Adams Paul: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Referral to Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Adams Paul: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Referral to Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 15 October 2003. Volume:612;Page:9234. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PAUL ADAMS (United Future) 
: 
 This is the first time I have spoken on this bill. 
Simon Power 
: Is this the real Paul Adams? 
PAUL ADAMS 
: This is Paul Adams of United Future. I am very proud to be in United Future the common-sense party. That is the party I am speaking on behalf of now. I hope to bring some common sense to the debate on the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill. I commend Steve Chadwick for the work that she has done on this bill. I am also a non-smoker and there will be a conscience vote in our party on this legislation. As the debate has gone on I have had to weigh it up but in the end I have had to look at this issue with my commerce spokesperson’s hat on. 
I see that 388 deaths are caused by exposure to second-hand smoke in New Zealand each year. That is a symptom of smoking. But I find that in a lot of legislation that goes through this House—which United Future with its common-sense policy will stand against—people look at symptoms and refuse to look at the causes of problems. Let us take cancer something that is often spoken about when dealing with this type of legislation. We can deal with the symptoms of cancer all we like but until we remove the cause of the cancer we have not removed the problem. 
Rt Hon Winston Peters 
: Which is? 
PAUL ADAMS 
: Smoking can be a cause of cancer but my father has smoked cigarettes all his life and is now well into his 80s. He had a chest X-ray not so long ago and there were no signs of any effects of his smoking over all those years. So I have had to look at smoking from a common-sense perspective. 
If we are concerned with deaths in this nation we should look at the problem from another angle. My dad drove all his life and unlike his son was a very careful and sensible driver often driving 1½ to 2 hours only. He would pull off the side of the road to do what was correct in his time: take a refreshment. He would often go inside a building and being a smoker he would light up. Now if this legislation goes through he would go in and instead of having a smoke he would have a beer. He could have as high a blood-alcohol level as he is allowed and—whoop-de-do—he would have saved people’s lives because he had not lit up a cigarette in the bar of the establishment but had taken the time to have a few pints. He could then gleefully go back out on to the road knowing that he had saved lives because he had refused to smoke. [ 
Interruption 
] Members need to have a few good preachers in this place to stir them up a bit and to get some common sense back into the place. That is what preaching is; it is common-sense. That is why people respond to it. So my old dad could go back on to the road with a system full of alcohol. [ 
Interruption 
] I say to members of the Opposition that that really gets us going. They should keep it up. My old dad could go back on the road with alcohol in his system. Where is the common sense in that? 
If we are really enacting legislation because we are concerned with the lives of New Zealanders members should ask themselves whether it is common-sense that people who fought for the nation and who have laid down their lives for it cannot in their latter years go to their clubs and have a smoke. I will vote against this legislation not because I am a smoker but because I believe it takes away the right of choice from people and is anti-business. Why should a business that has built itself up as a smokers’ bar—a cigar bar that people can choose to go into—have legislation come through that stands against it? 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: Hallelujah! 
PAUL ADAMS 
: Did the member like that one? 
Hon Members 
: Mr Chair! 
PAUL ADAMS 
: I have not finished yet. Many things are detrimental to our health such as being abused in the House as many members do to each other. If members did that in the workplace they would not be able to get away with it. But we somehow chose to come to this wonderful establishment and stand here getting verbally abused by those who stand against us and we respond to it. But we have chosen to come here.