always found interesting—is the third-hand smoking and that is the residues long after smoking in the vehicle is finished. I mean that's really fascinating—these studies that have looked at second-hand vehicles vehicles on lots that haven't been used for a while and where one vehicle for argument's sake had been a vehicle where smoking had occurred and another was not and then to do wipe samples of the seating and do air and dust samples in each vehicle and look at the difference. Many years later we still find residual effects of smoking in the upholstery where vehicles have been used as a smoking receptacle and in the air and dust samples. So this third-hand smoking is really important—another piece of compelling evidence as to why we are supporting this bill.I want to reflect for a moment on the health consequences. We know—certainly the regulatory impact statement told us—that there is an impact on asthma and on glue ear. I think we've probably known that for a while. I think the submission from the Auckland Regional Public Health Service (ARPHS) was really useful through the select committee stage. The select committee stage was very good actually. We had 120 submissions and I found them all very very useful with experts from a range of domains. But I particularly found the Auckland Regional Public Health Service useful because they actually quantified the damage. It's enough to say Look it affects asthma it affects admissions it affects glue ear." Well that's kind of an easy statement to say but give it a number. Give it a number so we can really identify what the impact is and compare it to what other interventions we might be looking at.So that's what ARPHS did and they said that for under-16-year-olds 15000 children with asthma attacks will be prevented. It would've been useful to do a cost-benefit analysis on that because I think 15000 children with asthma attacks is probably going to get up to a big fiscal number that we're saving and able to deploy elsewhere in the health system with the bill that we're passing here tonight. They said that for under-two-year-olds roughly 500 children will be spared from being admitted with chest infections. Now I imagine the case rate for an average admission for a child starts at about $1500. So again if we do the cost-benefit analysis on this clearly a good saving in passing this bill if we want to compare benefits.I think another good number that I hung on to was the number around glue ears. A short procedure—only takes a few minutes actually. But if we look at those people who are convicted and up at Ngāwhā prison at the moment 95 percent of them will have had glue ear as a child with a long consequence of that. So you get glue ear as a child you don't hear so you become disruptive you get passed into being the troubled child and your life's journey will take a different turn. So I think this has a really big impact on those children with glue ear which are disproportionately for Māori. Again the number's a big number. For under-two-year-olds 15000 glue ear operations will be prevented. In private they're about $1200. Again that's a big number that the system is saving through a systems approach a systems intervention like what is being proposed here.There were some concerns that we've had some which linger with us and we'll just have to see how they roll out. My colleague the Hon Michael Woodhouse has expressed our concerns around a vehicle as a private dwelling. It's kind of hard to understand actually. We have a different view and we'll just have to see how that rolls out. We've also expressed concerns around the time frames for the IT development and the infringement routine exactly what the workflow is going to be and how that will look and is this the best use of police resources when will they intervene and what that will look like.I continue to be aggrieved at new section 20D(2)(a) set out in clause 9 of the bill that said a person under the age of 18 who is smoking in the motor vehicle either on their own or while people over the age of 18 are in the vehicle is not committing an offence under this bill. Well goodness. We're trying to reduce harm from smoking at any age for any cause at any time anywhere. Who cares? Yet this bill where we have the opportunity to be a bit firmer and send a true signal that children under the age of 18 at no time whether it's in this bill or not whether there's someone else over the age of 18 who's smoking—who cares? There was an opportunity here to say "Unacceptable." But we're going to leave this weirdness here where first- and second-hand smoking—certainly second-hand smoking—is going to be OK but we're going to wave the crooked finger at third-hand smoking. I would suggest as I have in a previous reading actually that that's a lost opportunity.Look in summary we are going to support this bill. There are clearly benefits for this. We too have weighed up the effects on civil rights and all sorts of other things which I'm sure members across the House have as well as did the select committee. We reached the very firm conclusion that there are more benefits than harms to this bill. We think that we will be doing a good thing for children who have less opportunity to avoid less opportunity to take other actions that an adult may take to remove themselves or remedy themselves from a situation in vehicles. We think we are providing them some protections. We think we will be giving them some health benefits. We think we will be sending the right signal for them as they then become adults and their children mirror them towards the overall end goal that we want which is smoking reduction. So with that I want to thank the select committee who it was a pleasure to work with on this and I commend this bill to the House."