Brownlee Gerry: Smoke-free Environments (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Brownlee Gerry: Smoke-free Environments (Enhanced Protection) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:6617] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 This may well be a members’ day and this may well be a member’s bill but it is typical of the determination the current Government has to change the social fabric of this country. What an extraordinary night it has been where we find that we are not allowed to go into a bar and have a smoke over a beer but we can go to a bar to sell our bodies to whoever is prepared to pay for it. 
I want to make one comment about the irony of tonight. Here we are in a world of Osama bin Laden Saddam Hussein and various other terrorists and the Christians have come into the House tonight—those largely of Christian persuasion—thinking there is a chance that we might defeat the Prostitution Reform Bill only to find out that we are tipped up by the House’s only Muslim MP. I am sure that the irony in that will reverberate around various parts of the country over the next few hours. But when it comes to this bill I have to side with my colleague Dail Jones. I am not supporting it. If cigarette smoke or any tobacco smoke is so bad then the Government should come into this House with a full ban. It should come into the House with a bill that takes it out completely and that makes smoking as illegal as cannabis or any other drug. Until that happens everything we hear from those speakers is little more than the hot air that is the smoke coming off the cigarette itself. 
I notice that the Government is not prepared to give up its $7 tax per packet of cigarettes in order to facilitate the health advantages in New Zealand. Rather it wants to mount an attack on small business which this effectively is in saying that one cannot have a smoke in a club pub or a returned services association. In my view that has to be some sort of an outrage. 
I take the same view as Mr Jones. I do not like cigarette smoke. I get annoyed when I go into a smoky circumstance and I leave. Vote with one’s feet. Is it not staggering that this Government can crow on a daily basis about a surplus of jobs out there in the economy that it is doing so well that jobs are absolutely pouring out of the gunnels of this country—Mr Anderton comes down here day after day saying that one cannot go anywhere in the country where there is not a shortage of workers—and it wants to mount a campaign to change the law in this country to seriously impede the freedoms of New Zealanders because people might have to work in a smoky environment. If things are so good that choice is not a compulsion. Obviously those people have other options. 
I want to speak also about those who ask: “What about the children?”. I care deeply about children in this country. I do worry every time I see someone who is clearly pregnant smoking a cigarette. However I do not believe for one moment that banning the option of smoking in bars and other public places for people who are pregnant will prevent them smoking overall. So I go back to my original proposition. If the bill is so good and those members sitting over there are so pious and so strident in their view that tobacco is bad for New Zealanders then they should promote a bill that bans it completely. [ 
Interruption 
] 
I tell Tariana Turia that if she gets the Government to promote a bill like this I will back it. But that will not happen and do members know why? The Government loves the $7 that comes off every packet of cigarettes. It absolutely loves it. It will add that to the extra 10c regional tax it will take off our petrol very shortly to the little bit it added on to the sherry and the Madeira and the port the other week and to the electricity levy that is about to go on. Of course it is a huge augmentation to the “fart tax” it is about to impose on the farmers of this country as well. 
The Government is a tax-loving Government. I can only imagine the battles it had in its caucus when Steve Chadwick from Rotorua said: “Helen I’m sorry but I’m going to promote this bill because we don’t want smoking in this country.” Helen said “Well look would you mind paring it back from being a total ban on tobacco to just a ban on—let us say pubs because we do not like publicans. They are small business and we hate small business. But we do want the tax. We do want that $7 that comes off every packet of cigarettes. We want that tax going into the coffers.” 
My colleague has asked a question that clearly is important and I shall ask him to repeat it. [ 
Interruption 
] There you are! The Minister of Health is in the House supporting this bill and telling me that I am some kind of strange person for pointing out that it is just another form of social control and just another choice being taken off New Zealanders. I am informed that if one has a separate room in a public hospital in this country one is allowed to smoke. I cannot believe it! The Minister of Health is not on top of her portfolio when she comes into the House wanting to tell people they cannot smoke in a public bar but if they are lucky enough to get a room in a hospital they should go for their life. 
That just shows the horrible convoluted logic of that dreadful Government that is hell-bent on changing the social fabric of New Zealand. One cannot have a beer with a cigarette in a pub but one can sell one’s body outside and be congratulated for it; one cannot have a beer in a pub but if one ends up so crook that one is in hospital—sorry one can have a beer in a pub; but that will be next—one cannot have a cigarette in a pub but one can go into a hospital and have a smoke. 
 Well there you are. I have noticed that some speakers have said that this is part of a staged approach—we are slowly going to get rid of all the vices in society. I do not doubt that in a few years’ time we will see alcohol-free bars—that will be the Government’s new idea. The poor old publican will have to hang a sign outside saying “Come in for fresh air” because all the smokers will be hanging around on the pavement outside. The other day as I was walking back down the Terrace— 
Hon Annette King 
: That’s good for you. 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Walking is exceptionally good for a person except as I went past every public building I got an absolute inoculation with cigarette smoke because people have been forced on to the pavements. One comes back with cigarette butts stuck all over one’s shoes because smokers have been forced on to the pavement. But what I did notice was the extraordinary number of coffee shops now operating on the Terrace. One cannot go 50 metres up the Terrace without seeing about 20 or 30 coffee shops. I suggest that it will not be long before some erstwhile Labour Party social revolutionary concludes that caffeine is bad for us and we have a “Caffeine-free Bill” stuck in front of us because that is where small business is heading and wherever small business goes this Government hounds it because it hates small business. 
I want to conclude my remarks this evening by simply repeating that if tobacco is so bad for us—and I believe it is; I do not like cigarette smoking and it is not something I want to take up—why not ban it totally? The Government should not come in here with some half-hearted attempt to change the way in which society works by simply picking on some areas in New Zealand where people do make a choice. And I stipulate that they do make a choice. If I walk into a bar to meet somebody and it is full of smoke I walk out. If I go to a restaurant and anyone there is smoking I walk out. If I go to any public gathering and I do not like the cigarette smoke I walk out. The people who run businesses make a choice about whether that is what they want happening there. I do not think New Zealanders need much more of this legislation that tells them how when and why they must do something. This is a very bad bill. In the context of the bill that has been passed tonight it is a complete joke and a total irony and I hope the House has the good sense to end its passage tonight.