Hague Kevin: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHague Kevin: General Debate[Sitting date: 21 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7419. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]KEVIN HAGUE (Green): I move That the House take note of miscellaneous business. Yesterday in question time the health Minister Jonathan Coleman appeared to invite me to work with him to tackle the obesity epidemic that we face. I certainly appreciate the invitation. Perhaps it could be argued that it was a little late coming as it did after the Minister’s announcement of his strategy but had he asked earlier the kind of thing I would have said to him is: “We actually need to face up to this problem with dramatic and bold action.”The fact is that obesity is taking over tobacco as the No. 1 cause of preventable illness and death. We have a total health budget of around $15 billion per year. We right now have a situation where one in four adult New Zealanders either has type 2 diabetes or has pre-diabetes and is at risk of getting type 2 diabetes. We have a situation where we can now conservatively predict that by 2021 just 6 years away the cost of treating type 2 diabetes alone will be in excess of $2 billion absolutely swamping our health services. So the kinds of actions that we have seen from the Government in its 22-point plan are simply inadequate. This particular failure reflects two common failures two common weak points in the Government’s approach to so many issues. First of all there is a reliance on individual actions rather than addressing the environmental or as Sir Peter Gluckman calls them contextual factors that drive action. Secondly there is an almost pathological reluctance to in any way tackle the actions of industry particularly through regulation.Let me deal with those two things—first of all this idea about individual actions. The evidence in the health field is extremely clear that the model that has individuals making rational choices about their behaviour based on the information that they receive simply does not hold true in real life. Responding to these problems simply by giving people more education or more information does not work particularly for those who most need to be able to change their behaviour. We simply have to address the environmental factors. In the case of tobacco the factor that has been the leading cause of preventable death what has actually worked there? Has it been giving people more information about how tobacco causes lung cancer and has it been putting up more and more posters? No. What has worked has been increasing the excise tax it has been the Smoke-free Environments Act it has been the restrictions on where and how tobacco can be sold it has been the displays bans and it has been the almost complete prohibition on advertising and sponsorship. These are the very measures that the Government is refusing to use in relation to the obesity epidemic.The environmental initiatives that are in the plan are basically two things: one is a review of the code of practice for advertising food to children—that is fine as far as it goes but it is such a tiny thing—and the other is not really an action at all; it is just a statement that says that the food industry is keen to work with the Government on something kind of vague. Well it would be would it not? Actually industry at risk of being regulated is always keen to work voluntarily because its incentive is to do the least that is necessary that might damage its profit to obviate and avoid compulsory regulation. I predict that what will result from that is not very much at all. That is why I asked yesterday whether the tobacco industry would now be involved in setting the Government’s tobacco control plan. So I do not know whether it is the Government’s well-known links with the junk food industry that have caused this reluctance to regulate or whether it is as the Dominion Post asserts today the fact that the Government is scared of being caught up in its own rhetoric about the nanny State. But the fact is that as with climate change and housing and environment the Government is once again responding to a serious challenge with gesture.