Flavell Te Ururoa: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Flavell Te Ururoa: Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18522. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Assistant Speaker i tenei ata. There is always a risk that with the rush of urgency some minor technical amendments will slip under the radar as it were—and that has wide-ranging repercussions. We have seen this in the last 24 hours with the reaction from employers about the changes made regarding KiwiSaver and the Employment Relations (Breaks and Infant Feeding) Amendment Bill. Employers are saying that the amendments to the Employment Relations Act introduced yesterday represent a major change to employment law which means they will now have to review their pay arrangements to ensure they are not in breach of the law and potentially exposed to a personal grievance claim from one of their staff members. We need to be far more careful when the bill under examination has received as in this case only one submission at the select committee hearing. So with all these warnings in place we have examined carefully the potential impact that the Customs and Excise Amendment Bill (No 3) could have.  
As far as the Maori Party is concerned the bill makes a number of amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to enhance the statutory appeal and review rights in relation to the forfeit and seizure regime. A particular issue of interest to us in the Maori Party in the examination of this bill was the personal use exemption on the growth and manufacture of tobacco. The amendments in this bill will give customs better control over the illegal tobacco manufacturing operations and that is all good. However the bigger picture is one of banning the sale manufacture and importation of cigarettes so that there is no industry or Government incentive for smoking.  
The Maori Party has stood strong in its vision to end the sale of cigarettes and smoking tobacco. We say that vision without action is but a dream and in our case it is more like a nightmare. Smoking kills one in three Maori for goodness’ sake. Why the heck would we support a bill that kills Maori? Is this first-class legislation? I do not think so. Perhaps the Minister should have broken up the bill a little in order to separate out the part in respect of the issues we are raising at the moment. The tyranny of tobacco over the lives of tangata whenua has a long history in Aotearoa. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: The tyranny of tobacco! 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: Mr Tau Henare knows about this as he used to be a smoker. Any knowledgable historian will point out that tobacco was gifted from Pakeha settlers as a tradable commodity to purchase food and land. We are told that some of our tupuna rangatira who signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi were treated to tobacco. The archives are bursting with picture cards and postcards of our men women and to our horror even our children being shot—with a camera I had better add—with a cigarette in their hand. I was also shocked recently to find that during the passage of defending the nation in war that Maori and Pakeha were routinely allocated cigarettes and tobacco along with their food rations. So does the Crown bear any responsibility to take action to end sales of cigarettes and smoking tobacco? Hell yeah of course it should. A ban on cigarette sales would save 4000 lives and $22 billion annually. [ 
Interruption 
] That is why Tau Henare finished smoking.  
Of course we welcome the graphic health warnings that now appear on all tobacco products. If anyone could be persuaded to give up surely one would think that the prospect of ending up with gangrenous toes diseased lungs smoking damaged hearts rotting teeth big pukus and damaged gums must have some— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Smoking gives you a big puku? How long have you been smoking? 
TE URUROA FLAVELL 
: The member should ask himself. Although it is early days yet in the course of the campaign to get rid of smoking we are mindful that the number of cigarettes available for sale has not changed in 3 years. In fact even worse the number of cigarettes available for sale has actually risen 2.8 percent over the previous year. And here is the horror statistic—the number of cigarettes available for sale has risen an astronomical 83.3 percent since 1985.  
We say that it is a weak excuse to say that these figures are rising just because there are more outlets for sale. The figures are rising because cigarettes are being sold and cigarettes are being smoked. The other issue to bear in mind is that although the officials tell us that smoking rates have been steadily decreasing the importation and sale of cigarettes is actually increasing. So the tobacco industry remains rich. In effect then the proportion of smokers is not decreasing as the population grows.  
Does this bill do much to address the bigger picture? From our perspective no it does not. We see a new clause that was recommended by the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee so that the personal use exemption being introduced by the bill is now part of primary and not delegated legislation. This means that rather than illegal tobacco manufacture coming under the stronger regulation-making powers that were originally suggested there is less flexibility to be able to control the black market tobacco trade. Putting the personal use exemption into this bill is as the Labour minority report itself acknowledged inconsistent with the other control arrangements. We believe with Labour that the stronger regulation-making powers are more effective in controlling the illegal tobacco trade. The flexibility and speed with which delegated legislation can be amended is we believe likely to be more effective in addressing the growth of the tobacco industry. 
We should not be we say fiddling around passing laws that allow the Government and industry to collect revenue from tobacco when the bigger picture of tobacco use and abuse is still prevalent. If there is one thing that really put the nail in the coffin of this bill it was the very fact that the only submission received was the support of British American Tobacco New Zealand Ltd. The company supported the bill particularly in respect of amending the Customs and Excise Act 1996 in relation to the illegal manufacture of tobacco.  
Let me make it clear that all this bill will really do is to ensure that Governments get their excise duty payments. Over the 11-month period to May 2008 the Government received an incredible $775 million in customs tax on tobacco and there is a forecast of $144 million in tobacco excise duty over the year to June 2008. Although the Government is happily receiving the princely sum of $919 million there is another group of figures I want to leave with this House. This morning I was presented with a table of figures showing the prevalence of cigarette smoking by New Zealanders 15 years and over from 1996 to 2005. Although there has been a decline in the all-out-high of 58 percent in 1996 the results for Maori have been consistently alarming. Over the last two decades the number of Maori smokers over 15 years of age has hovered steadily on or around the 50 percent mark—50 percent for goodness’ sake! These figures provide a compelling reason to do everything we can to stem the tobacco tidal wave that our people are submerged under and for that reason we will not be supporting this bill.