Bridges Simon: Inquiries — Inquiry into the Tobacco Industry in Aotearoa and the Consequences of Tobacco Use for Maori —Report of Maori Affairs Committee 
Bridges Simon: Inquiries — Inquiry into the Tobacco Industry in Aotearoa and the Consequences of Tobacco Use for Maori —Report of Maori Affairs Committee 
[Volume:669;Page:15952] 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 Firstly I congratulate the chairperson of the Maori Affairs Committee Tau Henare and all the members of that committee. This inquiry was a very significant journey for every committee member. 
Many things could be said but I will share with the House two enduring memories and thoughts that I had as a result of being on this inquiry. The first was that quite a significant number of young Maori women who came along told us how they began smoking. They did not begin smoking as I had perhaps naively thought as women in their late teens trying to impress people at parties or something like that. Rather they began as girls usually of 10 or 11 who lived in houses of smokers and probably had been passively smoking since before they were born. They rolled and lit the tobacco of their mothers and kuia around them then started sneaking tobacco. I remember a number of young Maori women coming and telling us that. 
As night follows day they were hooked and they were addicted to tobacco. Those young women with children—and maybe some of them will be listening to this debate—want to stop but it is not easy for them. They are anxious that their young children do not start in the way that they themselves started smoking. 
The picture I had of smoking was quite wrong. Most of the time smoking is not this idea of a free market with adults who freely consent to take up smoking. I do not want to say in this House that personal responsibility does not have any part in smoking—for some in starting and for some in giving up. But the more complex difficult situation of children smoking as a result of parents and grandparents who smoked which I saw on the committee I will remember for the rest of my life. That means that a more intense stronger more interventionist approach is called for. That is what we have recommended in the report we have produced which all of us on the committee are proud of. 
The second thing I wanted to say is that I was shocked by the statistics and the figures that we were given by a raft of organisations. I remember in particular how the submission of Action on Smoking and Health made very clear to me the stark differences in average mortality rates between Maori and non-Maori. Putting it bluntly in short it is depressingly clear that Maori men and women live about 8 years less on average than non-Maori. For a non-Maori male the life expectancy is 79; for a Maori male it is 70.4. That is an 8.6-year difference. For a non-Maori female the life expectancy is 83 years; for a Maori female it is 75.1 years. That is a 7.9-year difference. We know that the smoking prevalence among Maori men and women is disturbingly high: 42 percent of Maori men and 49 percent of Maori women. 
I came away very clear in my own mind that it would be simplistic to say that if we simply stopped reduced or eliminated—which would be even better—that smoking rate for Maori men and women we would completely shrink that mortality rate. But I tell members that it would be the best thing we could do to really reduce that mortality rate. No one should feel limited in our country because of their race and no one should feel that they will not live as long as another on the basis of their skin colour. Tobacco and the high prevalence of smoking among Maori really does mean that Maori are living too short lives compared with non-Maori in this country. Those are two things I will take away from this committee.