Verrall Ayesha; Costello CaseyHon Dr AYESHA VERRALL (Labour): I'd like to ask about clause 35 which amends the regulations that were passed in 2021 and revokes subparts 2A 2B and 2C of those regulations. For my colleagues who haven't yet had the opportunity to google those regulations it does include the regulations that define the limits of the nicotine concentration in regulated tobacco products. My question to the Minister is when we regulate the contents of food—and we regulate harmful products all the time we regulate seatbelts and we regulate helmets—what is it about nicotine that means she is comfortable passing a bill that doesn't regulate the contents of tobacco or cigarettes? Why is this the one thing in our society that isn't regulated when actually it's the most harmful product we have? Why is the product allowed to contain anything in it—and there's no limits; well it's being revoked. Why is it that we're revoking here regulations about the contents of this product—a product documented for over 70 years to do a huge amount of harm to people. It seems to me that we have these conversations and they go something like this: we ask you why and you say Because I'm doing it." I would really like to see if you could come up with a logical reason—a reason that starts with "My view about this product is this and that is why…" and has some connection between the beginning and the end that makes sense. We don't want to spend the entire evening in this circle going round and round hearing more and more that the reason why something is being done is because it's being done. This is absolutely pointless. The contents of a cigarette can be harmful in multiple ways. Cigarettes contain many many different chemicals none of which are regulated without the context of these regulations. Cigarettes contain arsenic. Cigarettes contain tar. Anyone who's spent any time in a pathology lab as I did during my medical training knows intimately what tar causes because we've all had that experience where you attend a post-mortem with someone who smokes. They crack open the chest and you see the results of a product whose constituents are totally unregulated. That's what's being done here at clause 35. You see tar filling out the lungs. You see what should be soft pink elastic lungs—capable of stretching breathing and taking in fresh air—have been scarred. They have bullae in them—that means they have big air bubbles in them so they can't function. They lose their architecture so they stop moving and they become stiff. People who have that condition say that they can't breathe out properly and so they end up feeling like they're constantly at the top of their breath unable to breathe out constantly feeling like they're hyperventilating. That is the condition that leads to emphysema which of course is so so harmful to so many people.Minister my question is why is this regulation that makes the contents of cigarettes safer being removed when the fact is that this is one of the most harmful products that there possibly is. I used to be the Minister for Food Safety. There are more regulations on a sandwich than there are on the safety of a cigarette and you really have to wonder why. Why are you privileging cigarettes Minister? Why are these products that are the most harmful having the least regulation on their constituents? It seems like there's no logical answers in any of our conversations with the Minister. I'd really like to hear this time why it is that you think these products shouldn't be regulated.Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health): I just want to go back to the questions regarding consulting with Māori. We've dealt with the Part 1 changes relating to the response to Treaty obligations and that was clarified in that initial part. When I referred to continuing to work with Māori—and I think that's a collective agreement across the objectives that we're trying to achieve—we are wanting to ensure that the initiatives that we put in place are targeted to the groups that most need it and we will continue to do that. The specific format of that will be developed further as we move forward with the recommendations we want to put in place. The next part was around the discussions around clause 35. Those clauses relate to the repeal of the denicotinisation and all of that relates to the actions that we're doing to repeal the denicotinisation."