Roy Heather: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
Roy Heather: Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill — Procedure Referral to Health Committee Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee 
[Volume:610;Page:7951] 
HEATHER ROY (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I would like to take over from where my colleague David Carter left off. Overseas examples that Action on Smoking and Health and other anti-tobacco lobby groups love to quote are quite instructive. The example most often put forward is that of California. Apparently we are supposed to consider ourselves favourably with California where the climate is significantly different from the one in New Zealand. In fact if we had the climate that California has smoking outside would not be nearly the problem that it is here. 
David Carter asked whether people on the West Coast would go outside when the weather is wet and cold in the middle of winter. I doubt it very much. 
Dr Lynda Scott 
: Only wet! 
HEATHER ROY 
: Lynda Scott says that it is only wet. I thank her for that. I think that they will not go outside whether or not it is wet or cold. But what has happened in New York? We should look at the New York example. It was put forward initially as a very good example for us because the climate is somewhat similar to ours. There is now a lot of public nuisance on the streets there. People are forced to go outside to smoke because it is the law although that is in question at the moment. People go on to the streets and cause a lot of public disturbance and the police are having a great deal of difficulty controlling people who have had far too much to drink going outside to smoke. In fact I read a story recently in  
The 
Economist 
—a great source of information—which the members who were in the Chamber earlier will have heard. A bouncer working at one club was trying to prevent people who had been at other premises earlier in the night and who had had far too much to drink from coming into his club—he was not allowing them to enter—and he was stabbed. That is quite an extreme example I will admit but there is a lot of public disturbance on the streets of New York. Again that is not something that we want to see in New Zealand. 
Another issue that I would like to go back to is the Returned Services Association. The member in the chair who is promoting the bill Steve Chadwick said earlier on that she would like to correct the things that people have been saying about the Returned Services Association. I have had considerable contact with the Returned Services Association since the bill was tabled in the House. Steve Chadwick says that only 12 percent of the over-65s smoke. That may well be a fact although I am not quite sure where that figure has come from. Even so not all over-65s attend a Returned Services Association. The clubs who wrote to me said that the vast majority of their members smoked and I had a large number of letters from people who said that they were not smokers and that they did not object to smoking at their local branch of the Returned Services Association. They said that they went there for the social contact and if they objected strongly to the smoke and did not want people to be smoking there they would not bother going. That is a significant fact. 
There was a very interesting letter to the editor of the  
Dominion Post  
quite recently from somebody who called himself an “old digger”. He was in the Second World War and was provided with cigarettes at the front and became addicted as a result. When he went off to war he was not a smoker so the Government basically had given him his addiction. He wrote: “My local RSA club charges an annual subscription and issues a membership swipe card.” In effect he was saying that it was a private club. The membership swipe card prohibits the entry of the general public into his local club. He went on to say that the Prime Minister has said in no uncertain terms that there will be no exceptions to the smoking ban. His reply to that was: “Well I have news for you. I intend to keep smoking at my RSA club in the designated area. I won’t put up with her attempt to stop me at my age from having the pleasure of a quiet beer and a cigarette!”. And who can blame him? He has served his time for this country. He has given this country the freedom that every one of us in this Parliament enjoys and we are about to take his freedoms from him. “Old diggers” he went on to say “should fight again for their freedom—the freedom to do what they want in their own private clubs without interference from a dictatorial Government.” 
That sums up the attitude we are seeing in this legislation. There is a loss of freedom a loss of choice and a loss of personal liberty taken by a Government that thinks it knows best and that tells the people of this nation how to live their lives. For that reason the ACT party is opposing this bill.