Banks John: Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBanks John: Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 February 2014. Volume:696;Page:15804. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT): I rise to oppose this Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill with lower case narrative. It seems rather interesting does it not? I do not seek to be churlish but I remind this House that I was the only member of this House who voted against recreational drugs in this country. Yet we hear tonight about the sovereign rights of every nation to protect its citizens. I do not disagree with that but I would have thought those many weeks ago that there was a sovereign right for this House to protect its young people around Sunday recreational drugs. But we will leave that aside.I am not unhappy that this bill is going to the Health Committee but it is an exercise in rain dancing in the early stages of an election year. That is what it is: an exercise in rain dancing. It will make members feel good—feel that we have achieved something this week in Parliament for the people and exercised our sovereign right as a nation. We want plain packaging of tobacco but we allow alcohol to be advertised on TV tonight—Hon Annette King: Good point.Hon JOHN BANKS: I thank the former Minister of Health and I give praise and thanks to her colleague who is now at the United Nations. Phil Goff and I remember well 10 parliaments ago sitting in an aeroplane at 7 o’clock in the morning flying to Wellington with most of the people up front chain-smoking cigarettes.Hon Phil Goff: And we sat in “smoke-free” with no barrier.Hon JOHN BANKS: And we did. We sat in rows A and B in the smoke-free section of Air New Zealand and of course when we got to Wellington we all smelt like ashtrays. No one could believe that Phil had started smoking not even Mike Moore who never smoked by the way—at least not in an aeroplane.We got these deaths last year from tobacco but alcohol causes much more harm than tobacco. I suppose that as a wowser it is easy for me to say it but I am opposed to both alcohol consumption and tobacco use. They are both available at the corner dairy and they are both legal products sold by legal entities into a market of free enterprise. We wanted to ban tobacco advertising but what are we doing about it really? We are introducing a bill early in an election year so that we can feel good about taking a stance against tobacco addiction mainly with our young people and the harm that it causes. But this legislation will not see the light of day until the next parliamentary term. I think if this country and the parliamentarians supporting this legislation were committed they would ram it through the House in the dead of night and put it on the books. But we are not doing that—we are not doing that. So I see this as a very interesting exercise in futility.But I want to say to the Associate Minister of Health Tariana Turia what a great soul she is and what a fine member of Parliament and a great ambassador for her people she is. She has done a very good job extending the work of previous health Ministers in getting rid of tobacco in this country. I am looking forward to 2025 when this country is tobacco-free. We will see pigs flying across this Parliament but that is OK because I will not be anywhere near this place.The point I am making is that if we really want to get to the bottom of tobacco addiction in this country which is mainly amongst the young then the international evidence is that increasing the price substantially—increasing the price substantially—is the single biggest initiative we could take. If this Government wanted to take that initiative by doubling the excise duty on tobacco over the next 5 years I would support that. No one dislikes smoking more than me. Idleness educational failure and despair drives the take-up of smoking in so many of our young—idleness educational failure and despair. You can see it in the eyes of the people who consume these products on the streets of this country every day of the week. We should address the underlying cause ofthe deep vein of deprivation. For many smoking is merely a symptom of those causes of that deep vein of social deprivation.I congratulate the Associate Minister again. I need to put that on record. However I ask my Māori Party and National Party colleagues to carefully consider the precedent they will set with this bill. This bill guts the intellectual property rights of tobacco companies. Some will ask: well who cares? But do we want to gut the intellectual property rights of KFC or Red Bull sugar drinks? KFC and Red Bull sugar drinks are putting this country’s level of obesity up at the top of the OECD. They help to contribute to that. It may be seen as a long bow but the removal of intellectual property rights to the names and brandings of their products from tobacco companies without compensation is wrong because which international company selling products that are bad for our health will be the next target? The State is effectively seizing their property because it does not like the health effects of their still lawful business. It is still a lawful business.If a member wants to bring a bill into this House to ban tobacco that would be an honourable proposition because it then would be an illegal activity. But successive Governments have reaped massive benefits from excise duty on tobacco products. It is a fundamental tenet of our common law that citizens should not be denied their property rights without just compensation. You would not let it happen to the neighbour in your street if the local council was just as cavalier with its seizure of some of the property on your front garden. It is a property right. It is a property right.I know the Opposition does not talk about property rights. This is a parliamentary Opposition that goes to Dotcom’s mansion and tells him that if it becomes the Government he will not be extradited to the US. So it is all very well—[Interruption] I know it has hit a raw nerve. The members opposite might have to rush out and have a smoke. I know I have hit a raw nerve.The House should not do this. The common law is not only the gift of our British forebears but also of Māori who believe in a country under the rule of law where property is rightfully protected. We will have debates in this Parliament this month next month and for the next 10 years about property rights for the indigenous people of this country. The property rights for the indigenous people of this country are the same as the property rights for international companies lawfully trading in a lawful product in this nation. I say again that no one dislikes smoking more than me. I say to the Greens: what about a Supplementary Order Paper to this bill at some stage where you double the price of tobacco over the next 5 years? That will have an effect.Kevin Hague: We’re going to propose that.Hon JOHN BANKS: He is going to propose that. Of course we are waiting for the Aussies—we are waiting for the Aussies. If we really believed that banning advertising on cigarette packets in the local dairy was going to fix the problem of the uptake of smoking with young people—young Māori women in particular—then why do we not pass it through all its stages tonight?The point of principle is tough to apply in hard cases. The pain and loss caused by tobacco use is heartbreaking. It is heartbreaking. The pain and loss caused by tobacco is heartbreaking but this is a battle of the lawyers about freedom of expression. The second principle is that we should protect the freedom of expression of which the names of products their branding and their intellectual property are part. If we do not like it then increase the price of tobacco over the next 5 years by 100 percent use the money that we raise to buy the property rights of the international tobacco companies get rid of them for ever and become smoke-free in 2018. What a good thing that would be. I would support it. I would support it. I note my friend the Attorney-General has notissued a section 7 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report on this bill so it seems to have been cleared.Yes we want New Zealand to be smoke-free. Of course I support the amelioration of harmful tobacco. However I oppose this bill for the propositions I have outlaid and I welcome it going to the select committee.