Flavell Te Ururoa: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2561. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Kia ora tatou e te Whare tatau e wetewete nei i tenei pire na te Honore Tariana Turia i whakatakoto ki mua i o koutou aroaro. Ka nui te mihi ki a koutou e mihi mai ki a ia. Me mihi ki a ia ka tika nana tenei pire i kokiri ki mua i te aro o te Kawana Nahinara. Na kua eke tenei o nga pire ki tona taumata i tenei wa no reira mihi mai ki a ia.  
I etahi wa ka pataia te patai he aha te take o te noho o tetahi ropu pakupaku penei i te Pati Maori roto i te Whare Paremata? Anei. Anei te puawaitanga o te korero. Ka taea e nga ropu pakupaku te kokiri nga take nui mena kai te noho ratau hai hoa haere mo te Kawanatanga. Na reira kai te mihi ki a ia kai te mihi ki te painga o te noho i roto i te Whare Paremata. Kai te mihi ki te ra he ra whakahirahira mo matou o te Pati Maori ka mutu te tikanga ia mo te motu whanui tonu. Koia tetahi kaupapa kua roa e kokirihia ana e te Pati Maori mai i te ra tuatahi i eke matau ki roto i tenei Whare Paremata. Koia tetahi kaupapa nui whakaharahara ana koinei te puawatanga i te ra nei a he ra ano apopo mo nga wetewetenga o roto i nga komiti whaiti engari tona mutunga mai kua aro mai me ki te nuinga o te Whare Paremata ki tenei o nga pire. Ka mihi ra ka mihi ka mihi. 
[ 
Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Greetings to us who are here considering this bill which the Hon Tariana Turia has put before you. I really appreciate your acknowledgments to her. It is apt indeed that you praise her as she is responsible for putting this bill before the National Government. This bill has reached its pinnacle at this point in time. So acknowledge her indeed.  
There are times when the question is posed: why exactly does a minor party like the Maori Party remain in Parliament? Here it is. Here then is the fruition of the talk. It is possible for minor parties to broker matters of huge significance if they are an associate of the Government. So I applaud her I applaud the benefits of being in Parliament and I applaud this day. It is a wonderful and magnificent day for us the Maori Party and generally for the entire nation eventually. The topic at hand is one that the Maori Party has been dealing with for a long time right from the first day we entered this Parliament. It is a huge and enormous one and its fruition is at hand today. Of course there is another day tomorrow for select committee considerations but at the end of it all the majority of members shall we say will have taken due diligence to this bill. My acknowledgments to each and all. 
] 
It is a good day to be a Maori Party member when all of the things come together the stars align and you happen to get a nice sharp concise well-thought-out common-sense bill that is going to take the country forward. I made up all of those words just by myself. I do not think there is too much to argue about in this bill the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill as we really focus on looking after the well-being of the people of this land. We know that cigarettes are highly addictive and lethal and they cannot be made any safer.  
He mea mauhere i te ngakau i te wairua i te tinana o te tangata koinei te mate penei ta te Honore Tau Henare e korero nei. 
[ 
It is like what the Hon Tau Henare said: the problem is that it grips the heart spirit and body of the person who is imprisoned. 
] 
It is something that obviously grabs you. You can be un-grabbed as he was un-grabbed and then it grabs you again. That is one of the unfortunate things about it. This is one of the things that we of the Maori Party call a social hazard and it is something that we clearly wanted to address from day one when we arrived in the Parliament of this land. It is an epidemic and unfortunately we do not always have control over it. 
I can say that there have been many approaches and many ways that the Parliament of this land has attempted to deal with this issue from disease warnings on tobacco packaging through to bans in the workplace. Others have spoken this afternoon about subsidising medicinal nicotine but it has not had too much of an effect. I for one have been to tangi after tangi after tangi in particular of women—Maori women—who have suffered from cancer. There is nothing worse than seeing the children who are left behind because of the effects of cancer on not only that person who has passed away but the families and the children and the partners. As I say the consequences of this are pretty grim. Lung cancer mortality rates for Maori are three times that of non-Maori and we have much to think about as we take this bill forward.  
