O'Connor Damien; Costello CaseyHon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Labour): Thank you Madam Chair I appreciate the West Coast loyalty. I'm going to table an amendment to Part 1—it's to clause 5—and the purpose is actually to follow through on what is a philosophical approach from this coalition Government and that's freedom of choice. But I'll step back a little bit and give you and some of my colleagues a little a history lesson because section 3A(i) in clause 5 refers to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control done at Geneva on 21 May 2003." I was there. I was the Associate Minister of Health and I was advised by one Ashley Bloomfield. So we were in Geneva at that time working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to make progress on the very challenge that we're talking about in the committee today. I'm proud of the progress that we had made and I have to acknowledge in this Chamber Dr Rob Beaglehole who had worked at the WHO for quite some time who was a passionate advocate—and indeed still is today along with his son—on reducing the harm from tobacco use across the globe and I have to say that a lot of their good work followed through into what we passed in 2003.So it is mentioned here: the obligations to give effect to that framework. But my amendment goes one step further and adds on paragraph (j) to say "to support personal choice by removing the addictive component of smoked tobacco products."We have as I say a Government that's all for freedom of choice and we on numerous occasions through legislation including this bit here are trying to—and the Government claims it's trying to—reduce the use of tobacco. The uptake—I'm not sure I buy into their views on the uptake because actually we know and it's been shown that more outlets promote more uptake and utilisation. Then the issue of addiction is the one that we grapple with across our society and indeed across the globe. So you can smoke and indeed people have smoked through the centuries in fact different weeds and different products. But what we have in modern products of course is nicotine which is in lower concentrations in many natural products but has been concentrated up to drive addiction. Indeed it's said that nicotine is more addictive than heroin. That is people who use it find it harder to break away from that than they do from heroin. That's a fact. And if the Government is indeed based on evidence and facts and they say they want to reduce the rate of smoking in this country because smoking kills—that's a fact. If this Government does have a conscience if the Government does indeed want to reduce rates of smoking then it will accept my amendment which adds on to or builds on the 2003 conventions from the World Health Organisation which says we want to reduce harm from tobacco smoking. And if we want to go into this further we would then take away the addictive component of tobacco. You can do that now. You couldn't probably do that a couple of hundred years ago when people were chewing or smoking tobacco with smaller amounts of nicotine. You can do that now. So I call on the Government I call on coalition parties in the Government to honour the statements that they are making in this House to reduce rates of smoking and to take my amendment and to just add on "to support personal choice". Well we hear a lot about that—personal choice—whether you own a gun whether you want to smoke or whether you want to drink. It comes flooding at us from the coalition Government time and time again. Well give people personal choice free them from addiction and let them smoke if they want to. But the minute you have nicotine—which is more addictive than heroin—in tobacco that is sold to people across this country then you have a problem.So let's try and reduce the issues here—of addiction. So I call on the Government to support my amendment in this piece of legislation and I ask the Minister to respond.Hon CASEY COSTELLO (Associate Minister of Health): I would first just respond to the question that's already been answered about why we're in a state of urgency.Hon Rachel Brooking: Not answered very well!Hon CASEY COSTELLO: I can accept that the question might not be acceptable but the fact is it is in the 100-day plan and we are working through to meet those obligations. And I would create clarity around the fact that this was in both ACT and New Zealand First's coalition—so it has come from two parties in the three coalition Government and that's why we are moving it through. I think the final question "Is it the case more people will smoke?" I would refer to the purpose of the legislation which is in the clause summary as to what our objectives are and the purpose of this legislation. I'm not sure where it fits within Part 1 but in terms of the illicit market and what advice we have received the member has clarified the position around the investment that was made in driving down the illicit tobacco market which was the $10 million introduced in 2022. The advice I've received around the illicit market is from Customs and it continues to be a concern and that money is continuing to be invested. But I'd note that this illicit market existed at a time when none of these measures that we're talking about were in place and therefore it would be hard to quantify what the illicit market would look like if these measures which we were now repealing had been implemented. And finally just in terms of the final comment from the member "We know more outlets create greater uptake" I would suggest that that is contrary to our evidence we're sitting with at the moment given that we have seen a massive reduction with the same amount of outlets that we've got currently."