Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Mr Speaker—David Seymour: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I didn't want to give him the pleasure of being in the Hansard of my speech or interrupt my flow but Andrew Little was insinuating—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. The member knows that points of order are to be raised at the time. They can't be raised afterwards. Maggie Barry.David Seymour: Mr Speaker—SPEAKER: Maggie Barry.Hon MAGGIE BARRY: Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak at the first reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill. Naturally—and as my colleagues have already said very eloquently—National does support this bill. It was conceived and worked through over many years of hard work by the Hon Nicky Wagner and this is a piece of legislation that should have been before this House many many months ago. In my electorate Professor Beaglehole lives and we have had many meetings on the North Shore discussing the merits of vaping the efficiency of that method to wean people off nicotine and harmful cigarettes. It has been proven to succeed. It is something that I've had a lot of discussions about and I can really see that it will help people give up smoking and it will also help us in our aim as a country of achieving smoke-free status by 2025. These are all very good things. The vaping industry is really big business. The global market for vaping products in 2015 was estimated at around about USD $10 billion. The United States not surprisingly perhaps has about 56 percent of that market and there's 12 percent by the UK and in varying degrees through the rest of the world. We don't know in New Zealand how much vaping has taken off and is being used because we don't have any real estimates or even guesstimates about the size and the value of that New Zealand market. The Ministry of Health has sought information through the consultation process that was held a couple of years ago but the information still hasn't given us much of a sense of where the market is at. So I think that the select committee process is the appropriate place to tease that out. It is disappointing that the Government is not going to allow more time for that process because I think that this is an argument that is going to be quite subtly nuanced. There's a lot of people who are uneasy about the way that vaping might appeal to young people in particular—others have spoken of that. In my North Shore electorate I know that there are a number of shops that are deliberately designed it would seem to me to be appealing to young people. They're brightly lit convivial atmospheres people go in there—young people in particular. I've had discussions with my school principals at intermediate and primary school level about their unease about having vaping equipment and vaping being used by very young people—this is under the age of 10. So that to me needs to be very carefully controlled thought about and ideally stopped altogether. This legislation obviously with its R18 element within it will go some way towards doing that. The natural appeal of these places and the flavours and the things that we perhaps as older people don't quite understand are triggers for young people do need to be carefully thought through and talked through at length I would suggest at a select committee level. For the smoke-free in cars legislation—which we were speaking of earlier in this House this morning—we had had some exposure on the Health Committee to discussions from young people about that attraction and the flavours and the colours and the general kind of grooviness that vaping seems to have already established in the hearts and minds of some of our young. We need to be incredibly careful about that and it will be big business. So the regulations that have been as I said carefully thought through the elements within this bill by the Hon Nicky Wagner I think will help. So the R18 element—allowing health professionals as well to give guidance to people who come to them for smoking cessation; it is entirely appropriate to have conversations with your GP in the privacy of a consultation to establish you know how people can transition out of smoking and using vaping as a very successful tool in that. So of course we support that. Ensuring that there are appropriate rules around advertising—people have spoken of this before. Again I think it's something that will come through very strongly in the select committee process and it's something that we as legislators need to pay particular attention to. We need quality standards. It is not appropriate to have a whole variety of oils with different titrations within them of the nicotine element. I think it needs to be very apparent. Ideally standardised systems will be less confusing for people who want to transition out of smoking and into vaping. I think it is really important that the Ministry of Health has a role to approve the products. They are the appropriate place to look at the products assess them as being fit for purpose and for sale and also to prohibit vaping in smoke-free areas. Politicians travel a lot on aeroplanes; we are told very clearly not only is it a smoke-free place for cigarettes but also vaping is not allowed. It doesn't seem to me that we're too far away as a nation from getting people to acknowledge that vaping with—you know it seems to me as an observer—a heck of a lot of white smoke is not appropriate to do in confined spaces. The laws that already govern our smoke-free workplaces and restaurants cafes and so forth I think should equally apply to vaping. If there are some exceptions that will no doubt come out in that select committee process.I'm not quite clear why some of the other measures that the Hon Nicky Wagner put forward have not been included including that vaping products be child-resistant. My colleague Dan Bidois in the neighbouring electorate of Northcote has already confessed that when he was a young person and smoking he did find that the cigarette lighters with the child-proofing on them you know were there as a barrier. Of course being a smart young fellow I'm sure he got around it. But I don't know quite why we would not use anything that would be child-resistant for a vaping product. Also the refilling without leakage—you know apparently it's a fairly messy process. I would have thought as a practicality that something that could be incorporated—and the refillable vaping tanks to a capacity of 2 millilitres; I think restricting it makes some sense. But again this is something that would be better discussed at select committee so that we can arrive in the right space on this. The other element that was in the Hon Nicky Wagner's bill but not in this one is requiring vaping products to deliver this consistent dose of nicotine under normal conditions of use. Again I think that consistency standardisation all of these matters would be prudent for us as lawmakers to really get our heads around so that when this piece of legislation which has taken far too long to get to the House—and in the meantime a lot of people I believe have lost the opportunity to give up smoking by using the vaping tool. Again I think of Professor Beaglehole who has devoted a lot of his professional life to trying to encourage people to see the health problems with smoking. He is very much a fan of vaping. He feels that it is as a transition tool the best he's seen in his I think 45 years or so in this space. I think the Cancer Society have taken on as you would expect for such an organisation a really strong educational role. They have talked in moderate language about the need to bring people with them and to transition out of smoking but not to see vaping as something that's cool and you know another accessory for the bright young things. So I think that their carefully modulated message is something that we as members of Parliament and certainly in the Health Committee will take on board. So this is a piece of legislation whose time has long come and it should have been here a long time ago. We have offered to work constructively with the Government on this matter before; it is disappointing that they didn't take us up on that offer and adopt the bill. As I said earlier I think the political barriers that exist between parties and the lack of cooperation in sensible areas should have resulted in this coming to the House earlier and for all of the work that was done by the Hon Nicky Wagner to have been available for the good of people's health in New Zealand. So we support this bill and look forward to it coming to the Health Committee—which is I'm sure where it will go—and then to examine it in minute detail. Disappointing again that it is a truncated process because I think we have to get the detail of this absolutely right. We have to refocus and perhaps use this as an opportunity to engage New Zealanders again in the 2025 goal. I think with the potential legalisation of cannabis—a referendum will decide that—and loose leaf being an enabler there I personally feel it sends a very bad signal potentially for this country to legalise cannabis to smoke it while we are working hard towards trying to get to a smoke-free 2025. This party would not ever support—well it'll be a conscience vote but I would personally never support having loose leaf cannabis legalised. Shame it wasn't looked at decriminalising it; that might have had a far more effective chance. I don't want to digress from the bill; I just cite it as something that has occurred. I feel that with the vaping we have an opportunity because vaping actually is something—apparently in the United States for example cannabis and oils have been used to get high so I would imagine that that part of the discussion may emerge at select committee. But vaping as it stands on this bill is very useful and I think it will be a great addition to the suite of tools that we need to use as legislators to ensure that we are smoke-free by 2025 and that we help and protect the health of New Zealanders who are very keen to give up smoking and vaping is an excellent tool which is why I commend this bill to the House.