Bridges Simon: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
Bridges Simon: Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading Third Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10595] 
SIMON BRIDGES (National—Tauranga) 
: 
 There are some very simple reasons for the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill. First and foremost is that smoking is the single biggest preventable killer of people in this country. As Hone Harawira vividly put it the population of Kaitaia or thereabouts dies prematurely every year in this country from smoking—around 5000 people. We know and all the experts will tell us—they certainly told the Maori Affairs Committee—that the single most effective way to reduce the death toll and to reduce smoking is to put taxes up to increase the excise tax. So I am strongly and I speak as strongly as I am able to in favour of this bill. 
Before I came to the House this evening I was in a select committee meeting and then at a function so I did not know what the various parties’ positions were. I thought the most likely scenario was a House in unity a unanimous vote in favour of this bill and I think that would have sent a very strong signal and message to the people of New Zealand about smoking and this Parliament’s view on it. I was disappointed indeed to hear that a very small number of members are not supporting this bill but I explicitly commend John Boscawen for going against his party and following his conscience on this topic and giving a very good and thoughtful speech. 
If someone had asked me a year or two ago about my position on something like this excise tax I may well have said that I did not support it. I would have glibly said that people are free to choose and are free to do stupid things if that is what they choose to do. What changed things for me was a select committee inquiry by the Maori Affairs Committee that Hone Harawira pushed for and that as Tau Henare said National agreed to to its credit. We heard from hundreds of people—all sorts of people. There were academics experts and health personnel on the one hand and ordinary men and women young and old on the other. 
I will come to what they said very soon but I think before we do that it is worth talking about the problem we have with smoking in this country. I have already said to members that it is the single biggest preventable cause of death in New Zealand. It is a major contributor—this came through clear as crystal at the Maori Affairs Committee—to health inequalities for Maori. The figures that came from Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) say it all really. According to ASH non-Maori male life expectancy is 79 years and for Maori males it is 70.4 years—a difference of 8.6 years. Non-Maori female life expectancy is 83 years and Maori female life expectancy is 75.1 years—a difference of 7.9 years. ASH’s view and I agree with it is that eliminating smoking is the single most achievable way to go some way to closing the mortality gap between Maori and non-Maori. 
Why is that? I forget the exact figure but about 20 21 or 22 percent of New Zealanders smoke but for Maori the number is disturbingly high—42 percent of Maori men and 49 percent of Maori women. That is also the case for Pasifika people. It is disproportionately high although not as high as for Maori. In those figures we get a sense of the extent of the problem and of the evil of smoking. Yes it is an evil health-wise but we asked the experts who came to the select committee—we heard from dozens of them—what the common factor was and what the psychosocial reason behind smoking was and they said that it was disproportionately the lower socio-economic factor. It is about people coming from a certain background. We are dealing with a real evil. 
I have one other thing to say on the background to the problem. This bill is raising the tax on loose tobacco. That is a first step and then it will incrementally raise taxes across the board. According to ASH Maori smokers are most likely to smoke low-cost cigarette brands or roll-your-owns. Young Maori predominantly use roll-your-owns. Why is that? It is because of price and we are doing something about that as a House this evening. 
We know the problem; it is a serious one for this country. But what was the solution the select committee found? We heard from nearly 2000 submitters—no I tell a lie; some of those were form submissions. But all in all there were nearly 2000 submissions to the select committee. I have told the House often that we heard from academics and the like but we also heard from ordinary men and women. My recollection of the select committee process is that not a single submitter was against the excise tax going up. I tell a lie; probably implicitly British American Tobacco was implicitly. But in essence no one was against it and most were explicitly in favour. I remember a young Maori woman begging us to put taxes up. She had lost her father to smoking and tobacco. 
I came to this issue thinking that it was not the right thing necessarily to put up taxes. I had my own mantra if you like that I tested everything by in the select committee. It was “We have to do what works” and I wrote it down. I had a question for submitters that I put at the top of my paper every morning and my question to submitters was: “Let’s say that you can do only one thing to curb tobacco use. What would be the single most effective measure to undertake?” Nearly all submitters said to raise the tax—raise the tax raise the price. There were those who suggested absolute prohibition but I agree with Iain Lees-Galloway that that is probably not realistic. But nearly all submitters said to raise the tax and the academics were very clear that that works. In fact again when we asked them about the effect on lower socio-economic groups they said that lower socio-economic groups are the most price-sensitive and the most likely to change. They said as I think we have heard from Tariana Turia those are the groups that can potentially benefit the most from this measure. 
I think that the members of this House almost without exception can stand proud tonight. We are doing the right thing. Tobacco is the single biggest killer—preventable killer—of New Zealanders and raising the tax as we are doing will be the single most effective way to reduce smoking in this country. I am proud to be speaking for this bill.