Kedgley Sue: Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Kedgley Sue: Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:669;Page:16223] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 It is rare to see legislation in this House that puts the public interest ahead of vested interests but the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill does that. It puts the interests of New Zealanders ahead of the vested interests of the tobacco industry so I think it is something of a red-letter day to see this rare sort of legislation in the House. I too congratulate the Hon Tariana Turia the Maori Party and the inquiry into tobacco undertaken by the Maori Affairs Committee that they have triggered. I also congratulate Iain Lees-Galloway on his member’s bill. I suspect the fact that Iain Lees-Galloway’s bill was selected from the ballot and was ready to be debated in this House has probably sped up the introduction of this legislation into this House.  
I was on the Health Committee 5 years ago when we considered a petition that recommended that the Government require tobacco and cigarette displays in retail outlets to be out of sight. Iain Lees-Galloway is absolutely correct that National opposed that legislation. I have the report here. National said that in the opinion of its members there was a need for more international evidence. That is something we hear a lot about these days. We hear about the need for more international evidence of the link between alcohol and accidents for example. Anyway the National members said there needed to be more international evidence at that time that banning tobacco displays would bring about a significant decrease in smoking in order to present a compelling and convincing case to the public. That is what the National members argued in the select committee. They argued that there was not enough international evidence despite the fact that a number of countries had already introduced legislation to get tobacco and cigarette displays out of sight. Those countries included Iceland Ireland and the United Kingdom but National felt at that stage that there was not enough evidence. It is great that 5 years later we finally see this legislation in the House.  
When we were considering this issue in the select committee it was pointed out that 10000 retail outlets have tobacco displays around New Zealand. People can go into virtually every supermarket in the land—well I think every supermarket—every dairy and every petrol station and see a huge display behind the checkout counter. In fact I was at a Shell station the other day and I walked up to the counter and saw a huge display of cigarettes just behind the counter and all around the rest of the shop was confectionery chocolate and so forth. I recalled that the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and Infratil have taken over Shell. I thought maybe they could indicate their commitment to New Zealand by taking a lead and getting rid of cigarette displays before the legislation takes effect. At the same time they could get rid of the huge amount of confectionery that is there alongside the cigarettes in every single Shell petrol station in the land.  
Anyway the Health Committee was presented with lots of international evidence that tobacco displays called power walls create the impression that cigarettes are just another harmless grocery product—just another consumer product. The displays legitimise tobacco products and give a false impression of the safety of cigarettes. They are also of course a constant temptation particularly to anyone who has given up smoking. People go into the supermarket and see cigarettes which are a constant temptation. Above all the displays are a huge temptation for young New Zealanders. Every time children go into a supermarket they see cigarettes. The displays have a very significant influence in tempting young people to take up smoking. I thank God that in this House we will put the public interest ahead of the vested interest and we will get rid of those so-called power walls—the tobacco displays.  
One of the interesting things that we learnt in that committee was that the suppliers of cigarettes may—I think almost always—pay retailers to display their products. They would not tell us how much they paid although we asked them about that in the select committee. It was a bit like Coca-Cola which pays retailers and schools to have its vending machines all over New Zealand. So it is with the tobacco companies which pay retailers to have tobacco displays. Those commercial arrangements are the subject of confidentiality clauses known as “financial incentive arrangements”. It is no wonder that some small dairies are worried that they will lose income because one of the main sources of income that they will lose is the money that they are paid to display cigarettes in a tempting way right behind the checkout counter.  
It is interesting to talk about the lobbying of the tobacco industry. The latest issue is that the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) points out that the Australian ABC has recently obtained internal emails invoices and contracts that reveal that the tobacco companies in Australia had hired a public relations firm which told them to launch a campaign hidden under a third party like a retailers association to oppose plain packaging. ASH pointed out that a New Zealand retailers group the Association of Community Retailers was also linked with the tobacco industry. So the relentless campaigning by the tobacco industry still continues to this day and the industry still puts up third-party front organisations like the Association of Community Retailers to try to run campaigns opposed to plain packaging.  
But there are other interesting things; it is not just that. We now have big tobacco companies trying to use the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Members will recall that this week we have been negotiating the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Auckland. The tobacco companies are trying to use our trade negotiations to block anti-smoking laws in New Zealand. We had Philip Morris one of the largest multinational tobacco companies actually making a submission that it wants to use our trade agreements to try to stop Governments from introducing anti-smoking measures such as the ones that we are introducing tonight. Philip Morris is extraordinarily taking action against Uruguay’s proposed anti-smoking laws under the investor dispute mechanism in one of the free-trade agreements an agreement between Uruguay and Switzerland. Uruguay is proposing new measures to require graphic warnings on cigarette packaging and Philip Morris argues that requiring such packages would expropriate its investments. It is using a mechanism under that free-trade agreement to require a World Bank panel to decide whether Uruguay should pay Philip Morris for that so-called expropriation. Philip Morris is targeting our negotiations to require that it would be able to sue Governments such as that of New Zealand that attempt to introduce similar anti-smoking laws.  
So we have the astonishing situation where we are debating very enlightened and progressive legislation in this Parliament tonight to try to reduce the amount of promotion of tobacco particularly to young children. Here we have the same tobacco companies still lobbying for tobacco and using our so-called free-trade agreement the Trans-Pacific Partnership to argue that the introduction of the sorts of measures that we are talking about today particularly the plain packaging of cigarettes would be tantamount to an expropriation of their property rights. Their submission is that we should be required to submit this issue to a disputes tribunal.