Stewart Barbara: Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStewart Barbara: Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15806. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA STEWART (NZ First): On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to speak to the Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill. This is a very thought-provoking piece of legislation. New Zealand First—[Interruption]; I am not a smoker—will be supporting this bill only to go to the Health Committee at this stage. It is important we believe to get the views of the submitters on a bill such as this because it can have unintended consequences both positive and negative. We know that tobacco is responsible for 6 million deaths globally and annually and 5000 deaths in New Zealand as Iain Lees-Galloway was saying. There is no doubt that in New Zealand First we want to see the smoking rates in our country continue to decline as well but there are many aspects to look at with this legislation and we are going to be looking at those very closely.We know for a fact that many smokers purchase quite elaborate containers to put their cigarettes into. Are these containers going to be allowed be sold? Of course they will. So tobacco and the cigarette containers will still look just as good as they always have done because who wants that horrible eye or mouth in their pockets? Currently too we know that retailers have had to spend quite a lot of money to ensure that the tobacco products are not visible in the stores. That is a move that we also support. But we do not want to punish the retailers even further creating a situation where they have got to have further costs in order to conform to this law. After all is said and done it is a legal product.Research in this area is pretty mixed and it is from relatively small studies. The results are very very mixed and are not a clear indication. In many of the studies there is an assumption right at the outset of harm reduction—all participants giving support for plain packaging without the evidence to back it up. We know too that the conclusions of the reports are very different depending on who is paying for the actual report to be written. New Zealand would be the second country in the world to approve plain packaging after Australia and we are likely to meet the same legal challenges. I know that theNew Zealand Heraldarticle in December last year outlined it clearly: “New Zealand was also likely to face legal challenges if it followed Australia’s lead and officials have estimated the cost of a legal dispute as between $2 million to $6 million not including compensation if a case was lost.” So that is something else to consider.It is also interesting to note that the idea of plain packaging for legal highs was not included in the Psychoactive Substances Bill. Their packaging is very colourful. If plain packaging is effective in reducing the appeal of harmful substances when are we going to see amendments to how legal highs are actually being sold? And as Mr Banks pointed out what about alcohol? What about fast foods? What about sugar products? They are all causing harm to our people so when are we going to take the next step?New Zealand First questions whether plain packaging is the best use of money to prevent youth uptake because preventing uptake should basically be the primary focus for our young people.On another aspect we have also been made aware that hundreds of thousands if not millions of cigarettes are actually flown into New Zealand at the end of the calendar year to take advantage of the annual 10 percent increase in excise duty. We hear that the number of cigarettes brought into New Zealand in the pre-Christmas period is in excessof 6 months’ worth of normal consumption so when will this loophole also be closed? We are quite concerned about that.We want to see some action on smoking. I am not a smoker. I do not particularly approve of smoking myself. We believe that prevention is actually the primary way to go and we question whether or not this measure is going to get the results that we would like. So we are going to be supporting this bill’s referral to a select committee so that we can get an opportunity to hear the opinions of the submitters. At this stage we have more questions than we have answers and we are going to be listening for evidence from the submitters not emotions. We will be looking for real evidence and not prejudice. So at this point in time we will take the first step and then reconsider from there on. Thank you.