Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill

Hon TARIANA TURIA (Associate Minister of Health) Link to this

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. I move, That the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill be now read a second time. I start by acknowledging the work of the Health Committee, for its dedicated efforts in considering the bill, for its report back on the bill, and for the helpful amendments. If I could be so bold as to make a preliminary comment about the political support for this legislation, it would be to acknowledge the widespread and sincere attitude of support for smoke-free initiatives, which I believe is both heartening and responsible. I also acknowledge all of the 150 submitters who participated in the select committee process.

This is a very important bill. It is primarily about protecting children and young people, and the next generations to come. I am very proud that this Government is committed to actions that will reduce the number of children and young people who take up smoking. I think it is vital that we set this bill in context; a context that is about saving lives and advancing the well-being of our current and future generations. The key facts are, in sum, that smoking is the single leading preventable cause of early death in New Zealand, and that half of all long-term smokers die of a smoking-related illness, losing an average of 15 years of life. An estimated 4,500 to 5,000 New Zealanders die each year due to smoking or exposure to second-hand smoke. Māori are disproportionately overrepresented in these mortality statistics. About 650,000 New Zealanders, or one in five people over the age of 15, continue to put their health and lives at significant risk by smoking. This figure includes approximately 155,000 current smokers who are Māori, and about 45 percent of the Māori population aged between 15 and 65. Each one of these statistics on their own is a blight on the nation, but the cumulative effect is devastating, and we cannot tolerate inaction.

The New Zealand Government is committed to reducing tobacco consumption and to the goal of seeing Aotearoa become a nation that is essentially smoke-free by 2025. As this House is well aware, the Government considered raising the price of tobacco products through tax excise increases as an effective measure to reduce smoking prevalence and tobacco consumption. In April 2010 the Government moved to raise the tobacco excise in three stages of 10 percent, with the last increment to come into force on 1 January 2012. Subject to an evaluation of these recent excise increases, the Government will consider further sizable and regular tobacco excise increases from 2013 onwards. That was the first step.

This bill takes us forward with the next stage of the programme. This bill is a key mechanism within the package of increased control measures focused on the retail environment. This bill will make the marketing of tobacco products a much more difficult proposition for the tobacco industry. The bill achieves this by prohibiting the display of tobacco products in shops. People will no longer be confronted with a wall of tobacco every time they go into the dairy. These measures will also aid those who are trying to quit, by removing some of the temptation to make impulse purchases. The bill also removes the ability of retailers to include tobacco-related words in their shop signage. As an example, “John’s Discount Cigarettes” could no longer be plastered all over the shop front. It also makes it much more difficult for companies to enter into covert sponsorship arrangements such as the exclusive supply arrangements we have seen at recent years’ events like outdoor musical festivals. These are sponsorships in all but name, which have been prohibited since 1990. The bill clarifies and extends the prohibition on such sponsorships.

The bill also increases the penalties for selling tobacco products to children and young people from $2,000 to $5,000 for an individual, and up to $10,000 for a business. The legislation provides for this offence and a number of other offences to be dealt with by infringement notices, rather than costly and time-consuming prosecutions through the courts.

Therefore, this bill is an important step towards the Government’s goal of making New Zealand a smoke-free nation by 2025. We fully acknowledge that there may be some compliance costs to businesses in making the changes required. However, we also believe that these extra costs are completely justified when we look at the harm caused by tobacco products. Tobacco products should not be treated like other consumer goods, and they definitely should not hold pride of place where they can be seen directly behind the counter. As the recent report of the Māori Affairs Committee inquiry into the tobacco industry in Aotearoa and the consequences of tobacco use for Māori showed, there is still much to be done in controlling the scourge that is tobacco. This bill demonstrates that commitment through a specific initiative targeting tobacco displays.

In the spirit of things to come, I will highlight my interest in the developments occurring in Australia in relation to plain packaging. Plain packaging is a key recommendation of the international Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which is a World Health Organization treaty with over 170 signatories. It is part of a comprehensive global approach to removing tobacco promotion and advertising, and controlling the part that tobacco packaging plays in all that. The Government is supportive of the Australian initiative, and Australia is leading the world in this. Many countries, including New Zealand, are closely watching the events surrounding this change.

At a non-communicable disease conference that I attended in Moscow, cigarette smoking was considered to be the most significant contributor to non-communicable diseases, costing families economically, socially, and, in the long term, their health and their lives.

