Turei Metiria: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5599. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I want to speak briefly on this report. We also support it. It is funny listening to the grumping about it given that most parties I think if not all of us are supporting this legislation the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill. We know that raising the tax on tobacco works to deter people from smoking and particularly to deter new smokers from taking up smoking. That is a good thing. We know that it is one of the most effective tools. It is disheartening for those of us who want to see us meet our Auahi Kore 2025 goal to see the timidity—if that is the right word—with which this Government is pursuing this policy. I think it is very telling as my colleague Kevin Hague said that the Ministry of Health suggested that there should be a 40 percent increase in the tax Treasury suggested 10 percent and 10 percent is what the Finance and Expenditure Committee has proposed. 
There are some 5000 smoking-related deaths a year 600 of which are Maori deaths. Smoking costs around $2 billion a year in health costs. So this is a very serious issue. There are 150000-odd Maori in this country who smoke. The Maori Affairs Committee inquiry was I think one of the most detailed inquiries ever into tobacco in this country not just for Maori but on issues across the board. The recommendations included denormalising tobacco and not allowing it to continue to be a normal product on New Zealand shelves which I want to talk about in a moment; reducing availability; putting some pressure on the industry rather than just on consumers; transparency in the additives that tobacco companies use in their cigarettes to help maintain the level of addiction—and again I shall come back to that in a moment—and tax increases. They were key issues. The inquiry also talked about the elimination of interference by the industry in regulation setting. 
I want to touch just very briefly on this report  
International Trade Law and Tobacco Control 
 which was produced by Professor Jane Kelsey in May of this year. It sets out very clearly the risk to New Zealand through international trade agreements on continuing to regulate to meet our Auahi Kore 2025 goal. What she sets out in there and what the Maori Affairs Committee has heard from evidence about this is that in order to achieve this goal for 2025 we have to be very careful about the challenges at the World Trade Organization for example under trade rules where countries have been challenged on their tobacco regulation. We must be very conscious of the State-investor enforcement powers in international trade agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership which is currently being negotiated that give tobacco companies a great deal of power to challenge countries and to challenge nation States on the regulations that they want to put into place including potentially not just taxes but a whole range of measures in order to meet our goal of Auahi Kore 2025. We need the strongest regulation and the right to continue to put in place the strongest regulation in New Zealand’s law to protect the interests of our people and from our perspective in the Maori Affairs Committee to protect the interests of Maori. 
I would also say that there is a new development in drug law reform that Peter Dunne is proposing which I support and which I think will have some better uses in the future. He is recommending reform for a new regulatory regime to control the sale of psychoactive drugs in the New Zealand market. He is proposing to establish a regime where any new psychoactive product would have to be tested would have to meet safety concerns and would need to be proven safe before it is put on the market. That is quite a small industry and there have been very few deaths related to that industry. I would strongly suggest that tobacco should be subject to exactly that same regime. As a product that kills 5000 New Zealanders a year and a product from which there is enormous profit made off the poorest in our country it should be proven safe. If that is to be done they would then have to be transparent about the additives that tobacco companies use to increase addiction which was a major issue that we dealt with in the Maori Affairs Committee inquiry. 
We support this legislation. The Government is timid. It is terrible to see that not only are the Finance and Expenditure Committee and this Parliament rejecting serious taxes on alcohol for example but also this Government is rejecting serious taxes on tobacco when we know that these are major tools to help protect the health of New Zealanders which surely is what we are here for.