Nash Stuart: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11457. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Let me just sum up the contributions to this bill from the different parties. We have had David Seymour ignoring all the evidence that actually shows that an increase in the tobacco price stops people from smoking. So when he says that every single person who smokes is going to be hit with $2000 a year that is actually wrong. The academic peer-reviewed evidence shows that an increase in the price will stop a number of those people from spending significantly more money on tobacco than they are at the moment.The other thing about the ACT member is that he stands up here and calls this bill an abomination and a disgrace says how terrible it is and then he votes for it. Mr Seymour should actually stand for something. He should actually stand for something. I know that the Prime Minister has given him a mandate to vote against a bill that he does not agree with so Mr Seymour does have the mandate to vote against this bill. He despises this bill but he is voting for it. In Labour when we do not agree with a piece of legislation we vote against it.We have had the Associate Minister of Health Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga ignoring our calls to get it right and turn this into a real success and a piece of legislation that will work—a piece of legislation that can be backed by academic peer-reviewed research as well as by community groups that are dealing with this issue every single day. What I would say to the Minister is that I disagree with his last speech. Do not take our Yes vote as unqualified support for this bill because we have a number of concerns about the money that is being collected the $425 million that is being collected on this—that it will just go into the consolidated account. There will not be more cessation programmes. There will be less help for people who want to quit.What we would really like to see as Louisa Wall and I have talked about numerous times is more programmes targeted at those in the early education programme so that it is absolutely uncool at any stage to smoke. We have got to turn that peer review round from “OK my peers are smoking. Hell I’d better be cool.” to “It is very uncool to smoke.” We need a decent chunk of this $425 million to go into education and smoking cessation programmes. I think the Minister could have got a lot of political capital if he had come out and said that this policy is going to be backed by good public policy in terms of cessation programmes and education programmes.We have had New Zealand First members stand up ignore the evidence and say “Get stuffed.” to any measure that will reduce the harm caused by smoking. I am a little bit surprised actually. I thought that New Zealand First members were on the right track took an evidence-based approach and really drove outcomes. To stand up and say “Get stuffed.” to—10 percent of all deaths in our health system are from smoking. Ten percent and they are saying to any measure that addresses that: “Get stuffed.” I think that is the wrong message.Then you have Labour. Labour has tried to take a balanced evidence-based approach to this. We would have liked to see a greater increase in the excise tax to 20 percent as recommended by University of Otago researchers. We would have liked to see a whole lot of this money—not all of it but a lot of it—put into programmes that help people to break that nicotine addiction which is an incredibly powerful addiction. We would have liked to see a chunk of this money stuck into education programmes that actually stop people smoking before they start.We all agree that a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025 is an admirable target. We all want to get there because it is right. It is right for this country and it is right for the people who live here. But what we do not agree on at this point in time are the measures put forward by this Budget. They could have been better. They should have been stronger. We will support this legislation but we just think it could have been a lot more powerful and sent a much stronger message. Thank you very much.