Scott Lynda: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Referral to Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Scott Lynda: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Referral to Health Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Sitting date: 15 October 2003. Volume:612;Page:9212. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 As members will be aware the National Party is having a conscience vote on this bill but as I am a doctor and was a geriatrician I saw the consequences all the time of what smoking does to New Zealanders. That is not just active smoking. It also involves passive smoking and what we now call second-hand smoke. Only 30 percent of New Zealanders smoke; 70 percent do not. A lot of people in that 70 percent would quite like to go down to the pub or the club but the cigarette smoke puts them off. I conducted a bit of a survey in my electorate. Everybody wanted smoke-free restaurants. There was a bit more ambivalence about pubs and clubs but the large majority of people certainly wanted smoke-free environments. 
I will be supporting this bill because we have to remember that strokes heart attacks and arterial diseases are the leading causes of death in this country and cost our health system a huge amount of money. People who have smoked in the past are just encouraged to go back to smoking when they go down to the pub and if they have never been smokers they do not stand the environment for very long. So 70 percent of people out there may decide they want to go down to the pub or club on a Friday or a Saturday night if it is a smoke-free environment. 
The Health Committee made considerable changes to Part 2 which is where the most significant changes are. One of the ridiculous things that had been put into the bill by a Supplementary Order Paper we changed was a provision to allow smoking rooms at schools. Most schools in New Zealand have gone totally smoke-free. To reintroduce a smoking room would have been ridiculous so that provision was taken out and smoking is now prohibited at schools and early childhood centres. If we want our children to grow up healthy we do not want their main role models—after their parents teachers come next—smoking in the school environment. We do not want children to see smoking and think that it is cool because it is not. It affects their health and will contribute to major ill health when they get older. 
We also looked at dedicated smoking rooms in hospital care institutions residential disability care institutions and rest homes. Let us face it if people get to a rest home and are still alive and still smoking we should be kind to them. We cannot really kick people out into the rain to have a cigarette outside at that stage so we were kind and generous and understood that situation. 
Peter Brown 
: Why are you doing it in RSAs? 
Dr LYNDA SCOTT 
: People who go to Returned Services Associations can still walk and get about. That is not quite so easy when one is in a rest home so we allowed for dedicated smoking rooms in rest homes. Members will ask why we did that in hospital care institutions. The fact is that some people are absolutely desperate. I would like to see all people especially in hospitals not smoking. It is amazing how many people on their first visit to the coronary care unit when a staff member walks in and says “Stop the smoking right now.” do so. But why should people wait until they get to the coronary care unit which costs them and the country huge amounts of money and which is a cost to their health? It is much better to give up now—and so many people have. Huge numbers of New Zealanders have given up smoking and they are better off for it. We want to encourage that and we want to encourage it in a social situation. 
Originally two environments had been looked at resulting from a division into smoking and non-smoking areas. That would have imposed huge compliance costs on a large number of businesses—small businesses that could not physically divide a space into two areas—so it seemed better to have a level playing field with all pubs and clubs involved. If we took clubs out every business would licence itself as a club and it would be an utterly unfair playing field for pubs so because this legislation is trying to improve public health and the health of our nation we have moved it forward. 
I had a really good look at the issue of ventilation air standards. We went to the Australian Capital Territory where there is a ventilation air standard and there is evidence that carcinogens cannot be removed. The other thing we were told in Australia was that everyone turns ventilation systems off. They are very expensive to run when hot air is being dragged out and buildings need to be heated to a large degree in winter and cooled in summer. The Australians found when they audited ventilation systems that most had been turned off.