Finally, I say this bill is one of the stepping stones to achieving our goal of ensuring that New Zealand is a smoke-free nation by 2025. I urge all members to support this bill and help to ensure that our children and our rangatahi have the best possible chance to enjoy good health throughout their lives. At the time of this bill’s first reading I said I was confident that this bill would help in reducing the harms caused by tobacco in New Zealand. It was extremely heartening to observe the level of cross-party support at the first reading and in the Health Committee. I look forward to that ongoing and universal support in the subsequent stages. I commend the bill to the House.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) Link to this

It gives me a lot of pleasure to rise and offer Labour’s enthusiastic and wholehearted support for the Smoke-free Environments (Controls and Enforcement) Amendment Bill. This bill is an important step on the path towards achieving a smoke-free nation by 2025, a path that this nation has been on for a number of years. I think it is an important step because we have seen in this term of Parliament the second significant piece of legislation aimed at curtailing the use of tobacco and the prevalence of smoking in New Zealand. In this term of Parliament we have seen what is near to a consensus across parties on these measures. That is a huge leap forward, I have to say, from some of the debates—fights is probably the appropriate word—that we have had in New Zealand in the past when it has come to tobacco control and legislation dealing with it. I hope that the silliness and some of the pettiness that we have seen in the past is now behind us. We have certainly seen strong moves towards a consensus on this issue in this Parliament.

I hope that this bill continues to have the support that it received at its first reading and the support that we saw at the Health Committee. I acknowledge my colleagues on the select committee. I see the chair, Dr Paul Hutchison, in the Chamber this evening. There was a very constructive conversation. Everybody was on the same page. It was great to see all the parties working together not only to transition this bill through the House but also to find whatever possible opportunity we could to strengthen the bill in order to make this the biggest step forward that we possibly could.

I also acknowledge the very large number of submitters who came and spoke in support of this bill, particularly those people who work in the area of tobacco control. Those people work at the front line of health promotion in this country. They work with communities, trying to prevent our young people from taking up smoking, and trying to encourage those who have the smoking addiction to give it up so that they can extend their lives, extend the quality of their lives, and extend the quality of their relationship with their families, their whānau, and their communities. I think there are amazing people out there doing that work, trying to improve the health and well-being of all New Zealanders, and I acknowledge them.

It is fair to say we did not have 100 percent support of the bill by all submitters. We heard from people who were, I think it is fair to say, representing the tobacco industry. We heard some retailers who were concerned about the compliance issue and the change that this legislation would mean for their business. We also heard the same tired old arguments from the tobacco industry that this issue is about adult choice and that people should be able to choose whichever brand of cigarettes they would like to smoke. People will still have choice; we are not banning tobacco smoking. We are not stopping people from purchasing tobacco products from the places where they are quite used to purchasing them right now. People will still have that choice.

By removing tobacco displays, in what I think is the most significant part of this legislation, we are simply removing temptation for people who are trying to quit, and removing the presence—the omnipresence—of tobacco in retail outlets that young people are exposed to. It is true that the only thing that people have to look at if they go into a dairy or most supermarkets is the tobacco display. It is right behind the counter, where they have to go to pay for whatever other goods they want to purchase. It is right there in people’s faces. I am sure that everybody else in this Chamber will join me in saying I look forward to the day when I can walk into my local dairy and find that tobacco display is no longer there. I know that a number of retailers have already taken up this initiative, and they report that they have seen no loss in sales and no loss of customers; in fact, it has gone down very well with their communities.

We considered a number of issues at the select committee. One of those was the commencement and transition dates. A number of submitters wanted to see the commencement date brought forward and the transition dates shortened as much as possible. I can understand their enthusiasm; they want to see these measures come into place as quickly as possible. But we had to take into account the change that is required for retailers. A number of retailers and organisations came and said to us that they wanted there to be some consistency, and they wanted to know exactly what they were dealing with. Although the select committee extended the initial period, which allows more time for retailers to make the change, I think overall we will see a total removal of tobacco displays in a shorter period of time as a result of the amendments made at the select committee. The total lead-in time is slightly reduced, and I think that is a good thing. We will have certainty. The retailers have certainty and the public have certainty about when the removal of tobacco displays will actually take place. I think that is a particularly good change that was made at the select committee.

I do not want us to get distracted by this issue, but one issue was, I suppose, particularly vexing for the select committee. It was the issue of herbal smoking products and whether we should extend the same conditions that we are placing on tobacco to other herbal smoking products. I know that this has become a particularly relevant issue over the last couple of weeks, when we have seen a lot of media coverage about products such as Kronic, Dream, and Spice. These are synthetic cannabis products that fall under the Smoke-free Environments Act as herbal smoking products. The suggestion that we should extend the measures in this bill to those products was brought to the select committee very much at the last minute, I would say, by the Ministry of Health. Although I think every single member of the committee thought that was a splendid idea and something we should progress with as quickly as possible, we felt it would be better to make sure that the manufacturers, importers, and retailers of those products—