Reti ShaneDr SHANE RETI (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to speak to this bill and to speak to Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) in my name on behalf of the National Party that seek to improve the proposal that's on the table.I want to speak to the SOP 312 first of all which seeks to take into account the proximity of specialist vape retailers when new licenses are announced. This Supplementary Order Paper amends the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Bill. It addresses concerns about large numbers of specialist vaping retailers clustering together in close proximity to each other and their potential impact on under-age vaping especially. In July 2022 Local Government New Zealand member councils passed a remit proposed by the Kaipara District Council that called for the retail availability of vapes to be limited to specialist stores and for proximity restrictions. At that time Kaipara Mayor Dr Jason Smith said Without these measures in place we could end up with more situations like the one in Dargaville whose main street has 13 places where people can buy vapes. This includes 3 specialist vape stores within 150 metres of each other".Vaping is an important vehicle for smoking reduction. However there are widespread community concerns including from parents and schools around the significant increase in under-age vaping. The concern is that large numbers of specialist vape stores in close proximity unnecessarily contribute to under-age vaping and that the same overall smoking reduction benefits could be achieved without proximity clustering. To date there is little evidence for market-forces correction.This SOP provides a mechanism for the Director-General of Health to have regard to the proximity of other specialist vape retailers when granting approval to new specialist retailers. It addresses the concerns of local bodies for greater regulatory control as well as the concerns of parents schools and the community to better manage the significant increase in under-age vaping.Local Government New Zealand when they passed this said this: "New Zealand was late to the party passing laws regulating the sale of vape products and that's left our communities playing catch up … Between 2018 and 2021 daily vaping rose from 2 percent to nearly 10 percent amongst 14- to 15-year-olds. We can't afford this trend to continue. While we support the supply of vapes to people wanting to stop smoking we don't want to see young people who've never smoked in their life taking it up. That means we must stop vapes from being [as] readily available in our dairies supermarkets and service stations. We need to get the balance right because even though vaping is less harmful than smoking we don't know what the long-term effects are. Councils play a major role in promoting the wellbeing of their communities. Concerns around youth vaping is one issue mayors and councillors hear about time and time again from worried parents." They then go on to talk about the situation in Dargaville.This SOP makes a sensible addition to what is already on the table. It is a community-led initiative recommended by Local Government New Zealand. So let's be clear then: to vote this down is to vote down a community request that will send a signal that confirms this Labour Government's ideology of "Government knows best; Wellington knows best" and that they don't listen or care for the local voice of councils and ratepayers. This SOP improves the vaping environment and we ask the Government and other parties to consider supporting this as part of the bill.I have two other SOPs the second of which I'll talk to. It talks to a schedule change which was raised in the second reading that achieves in my view and in our view the same goals we all want—we don't disagree in the goals but we do disagree in the scheduling. We think what we want to do is we want to be able to achieve those goals with the least harm possible. To do that we're proposing that denicotinisation be the first action that kicks off in this bill and that we give it roughly over two years so that we can watch and observe if this is effective or not. Certainly the modelling suggests it will be but we should put this to the test before we reduce our hard-working small retailers businesses and local dairies before we eviscerate them from 6000 down to 600 being able to retail smoke products. We should put this to the test.This SOP suggests exactly that with a proposal that suggests denicotinisation within 18 months of commencement of the bill a review period 30 months after commencement so that we can see if denicotinisation has worked or not. If it's already been successful and mostly achieved like the modelling suggests it would the targets we're looking for then there is nothing more to do we don't need to do any further damage. If not then we would need to entertain the other two options in this bill: retail reduction and the smoke-free generation. We think this heads us in the direction we want to go and does the least harm possible particularly to those small retailers and dairy owners who are already severely hurting from ram raids and burglaries and other items. So I'll come to my other—[Time expired]"