Doocey MattMATT DOOCEY (National—Waimakariri): Oh look—took me by surprise a Government MP couldn't even speak for the full 10 minutes on his own bill. And I'm not surprised. Isn't it—getting near the end of the year—just an absolute shambles as this Government crawls towards the end of the year? But there was one quote I noticed today: I quote I feel I am better suited for government than opposition"—Jamie Strange Labour MP from Hamilton East. Because he's been at the front line of the political war for the last six weeks and he knows how the tide is turning. "I feel I am better suited for government than opposition …"—it says it all really. Good on him for standing up and being honest. There's a lot of crossover in that honest statement today from Jamie Strange to the bill we're discussing today. A bill that is filled of missed opportunities; a bill that speaks to an arrogant Government that knows best. Full of sound bites and virtue signalling but when you look deep into the public policy aspect of this bill it is hugely lacking. The flaws that my learned colleague Dr Shane Reti spoke about in the first reading clearly outline why National will oppose this bill in its third reading. And here we go another example of Dr Shane Reti who on his own has put a compelling argument forward and a credible alternative and gifted it to the Government who turned it down. Shades of months ago when the Government was scrambling and struggling to put legislation together for the medicinal cannabis bill and Dr Shane Reti put his own framework together that was widely acclaimed by the health community. Here we have again another issue with this Government that just won't listen. As Dr Reti clearly outlined the National Party agrees with the end goals. In fact to a point we actually even agree with the three policy levers of reducing retail shops denicotisation and making it illegal for a certain cohort of New Zealanders born after 2009 to buy cigarettes. But where we differ on this side of the House is the order of those three levers. Why are we sending the sacrificial lambs—our small-business owners—in first? Ones that have been under the pump for several months due to the soft-on-crime Government who are facing the voracity of the increased crime in New Zealand. And now through the sound bites and the virtue signalling they are put up first to lose their livelihoods. Under this bill potentially 6000 small retailers will be reduced to 600. All we're saying is "Yep that's a lever you can use but why not pause? Why not use one of your other policy options first?"—denicotisation. Because if reducing the nicotine in cigarettes gives us the ability of reaching the smoke-free goal of 2025 of less than 5 percent of New Zealanders smoking then why would we not try that first? We still haven't had one compelling reason from this Government. One of the reasons we don't have any compelling reasons is because they get up and do 90-second speeches. Welcome to being a Government backbencher in an unpopular Government where the whip just says "I'm not worried you've been up all night preparing your 10-minute speech—we want to rush this bill through. It's not the best; we'll just get it through. Ninety seconds—just go for it." And to think that these MPs two years ago were in the electorates you know saying to their constituents "I'll work hard for you." you know? And what they call that is a lion in their electorate but a lamb in Wellington. Because they won't stand up for their electorates and they won't do the right thing. So I look forward to the Government MPs going back to their small-business owners going back to their dairy owners who are under a lot of pressure at the moment to say "Yep there was another policy lever open to us: denicotisation. We could have done that first but we chose not to."And you can't say the science stacks up because what was very interesting in the first reading of this bill was how much international coverage this bill got. And fair enough too. I mean it's quite experimental. I don't have any problem with New Zealand leading the way and I think we've got to try things. We've got to be flexible we've got to be responsive and we've got to be reflective but it just doesn't make sense when you sequence those three policy levers why the current Government is so stubborn about closing down our small-business retailers first. Why would you not try denicotisation?Then there is the other issue around the gaps we've now got in this bill because there was a real opportunity to address some of the issues about vaping we have in New Zealand. I personally think for those who smoke and have the ability to transition to vape it's a fantastic solution for them. It's great and for many it's been the only solution that has worked when they've tried several mechanisms for getting off tobacco smoking. The problem we do have in New Zealand though is there are a number of young people who haven't smoked—traditionally tobacco first—going straight on to vaping. I'll challenge any MP in this House that hasn't heard of or been approached by a parent who's really concerned why underage kids are getting access to vapes at the vape stores in our towns and in our cities. And this was an opportunity to put in—again Dr Shane Reti wrote it all out for the Government. These guys have got thousands of officials and one astute doctor writes better policy than their thousands of officials. Because he knows what's right and that's why he did it. So why did we not tighten that up for young kids who are getting access to vapes? I've tried to address it in the small town I live in and the police just basically said "Too many bigger priorities at the moment Matt. We're not going to be able to focus on that." This bill could have gone part of the way to do that as well as enabling through legislation a view on proximity by the director-general for future vape shops? And you might ask "Well has a Minister tried to muddy the waters through the committee of the whole House stage?" Well the similarities between proximity of vape shops and reducing from 6000 to 600 for tobacco shops—very different. It's not retrospective; proximity for vape shops was growth for the future. We had an opportunity—we've had several opportunities through the course of this bill. We have a hard-working future health Minister. And boy I'll tell you what the state our health system's in at the moment especially for those people who go into our emergency departments wait longer than six hours than they did under a National Government and then leave because they can't get seen—they can't wait till Dr Shane Reti's the health Minister to bring back targets into our health system and to bring back a health system that actually delivers. When you listen to Dr Shane Reti it's very clear from his speech that he's focused on the outcomes. It's very clear that if we're going to reach Smokefree 2025 the three policy levers we are debating in the third reading this afternoon are ones we're happy to support. It was how you would deploy those three policy levers and what we're doing now is setting up our small-business owners our dairy owners our retailers—all members of our local communities—and they're going to have to front it. They're going to have to front it with their families and do the heavy lifting when denicotisation could have been the lever—it could have been the one that drove it down. As Dr Shane Reti clearly pointed out we could have reviewed it and gone from there. But another example of a Government that's stubborn has missed opportunities and is arrogant."