Kuriger Barbara: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeKuriger Barbara: 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:11430. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]BARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): It is a pleasure to take a short call on the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. What I really want to say today is that the previous speaker David Seymour said in talking about the intent of this bill that we are doing this because people are doing something we do not like. It is actually not about not liking it; it is a matter of doing it because smoking kills people. It is a life and death situation. It has actually been a long-time proven that it kills people.This excise tax is a powerful tool as we have seen in the past. I know that as we get harder and harder into the people who have been smoking for a long time it gets a bit harder to make an impact but this is one of the tools—and one of the effective tools—that we can use to make a difference. It is only one tool and this is why we have had a question today about where the money will be spent and whether it is a tax take. Actually this has been debated by the Health Committee because this is about the health of people. This excise tax is only one in a number of tools. We have adopted the Better Help for Smokers to Quit programme. Actually 95 percent of people who now visit a hospital have a conversation with their doctor or with their health professional about smoking. Over 470000 people of about 550000 people who smoke have received at least some minimum advice from their health professional. So this is all part of the programme.The other thing that this Government has done is it has increased the fines from $2000 maximum to $5000 maximum for those people who are selling cigarettes to minors. That was an extremely good move as well because the last thing we want is for people to start this habit young. We all know it is addictive and if they start young the potential for them to smoke for a very long time is huge so the sooner we can cut that out the better. As the Associate Minister of Health the Hon Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga said before—and I want to give credit to the Minister and also to the Māori Party for bringing this piece of legislation forward—12 people a day are dying a premature death from smoking. This really is a health issue and if this is one tool in our tool box that we can use to help smoking cessation then we should be looking at doing that.The other thing that this National Government has done is ban smoking in prisons. There are a whole lot of moves as part of this tool box that we are actually doing. Over half of all long-term smokers will die of a smoking-related illness. It kills people. But quitting smoking by the age of 40 actually reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related diseases by about 90 percent so it is my pleasure today to support this piece of legislation and commend it to the House. Thank you.