Williams Andrew: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2564. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 Talofa lava Mr Speaker in Samoan Language Week and heading towards Samoa’s 50th anniversary of independence in the next week. Tena koe Minister Tariana Turia. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. We read in the bill that this bill will see cumulative 10 percent increases in tax on tobacco commencing 1 January 2013 and on every 1 January thereafter for the following 4 years taking a packet of cigarettes from about $14 per packet to over $20 a packet by the year 2016. The bill states that the increase in the price of cigarettes will discourage tobacco consumption which in turn will improve the health of New Zealanders. New Zealand First will not oppose this bill; we will support it. However we agree that it is in New Zealand’s interest to tackle the harmful effects of smoking and the cost of cigarettes is only just one tool—a very simple basic tool—to limit consumption. 
New Zealand First has some concerns that this may have been just a pay-off by the National Government to the Maori Party in order to keep its vote and support. This is a common thought throughout New Zealand. Was this just another sop to one of the cling-on parties attached to the National Party—a bit like the charter schools for the ACT Party? We hope we are proven wrong. We hope there are real reasons for this and that this is not something being put through by the National Government just as another one of its sops to its cling-on parties. 
We are also concerned that this is being done in the interests of the health of New Zealanders that it is not being done by a nickel-and-dime pick-a-pocket Fagin Government looking just to extract more tax and money from the hard-working everyday man woman and child—or even people in rest homes—in this country and that this is being done for genuine reasons and is not just another means of topping up the coffers of the National Government.  
New Zealand First on the other hand expects that increases in tax on tobacco and cigarettes will see these taxes making a real difference with the effects of smoking in New Zealand. We would expect that the increased funding from the taxes taken from the increase in the excise will go into the following things which are already taking place to a certain extent but which we would expect as a result to be beefed up. We expect an increase in the media spend on public awareness campaigns concentrating for example on the media showing the real effects of smoking on unborn babies—real stories real people the good and the bad and getting the real information out there to show the effects on our children. We would expect that such campaigns would dispel the whanau myths. Smoking is a killer but the messages that come down through the Maori whakapapa contradict that. “I smoked through all my pregnancies and you lot are all right.” is a common comment. 
The truth is cigarettes now contain many more poisons than they ever did before. They are more potent and New Zealand cigarettes have one of the highest levels of nicotine in the world which therefore makes them more highly addictive and harder to do without. Tau Henare is testimony to that.  
New Zealand First would also expect that more funding from these tax increases would allow health professionals to work with specialist populations such as more specific support for those with mental illness who may find it extremely difficult to quit without extra assistance. We hope more funding will go into programmes with those with mental problems who face difficulties giving up smoking. Our very able primary health organisations throughout New Zealand are already doing a great job in terms of their smoking cessation programmes. We hope those primary health organisations throughout New Zealand will get more funding to raise awareness of the importance and seriousness of tobacco-related harm. Smoking cessation programmes need to become more integrated and prioritised across contracted funding streams such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Quitting smoking reduces risks across these other health issues and this must be part of the tax package that goes back into these health programmes. 
Cigarette taxation needs to fund research with resources made available to those who are at the coalface without there being huge application processes or bureaucracy and access to researchers who can give their time to help write up case-based realities to share and grow existing smoking cessation services. We need more training and recognition of the smoking cessation workforce and access for funded quality training of those people providing those programmes. 
We also need money from these increased taxes to go into an innovation fund to recognise that there are lots of great suggestions to try such as quit cafes for example which have been tried around the world. In other countries they have been very successful. Let us give them a go. Let us have some quit cafes developed in New Zealand. New Zealand needs to look at innovative ideas and methods to help our population reduce the consumption of tobacco and cigarettes. 
New Zealand First will not oppose this Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill but we will put the Government on notice. New Zealand First will be monitoring what funding is being provided on the other side of the ledger to help deliver programmes that will make a real difference to smoking consumption in this country. We will expect to see funding and delivery of smoking cessation programmes to go up quite a few notches—not just lip service but proper funding and delivery of good programmes. These cigarette tax increases must not be just another way for this penny-pinching Fagin Government to pick the pockets of good everyday New Zealanders in order to balance the books of an ever-failing Government.