Hague KevinKEVIN HAGUE (Green): As I think members know I will be leaving this House in a couple of weeks' time. I would like to thank the Hon Annette King very much for her kind words in the debate and I also thank the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga the Associate Minister of Health for doing me the favour of bringing this bill back so that I could speak on it one last time before I go. It is great to be able to see this bill enacted before I leave. It also gives me one last chance to give the House a bit of a lecture on health promotion—you know I cannot resist the temptation. The fundamental thing about health promotion is the understanding that people do not change their behaviour because of information by and large. So the idea that Homo economicus"—the rational economic decision-maker—will translate Adam Smith's 1776 theory into their health behaviour and weigh up the pros and cons of different behavioural choices and thereby choose the option that is going to produce the best health results is just nonsense. It does not happen that way. If one thinks about the processes of choosing food or smoking—as in this case—or alcohol or sexual behaviour these are not in fact rational choices. So imagining that we can change people's behaviour by giving them better information is fooling ourselves. It turns out that the things that do actually work empower those communities that are most affected by health problems. Those communities will tend to be most affected not only by one particular health problem but by every health problem. There is a clustering of health problems in particular communities that are marginalised and as it happens those same communities will be particularly adversely affected by problems in education or justice or social development. So empowering communities to design and implement their own interventions is one of the fundamental things that we can do. The second thing that we must do—and this applies particularly to this House to Parliament to the Government—is that we must create supportive environments around those communities through legislation public policy social and physical environments and economic environments. That is the formula. As Iain Lees-Galloway has said in this bill we are dealing with standardised packaging. We are removing the last opportunity that tobacco companies have had to market and advertise their products through visual means using the very packets that their products come in. So this is an intervention that is about creating an environment that is more supportive of good health outcomes. Other speakers in this debate have talked a little bit about the history of this country of Aotearoa being a leader in tobacco control public policy. It is a legacy that political figures from several parties actually have the right to feel proud of—for example the Rt Hon Helen Clark the Hon Annette King Stevie Chadwick was mentioned and appropriately so the Hon Tariana Turia Hone Harawira and Tau Henare. Actually I want to also praise Paul Hutchison who had a history of crossing the floor of the House to support sensible tobacco control measures. That was a brave thing for him to do. But I wonder now after all the delay on this bill whether the delay was caused not so much by the Government being scared of being sued by tobacco companies as the Government said at the time—using investor-State dispute settlement provisions and going through proxies in the World Trade Organization—but whether it was not prepared to be the leader any more like the kid in the classroom who does not want to be the first to put their hand up. Actually we have seen this in other areas of public policy as well where our country has moved from being a leader internationally or even a fast follower to becoming a slow follower a laggard internationally. That is a change that I regret. In that fine tradition of leadership I wonder where the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga is going to rank—and Minister I urge that you step up to that leadership role because the goal of having a smoke-free Aotearoa 2025 is a laudable and necessary goal. We have just heard Barbara Kuriger in fact from the Government side eloquently making the case for urgency in tobacco control and for a comprehensive suite of measures yet we have had a Government that has said no to many of the measures that could have taken us there. We have had a Government that has dragged its heels on this bill on this measure which actually had a really important contribution to make. So Minister I hope that you will be the person who will lead us in that comprehensive plan for tobacco control and to achieve a smoke-free Aotearoa because right now we are not on track for doing so.That plan has got to include things like smoke-free cars like smoke-free parks and like licensing retailers of tobacco products. It has got to include the public health advocacy—and it was interesting to hear Simon O'Connor praising the public health advocates that he has been hearing about in relation to this bill because the Government has chosen to cease the funding of most of those public health advocacy organisations. The people whom Simon O'Connor has been hearing from probably do not have jobs any more. The plan also needs a massive injection of funding into services for quitting smoking and I look forward to seeing that from the Government. To do that to show leadership in achieving a smoke-free Aotearoa 2025 will require considerable courage. In the submissions that the select committee heard the ones from the tobacco companies themselves and from their proxies were notable because they illustrated a strategy that the tobacco industry has followed since the 1950s when Doll and Hill first conclusively showed the link between tobacco consumption and lung cancer. First of all tobacco companies denied that such a link existed. They then tried to throw into the mix their own research to add confusion to the picture. We actually see the sugar industry following precisely that path now and we see the oil and fossil fuel industries doing the same on climate change. They are following the game plan of the tobacco industry and right now the tobacco industry has got to the point where the phase of the strategy they are pursuing is delayed. So that is what sits behind the delay that we have seen on this bill. The tobacco industry which has opposed every single measure intended to curb tobacco-related harm in this country will do the same on all of those other measures intended to reach a smoke-free Aotearoa 2025. It will require leadership and courage from the Government to stand up to those tobacco companies. Does the Government have that? I wonder."