It is about life and death. We are at a critical point I think in our history where we have never been before seeing the levels of support—from both sides of the House and both from politicians and from the public—to take a serious look at tobacco control measures. As I say I am really proud of the outstanding leadership and the dedication that the Hon Tariana Turia has shown in progressing this bill. It is acknowledged that some of the work was done through the Maori Affairs Committee as well and there are members of the House who were on that committee who really did push this issue out into the public arena. In terms of the Hon Tariana Turia she has been at the front of this for the last couple of years certainly. Not that I should necessarily talk behind her back but she is one who does not tolerate inertia too much. She wants some action and I know that she was pretty disappointed that we could not unfortunately send the legislation all the way through the legislative process today. But we get that it has to happen like that. But we must try to seize the moment to meet the vision of having a smoke-free Aotearoa by 2025. 
It is also about the leadership that each of the MPs in the Parliament of our land has in exercising and voting on this particular issue supporting raising the tax as a catalyst for change. The great thing that we know about the rise in the tobacco excise tax increases that were introduced in April 2010 and in January 2011 and then again in January 2012 is that putting up that tax not only prevents young people from smoking but also encourages existing smokers to quit. I hope the Hon Tau Henare will follow through on that particular issue as well. 
It is particularly pleasing to read through the Action on Smoking and Health year 10 study and to see that Maori students had the biggest decline in daily smoking compared with other ethnicities with a change from 14.1 percent in 2010 to 10.3 percent in 2011. As that points out it is all about changing attitudes and creating an environment that enables smokers basically to quit. Research from the Otago University study of 1300 smokers reported that almost 70 percent of Maori who smoke and 74 percent of Pasifika people who smoke actually supported tighter regulation of the tobacco industry. The study also showed that 66 percent of the Maori smokers and 78 percent of the Pasifika participants thought the Government should do more to tackle the harms of smoking. 
I have heard all of the arguments that tobacco tax increases can induce financial hardship and result in ill health in families. But I would have to say that on balance increasing tobacco tax actually benefits poor families far more because as we all know the harms from smoking are far greater than the harms from tobacco tax will ever be. The ill health and premature loss of life caused by smoking particularly for Maori as I say is a real disgrace. It is also a perfect opportunity right now to put in place an immediate strategy to eliminate a social hazard that has done so much to hinder economic and human growth in Aotearoa and as other members have said it costs literally millions of dollars in health care. 
I want to commend again the Hon Tariana Turia for looking at this issue in a wider context as we take on this issue with all of the other initiatives that we have in train—for example the plain packaging tobacco not being displayed in the shops from July of this year the issue about making cars smoke-free and all the other ideas to advance the tobacco control strategy to be smoke-free as I said by 2025.  
Although the tax increases are effective we know that tobacco tax alone will not do it by itself. We need to support those who are struggling to quit. So with that in mind I am really proud of the Budget that we are currently debating and of the Maori Party being able to negotiate through some gains across the board but in particular the $20 million for health promotion initiatives which are basically about supporting positive and healthy lifestyles and freeing people from cigarette smoking. The initiatives can relate to a wide range of things and I am hoping they are talking about sport recreation creating incentives to quit smoking healthy homes and all of those sorts of initiatives.  
Finally I recognise that this is a huge challenge. Who would think that in another 15 or 16 years or so we can hopefully realise the dream of a smoke-free Aotearoa? If we achieve that it will be a great day for this country. But it is going to take some leadership and it is going to take some action. We saw last week the Iwi Leaders Group taking a leadership role at the AFFCO plants around the country. It was able to negotiate through the communication gap between the unions and that firm and I would hope that the iwi take up another leadership role in respect of this particular kaupapa. I know that Dr Pita Sharples through Ngati Kahungunu is skiting about Ngati Kahungunu’s youth tobacco strategy. It has certainly looked at banning cigarette smoking on marae in the whare on waka at the urupa at the cemetery and so on. We hope that that rolls out throughout the country.  
Finally we want to invite all New Zealanders to pick up on the challenge to quit smoking to support and encourage whanau members to give up and to discourage our younger ones from ever starting. That would be the ultimate. Smoking has robbed us of too many of our treasures. We need to de-normalise smoking and we need to support our whanau to be smoke-free. The Maori Party supports this bill absolutely.