Auchinvole Chris: Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Auchinvole Chris: Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:673;Page:19718] 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 I fully support all the things that were said by both the previous speakers I have heard since I came into the House. I have noted that old expression “no man is an island” but I have just taken the opportunity to ask not the multi-choice questions that Te Ururoa Flavell put but instead a rather more direct question of my colleagues who were in the Chamber when I arrived. I asked them whether they had ever smoked. I was astonished to find that very few have that and those who have smoked did so very little. I am sure that Mr Assistant Speaker Roy will not mind my saying that when I asked him he said he had never ever smoked and that that accounts for his fine complexion youthful appearance and high levels of energy and intellectual capacity. We do not wish to bring the Speaker into the debate so that will not be debated. 
I stand as I guess in one way a little bit of an oddity in that I first smoked when I was 11. I used to nick my mother’s cigarettes one at a time. I progressed to getting a job and I started to buy my own cigarettes. Members can picture if they will a 19-year-old Auchinvole in New Zealand gazing with admiration as he watched the classic Kiwi roll his own cigarette with one hand put it in his mouth light the match with one hand and take a puff. Eventually I perfected that art. I was mostly in the rural sector and I perfected that art of rolling my own cigarette sticking it in my mouth lighting it with a match and then I would take a puff and take off half my lip because the cigarette would get stuck to my mouth. 
I remember that for social occasions when we were young bucks we used to smoke Sobranie Black Russians. They were very very special and very expensive cigarettes. People like Tim Groser will remember those. But mostly it was roll-your-owns then tailor-mades and then pipes with pipe tobacco such as Erinmore Mixture. I can smell it now. I can smell it now. 
We used to go to conferences. I was a member of the livestock improvement movement. We had national conferences and everybody smoked. I can remember I think it must have been in the 1970s when someone moved that smoking not be permitted during the conference. There was a stunned silence and then roars of laughter. The next year it was put to a vote. The following year it was not even mentioned; there was just no smoking and that was that. 
I used to go to political conferences. At the National Party regional conference in Auckland my Erinmore tobacco used to be nicked by Kennedy Graham’s brother and we would share a good pipe of tobacco. We had a debate at the divisional meeting about whether we should smoke. I was one of the strong proponents. I can remember using phrases like “Have some sympathy for smokers; they are a dying breed and they are dying at a faster rate than the rest of us.” One could make quite a light-hearted speech about that. 
In the 1960s and 1970s when I was going through adolescence almost everybody did smoke. If we look back at the films in those ages we see that there was an awful lot of promotion of tobacco. I gave up when it became more difficult to smoke. My children have never smoked and my wife has never smoked although my wife has never objected to my smoking. I have now not smoked for about 13 years because it became harder and harder. The children would oblige me to smoke outside the house and they did not like me smoking in the vehicle—that sort of thing. 
I still smoked my pipe—I was comfortable with it—but when a friend of mine asked me why I smoked and started to explain much the way that Mr Assistant Speaker Roy did that it impaired one from certain functions compared with not smoking and that I would have much fun in life if I did not smoke he gave me a little bit of a challenge. I was ordering a wrought-iron gate from him for my mother-in-law’s 100th birthday and he could not make it in time because he was too busy. So I said “Gosh I thought I’d heard that you could do anything you’re such a brilliant fellow.” And he said “So I can and can you stop smoking?” so I said “Probably.” He said “All right you send me the design of the gate. When you send me that get rid of your pipe all the tobacco that you’ve saved up cigars and that sort of thing get rid of them all and don’t smoke ever again then I’ll get your gate finished.” So we did a deal. We had just moved across to the Coast. I had a complete change of habit lifestyle and everything else. It was a good time to stop. 
I have never ever smoked since other than a puff of a cigarette that a colleague gave me. I thought “No I don’t want to go back to that.” and I never have. The question though is what have I learnt from it? If one speaks to people and asks about their experience of smoking one learns that there are not very many who have a good experience. There are not very many people who want to maintain smoking. I have never ever had any experience with drugs other than those administered in a hospital. This story would perhaps be different if I had asked around about drugs. Drugs just have not happened in my life. I have had no exposure and no opportunity and I have never sought them. So on the one hand I have smoked cigarettes but on the other hand I have had no other drugs. People who work with druggies tell me that they all want to give up. They do not want to persist with them. Nicotine and other drugs like that are very hard to kick once they get hold of someone. 
Would I go back to smoking now? I guess if someone produced a box of Sobranie Black Russian cigarettes I would give one a go. Former smokers are always vulnerable. Alcoholics are never cured they tell me. Formers smokers are never completely cured. It is a matter of opportunity. As I say if someone showed me a packet of Sobranie Black Russians or if I went into a shop and saw them I might have a go. I think the proposals in the bill to remove the visual temptation and to take away the opportunity from people can be only a good thing. 
I had the privilege of attending several sessions of the Maori Affairs Committee as it interviewed the tobacco suppliers which I spoke to. As a large contributor to their fortunes I felt entitled to have a fairly aggressive approach to them. I asked whether they really still believed in that wonderful old adage “cigarettes whiskey and wild wild women”. Largely tobacco suppliers are there to generate money—profits—for their organisation and their shareholders. They will fight extraordinarily hard to maintain that profile. 
I was very supportive of the work done by the Maori Affairs Committee and was very impressed that it almost went out on a limb and fought the issue—perhaps against the wishes of some of their own members—but fight it the committee did. I raise my hat of course to the— 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Hon Tariana Turia. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: —Hon Tariana Turia and her associates in the Maori Party. The tobacco industry can do without us we can do without smoking and we should strive to achieve the purposes of this bill. Thank you.