Stewart BarbaraBARBARA STEWART (NZ First): I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak to the second reading of the Smoke-free Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill. New Zealand First supported this bill to select committee at the first reading because we believed that it was really important to get the views of submitters which we listened to with interest and we promised to do that in our first reading speech. It was challenging to get a substantive view of the situation when we listened to the statistics because it depended on who was presenting the submission to us—whether they were in the industry campaigning for smoke-free or whether they were actually tobacco manufacturers—as to what the actual statistics were. There is absolutely no doubt that cigarettes are harmful and they cause a significant number of deaths every year. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the select committee that travelled to Australia to find out a little more about their smoke-free experience—Hon Simon Bridges: Sounds like a junket.BARBARA STEWART: No it was not a junket this time. We found out that from—Hon Simon Bridges: Tell us about the other one then because that'd be a much better story.BARBARA STEWART: We did not do that so—The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!BARBARA STEWART: —plain packaging in Australia—the trends showed that there is a downward trend of tobacco consumption in Australia but that was not necessarily related to plain packaging. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare confirmed that plain packaging does not show itself to be the key factor in this downward trend. Rather price was the key factor. Of course Australia is carrying out annual surveys and its population shows that in the year after plain packaging was introduced the consumption actually increased in most states. Youth smoking actually increased in that time as well. The researchers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in Australia analysed the Australian consumption habits and found that any evidence to suggest that the plain packaging policy has reduced household expenditure on tobacco is simply lacking." So the experience over in Australia showed that the Australian tobacco industry actually sold far more cigarettes and tobacco in the first year of plain packaging than it did in the last year of branded sales. In fact part of that growth was due to a large number of people buying roll-your-own tobacco because it was far easier to actually get. People were buying based on price. That was the cheapest way to go and it was easier than buying the cigarettes. We believe that people are not stopping smoking because of plain packaging but only changing the tobacco product that they purchase and really in New Zealand First we would like to see some reduction in tobacco consumption. Ironically I was talking to a group of young people and was told that they were not interested in the packets—Hon Simon Bridges: That is ironic.BARBARA STEWART: This was a lot of people I was talking to actually Mr Bridges and they were interested only in what was inside the packet. They did not care about the outside just the inside and of course it is very easy to buy containers to actually put the cigarettes into. They are easily available so that you do not have to see these diseased body parts when you want to indulge. So it is really easy to get around this plain packaging legislation with very little effort. Most smokers are now desensitised to those pictures on the tobacco packets so in New Zealand First we believe that a totally different approach is actually needed because those pictures do not mean a lot any more. We know that there should be education—we do not want people to die from cigarette smoking—and so perhaps we need to look at ads that are similar to the Tui ads which actually capture people's attention. They may be the best for smokers—something along that sort of line. We also want to know if we are going to go ahead with this plain packaging because we believe it is improving the health of New Zealanders whether we are going to apply the same precedent to alcohol which causes far more harm than tobacco. Are we going to apply it to high-sugar foods chocolate energy drinks high-salt foods and gambling? All of these are harmful. Why do we not remove branding from these items as well? We know that there are 1.2 million New Zealanders who are obese costing around about $686 million per year to the health care system. Why is there no action on branding? Likewise this afternoon the Government was unwilling to ban sunbeds even though there is a clear link between sunbed use and the development of melanoma. So why is there no sunbed-free New Zealand from 2015 or something? The Associate Minister of Health talked a lot about smoke-free New Zealand by 2025 and said that implementing plain packaging was going to be the very first step. We do not believe that there is a hope of introducing a smoke-free New Zealand by 2025 particularly if we keep following the path that we are on. If New Zealand is to be smoke-free why not ban tobacco? It is a legal product. We know that about 17 percent of New Zealand adults smoke so why not ban the product altogether? Also the excise tax on tobacco products raises about $1.4 billion each year and around $300 million is spent on smoking-related costs. What is the Government going to do to replace the over $1 billion in tax revenue that will no longer be collected if New Zealand becomes smoke-free? Also for tourism—our Asian tourists are smokers and it will have a negative on tourism. We have had letters saying that tourists will be turned off unwilling to come to New Zealand because they are not able to practise the habit that they enjoy. How many tourists are we actually going to lose with this stance? Finally we know that there is an increase in crime around cigarettes. Young people in particular are breaking into service stations and liquor stores which are being targeted not for the till but for cigarettes. Already in New Zealand we can see an increase in black market activity. We know that the New Zealand illicit tobacco market is estimated at about 8 percent of tobacco products. We are likely to see the same levels of illicit tobacco entering the country. Of course we have to be aware that people can—and are—growing their own tobacco products and drying them in their own garages and wherever. We do not believe that introducing plain packaging is the way to reduce the incidence of smoking. There has to be far more than that. In New Zealand First we have always said that we will support good legislation and we will oppose bad legislation. We do not believe that this measure is going to do what everyone believes it will. We will not be smoke-free we will still have smokers and we are just wasting our time carrying through this piece of legislation."