Dunne Peter: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Dunne Peter: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7952] 
Hon PETER DUNNE (Leader—United Future) 
: 
 I want to go back to a couple of comments that have been raised during the course of this debate on the title to date. Members have raised in what has been agreed should be a wide-ranging debate a number of issues regarding the practicality of the legislation. While we will explore those in more detail as we move through the parts of the bill some questions have been raised that neither the promoter of the bill nor the Associate Minister of Health who has taken one or two calls has answered. 
I want to go back to one that was raised by Mr Worth some time ago relating to the cigar bar in Christchurch. My colleague Mr Alexander made reference to it as well. That enterprise was set up specifically to provide a place where people who may like to enjoy a drink or a meal and a cigar or two are able to go pay for the privilege of doing that and enjoy themselves. It is not a place to which members of the general non - cigar-smoking public would go. The question posed which has not yet been answered is why an organisation like that has to be proscribed—as it will be under this bill. Members should bear in mind that that is part of the same agenda that saw a cigar-lovers’ magazine banned by the health zealots a little while ago because it was apparently offensive in some way—even though one could download it from the Internet if one were so inclined. 
But there is a real point of principle here. If we are to believe the promoters of this bill it has been introduced because people do not have choices. But it then denies people the opportunity of saying as in this instance that they may like to run a cigar bar knowing full well the implications of the atmosphere within that bar and the risks that may be attendant upon those who go there. Equally we may want to set up a smoking bar within our club a smoking dining room within our restaurant or whatever else. Those options have not been permitted and more important when questions have been raised about why they have not been permitted there have not been any answers. There has been a blanket statement that the bill is about occupational safety and health and we have not had an answer to the question of why if it is about occupational safety and health we have to have a different standard of legislation in respect of this activity. The promoter of the bill I think it was drew attention to the matter of unsafe building sites but we do not have specific legislation for them. The general occupational safety and health legislation is held to apply in those cases. 
We are left with the conclusion that there is another agenda afoot here and I think that was betrayed somewhat by the promoter of the bill when she said that this legislation had its origins in the late 1980s and that this is as far as the Government is going—and she sort of petered out by saying—“at this stage”. So clearly more legislation is intended. We need to know what else is intended and when it will be implemented. If the Government’s intention is to take further steps and this bill is only the first step down a path then the people who are worried about the legislation’s implications now need to know what lies ahead and on what time frame it will be happening. We need to know that so we do not get into the sort of situation for instance that the cigar bar in Christchurch—and I think there is one in Auckland—have got into by investing heavily in a business that will essentially be proscribed by law potentially as early as this evening. 
In a country that talks about having an open competitive economy where people have the opportunity to try their hand and to succeed or fail as the case may be to have activities that are not in themselves illegal proscribed by law is an absurdity. Some people have frivolously made comments about what goes on in the street as a result of another piece of legislation that this Parliament passed recently. One could mount an argument to say that technically smoking will now be banned in the street because that is where the hookers’ workplace is. That is a clear example of the sort of absurdity that we are getting into. 
We need to know the real intention here. Why is it that on the one hand we can hold an activity to be legal—Ms Chadwick said that this is not anti-smoking legislation per se—but on the other hand we just make it impossible for people to actually indulge in the activity? There is a word for that. I raised a point of order about it before so I will not do so again. But I think we are entitled to some answers as to the real motivation here. If people are carrying on an activity that is held to be legal how can we then seek to proscribe the legality of their carrying it out? Why can there not be alternative venues put in place? Why do people not have choices? The best choice I know is that if people do not like a smoky bar or a restaurant they should either stay away from it or get out of it. If people do not like as I do not the stench of smelly clothes and all that sort of thing then they should not put themselves into that circumstance. Why do we need the hand of the law to proscribe people’s participation? That question has not been answered.