Williams Andrew: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williams Andrew: Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 September 2012. Volume:684;Page:5594. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First) 
: 
 I am taking a call on behalf of New Zealand First in the Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill debate. This bill will see a 10 percent cumulative increase in tax on tobacco commencing 1 January 2013 and applying every 1 January thereafter for 4 years taking a packet of cigarettes from something like $14 a packet to around $20 a packet by 2016. The bill states that the increase in the price of cigarettes will discourage tobacco consumption which in turn will improve the health of New Zealanders. New Zealand First will not oppose this bill as we agree that it is in New Zealand’s interest to tackle the harmful effects of smoking and the cost of cigarettes is one tool—a very simple basic tool—to limit consumption. 
However New Zealand First does have some concerns that this may be just a pay-off by the National Government to the Maori Party members in order to keep their vote and support. Is this just a sop to one of the Government’s cling-on parties to maintain its vote? It is a bit like the charter schools—another sop to a cling-on party to keep its vote as well. So we do wonder. Having heard in this House today how National Party members had opposed the many other increases in excises in the last decade it is interesting that suddenly the leopard changes its spots and agrees with it but probably only because Associate Minister of Health Tariana Turia has managed to convince Government members that she will maintain her vote with them only if they support this particular bill of hers. 
We do have concerns however about whether this money will not just disappear into the general consolidated fund as another way to prop up the National Government’s “Fagin Budget”. We have already had the “pick a pocket or two Budget” this year which included the Government taking $14 million of taxes from the paper boys and paper girls of this country. It was getting down to the rock-bottom way of getting money into the coffers by attacking the young people of this country who are trying to get out there and make a little bit of pocket money to perhaps pay for some of the things that they would like to have that they cannot afford. Or in some cases I have heard young children have actually paid for their annual school camp from the money that they have made from their paper round or their odd jobs. So it would be disappointing if this 10 percent cumulative tax was taken each year—a significant amount of tax—but was only to then disappear into the coffers. 
New Zealand First is supporting this on the basis that those taxes do go into genuine health support and into trying to reduce smoking such as through public awareness campaigns for instance or an increase in the media spend concentrating for example on the media showing the real effects of smoking on unborn babies—real stories real people the good and the bad. We would expect that such campaigns would dispel the whanau myths—smoking is a killer but the messages that may come down through the Maori whakapapa contradict these such as “I smoked through all my pregnancies and you lot are all right.” The truth is that cigarettes now contain many more poisons than ever before. They are more potent and New Zealand has more poisons than ever before. They have the highest levels of nicotine in the world which therefore makes them more highly addictive and harder to do without. 
New Zealand First would expect more funding from these tax increases to allow health professionals to work with specialist populations such as more specific support for those with mental illness who may find it difficult to quit without that extra assistance. The primary health organisations throughout New Zealand are doing a tremendous job in helping public awareness of this problem and addiction. Smoking cessation programmes need to become more integrated and prioritised across contracted funding streams such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Quitting smoking reduces risk across these health issues as well so the flow-on effect to our health system is enormous. It cannot be just an isolation of taxes on smoking; it must be hand in hand with the other health measures as well. 
Cigarette taxation needs to fund research with resources made available to those who are at the coalface without there being huge application processes. We need access to researchers who can give their time to help write up case-based realities to share and grow existing smoking cessation services. We need more training and recognition of the smoking cessation workforce and access for funded quality training. We also need money from these increased taxes to go into an innovation fund to recognise that there are lots of great suggestions to try to quit smoking such as in countries around the world where they have tried quit cafes. Those quit cafes have been successful in many other countries. 
I also sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee on behalf of the Rt Hon Winston Peters and one of the discussions that came up during that committee was that this legislation did not cover duty-free cigarettes. In fact there is a significant consumption of cigarettes that come via the duty-free stores in our airports and our ports but there was no real data—the officials could not provide data—on how many duty-free cigarettes were being sold. In Australia they have reduced the dispensation on duty-free cigarettes to only 50 now whereas we are still at 200; therefore if the Australians can see fit to reduce it to 50 cigarettes then we should be considering likewise. Otherwise why do all this work? Why have all this effort to try to increase the programmes to try to improve the education around smoking and ceasing smoking and yet still allow literally pallet-loads of duty-free cigarettes to hit you in the face as you walk off the aeroplane. If we are going to be genuine about reducing smoking and reducing the use of tobacco and cigarettes then this Government certainly needs to also look at duty-free cigarettes and line ourselves up more with the Australians who have obviously decided to get on top of the problem. 
New Zealand First will be monitoring what funding is provided from this taxation to ensure that the programmes that I have suggested and the health measures that I have suggested will receive the benefits of this increased taxation. We will expect to see the funding and delivering of the smoking cessation programmes to go up quite a few notches from where they are at the moment—not just lip-service from the National Government but proper funding and delivering of programmes to help the health of New Zealanders. These cigarette tax increases must not just be another way for this penny-pinching “Fagin Government” to pick the pockets of good everyday New Zealanders in order to balance the books of an ever-failing Government.