O'Connor Damien: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
O'Connor Damien: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7968] 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Associate Minister of Health) 
: 
 I suppose it was inevitable that we would have the old race issue raised here. The member asked “What about marae?”. The member might not know that many marae do have licences from time to time. Many marae are educational institutions and run educational programmes such as kohanga reo and many others. Many marae employ people and where that occurs those places will be smoke-free. There is no need to specify marae church halls or any other place. We are making a judgment based on whether a building is a place of work a place of education or licensed premises so there is therefore no need to specify. Does that answer the question for Mr Carter? 
Members from ACT would like us to put “marae” up front. Members asked before why we do not have a ban on marae and I tell them that we have a smoke-free ban where a marae is a place of education where it employs people or where there is a licence in place. The objective of this bill is to protect people in those places of work; it is not to specify where smoking should or should not take place in a private place. The issue here is to protect workers. 
I will very briefly go back to the ventilation issue. Why did they not decide to have air quality standards in New York? Why did they not decide to have air quality standards in Ireland? From 1 January next year smoking will be banned in all licensed premises in Ireland. Coming from the West Coast where there is a good proud Irish heritage I just about fell over when I heard that myself. It does not seem to go hand in hand with an Irish bar but thankfully the Irish are an intelligent race—the best of whom came out to New Zealand of course—and they have realised that to improve the health status of people in Ireland they have to bring in some measures to stop smoking in bars to try to help the workers and ultimately all the patrons of the bar who are suffering from the effects of second-hand smoke. 
That is why they did not decide to go along the lines of Mr Peter Dunne’s amendment and accept air quality standards. Regardless of the complicated bureaucracy that would be needed to set up the standard and to decide on where it should be and what is appropriate one would then need to go around and enforce it on what I suppose would be a half-hourly basis—would that be fair Mr Dunne? No the only fair way to approach this is to have a level playing field which is something that the hospitality industry has advocated for a long time and which is fair to all participants in the hospitality industry. 
Hon Peter Dunne 
: Rubbish! 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: The hospitality industry has advocated for that because as was originally proposed in the bill it does not accept that premises can have smoking and non-smoking areas. It is simply not viable; it is not physically possible. Therefore the only sensible conclusion is that any provisions brought in by this bill should be fair to one and all. I accept that. 
Hon David Carter 
: They won’t believe that. 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: I think they will because the West Coast does have a poor health status with there being more of us there who smoke than should do so and who perhaps drink a little too much and we do have a health problem. I am sure we will see an improvement in the health status of the workers in West Coast establishments as we will with workers in establishments up and down this country and ultimately with their patrons. That will be a beneficial side effect of this bill which is aimed at protecting the health of people who are working in risky environments. We do not turn our back on that in any other area—whether it be on the roads on construction sites or in a car—so we are not turning our back on it here. That is why I applaud the efforts of the member here and why we are bringing in technical amendments in this part to improve the operation of the bill.