Williams PotoPOTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East): Kia ora. It is a little bit hard to follow my colleague Rino Tirikatene after that very useful contribution—very useful contribution—to this debate. Firstly some acknowledgments. I want to acknowledge Dr Paul Hutchison who led the Health Committee when we first heard the submissions on this particular bill. I want to acknowledge Hone Harawira and Dame Tariana Turia for their pioneering work in getting us to the point where we are about to have the third reading of this particular bill. There are a couple of points I want to make. The first one is the use of the vernacular quit" in the legislation. It is something that I was really happy to advance because the vernacular "quit" is something that we now associate with giving up smoking with smoking cessation. We all know about quit coaches we all know of Quitline we all know about quitting in reference to smoking cessation so I am really pleased that this piece of legislation has responded to the use of "quit"—the vernacular; the common term of the day—so that we know what we are talking about in this legislation. The other thing I am pleased about is the use of the term "standardisation" as opposed to "plain" because the whole purpose of this bill is to reduce the impact of tobacco companies' influence on the kind of latent advertising that is the packaging of cigarettes. So standardising the packaging really neutralises the impact of the individual tobacco companies' influence on that packaging. The standardisation also refers to the types of messaging the types of graphics the size of the font and the colour of the packaging so all packaging will be very similar. The tobacco companies will still be able to put their name on it but it will be in a format that is standardised across all of the products. The importance of this piece of legislation is about prevention. It is not necessarily about getting people who are currently smokers to give up. That is not really the full intent of it. It is really about prevention. It is about ensuring that we prevent our young people from taking up smoking in the first place. There is one thing I do want to say: I am the daughter of smokers. Both my parents smoked and both my sister and I were inevitably going to become smokers because we were in the environment where smoking occurred. But one of the biggest things that motivated me to change—I think many of us in this House who are parents will know that our children are the greatest motivators for change in our lives. The day that my daughter said to me "Don't do that anymore Mum that's yucky." was the day I said: "You know what? She's right." The other thing she said to me was: "I don't want you to die." That was pretty compelling. The reason standardised packaging is so important is that we want our children to get the message really early on that smoking is "yucky" because they will motivate their parents to change and they will not take up smoking themselves. That is really important when we look at Pacific rates of smoking which have really gone through the roof. We want our children to motivate us as parents to change and also to be leading the charge by not taking up smoking themselves. So I really commend what is happening with the standardised packaging—with the graphics and with the messaging. At the Health Committee we heard stories from previous smokers about the old packaging that they used to see in their homes—the colour of the packaging and how compelling that was. I am really pleased that the prevention aspect of this legislation will go ahead. The one thing I do want to say in conclusion is that yes I too was concerned when the select committee had done all this work and we were delayed in bringing the bill back to the House. There were a couple of reasons that were promoted. The first one of course was the impact of the litigation that was going through the World Trade Organization at the time and the other one which my colleague has rightly pointed out was perhaps the significant influence of the tobacco lobby in delaying the passage of this bill. I can only surmise that it may have something to do with two current members of the House. Thank you."