O'Connor Simon: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is subject to correctionO'Connor Simon: 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:11428. Text is subject to correction.]SIMON O’CONNOR (National—Tāmaki): I am very pleased in this matter of urgency to discuss the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. This is an excellent bill. In fact I think listening to all the contributions that have been occurring in the House that that is ultimately the theme. There are a whole lot of distractions conspiracies and otherwise to try to take away from that but this is actually an incredibly good bill. I want to acknowledge Minister Sam Lotu-Iiga along with Marama Fox from the Māori Party for their work on this bill but particularly Sam who has shown I think very strong leadership in this space as we as a New Zealand Parliament and the New Zealand public move towards New Zealand being smoke-free by 2025.I have been disappointed by effectively the bluster and conspiracy from the other side particularly in two areas which I want to debunk. The first is this whole element of “Well smoking is legal therefore it is right.”—that is a very false point of thinking.Stuart Nash: No one said that at all.SIMON O’CONNOR: No actually we just heard that from the last speaker Fletcher Tabuteau who was saying: “Look this is legal; it is nanny Statism.” We have actually heard it and we are going to hear it I suspect from our more libertarian friend afterwards. Just because something is legal does not make it right and therefore I think it is quite appropriate for the Government to actually—Iain Lees-Galloway: Tax dodging.SIMON O’CONNOR: Tax dodging? Once again we see the absolute lack of thinking and rigour from the other side. There is never an idea that they have been able to comprehend that they could not sort of try to comprehend.David Seymour: The Labour Party is legal but it’s not right.SIMON O’CONNOR: So look—that is right. Absolutely. Actually the best example has just been given: the Labour Party is legal but it does not make it right. That is actually the second element that comes up.Tim Macindoe: Nor was the pledge card.SIMON O’CONNOR: That is right. So first and foremost just because something is legal it does not make it right. Coming out of that then was the suggestion that this is a tax that therefore the poor will pay. First I do not think there is much or direct evidence of that. Second the whole point of this excise tax is to encourage people to not smoke OK? So if people stop smoking through measures such as this they cannot ipso facto be paying the tax—sorry I was just throwing a bit of Latin in there.The next element of course—and we have been hearing it from I think Stuart Nash in particular—is about all these other harms in society. He was talking about sugar and in fact we have heard about it from others. I should not pick on just Stuart Nash but he was saying that alcohol is harmful. He did not actually quite get to coffee being harmful but we heard that sugar is harmful. I think members who go down that line—particularly in this context of us putting an excise tax on tobacco—forget that tobacco is by its very nature harmful OK? Sugar is not harmful by its nature. Coffee is not harmful by its nature. Alcohol in fact by its nature is not harmful there can be harm associated with it; but we are talking about something fundamentally different here when it comes to tobacco. [Interruption] I hear chortling from members on the other side but then again they do not understand science. It is actually very interesting.So this is actually in context an incredibly good bill: to put a tax on a compounding tax starting from January this year to encourage people to not smoke. I think what is going to be quite interesting and I am conscious that we go through all parts today is that we will be able to raise some other elements particularly what the Government is doing in the health space. I think I will address that in other readings around how this tax will be actually targeted to health and I will also be able to raise more points around what the Government is doing quite rightly beyond the excise tax to support the cessation of smoking. So I commend this bill in its first reading.