Clark David: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Clark David: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 26 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5728. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) 
: 
 Mr Chair I hope you will excuse me. I am working under a pseudonym. I rise to speak to the—perhaps appropriately addressed—title debate. I want to go a step further than my colleague Iain Lees-Galloway although I support the sentiment entirely in his address on this topic. He suggests that the bill the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill is perfectly named because it does not mention the health benefits. It is a tax bill so therefore we might well view it as an appropriately labelled bill. 
I think I would want to go one step further to make a little more explicit what the purpose of this bill is. I would like to see it renamed. I guess we will ask the Government to consider this suggestion and you know present its argument as to whether it is a useful one or not. My suggestion is that we rename it the “Fill the Revenue Hole but Decrease Smoking as an Unintended Consequence Bill’ because I believe that that is what the bill actually does—that is what the bill actually achieves. 
The reason why the bill is an unintended consequence is that the facts line up and say that increases in revenue actually do discourage smoking and we know that smoking remains the single biggest cause of preventable morbidity and mortality in New Zealand. There is good reason to address this problem especially when half of all long-term smokers die as a result of smoking-related illness. That is about 5000 deaths each year that are attributable to smoking either directly or through an indirect route like second-hand smoke. But unlike National when it was in Opposition Labour has supported Government moves to reduce smoking in New Zealand. Labour has been consistent in supporting moves to reduce smoking in New Zealand and that is why we see if we look back that this title highlights I guess the irony in the National Government moving this bill. It says that the decreasing of smoking is an unintended consequence and that it really is about the revenue-grabbing. 
How do we know that? We know that because when in Opposition Bill English who is now obviously concerned about the revenue hole that this Government is facing said that it was a tax increase when Labour moved measures. When Labour moved extraordinary urgency to increase the excise on tobacco in the early 2000s Bill English said “It is a tax on the poorest people in New Zealand. It is an increase that is far too large.” So he labelled it a tax increase. That is what he thought it was nothing more nothing less—nothing more nothing less. So that is why we know that it is an unintended consequence that it is actually addressing smoking and why the title “Fill the Revenue Hole but Decrease Smoking as an Unintended Consequence Bill” is a far more fitting title than the one that the Government has proposed. 
So I move that we consider that title. I do not formally move it. I move it in the sense of having a debate about it and inviting the Government to consider that as a more fitting title a more honest title and as a title that would reflect the content of the bill which is presumably what a title is designed to achieve so that we could have a bill that reflects the Government’s real intention which is about filling this revenue hole which it has no other plans or means to do so.