I was not expecting to take a call at this time but it looked as though the debate on the Excise and Excise-equivalent Duties Table (Tobacco Products) Amendment Bill might have been coming to a premature close. I will start by saying that unlike many people who have spoken this evening who have acknowledged that they are smokers, who are reformed smokers, who have outlined the extent to which they have gone to give up smoking, or who have spoken about the loss of family members, I have never smoked, I hope I never smoke, and I have never lost family members to tobacco. However, this is a subject on which I have had very strong views for a very long period of time. Roger Douglas said in the first reading debate that there will be some ACT members opposing this bill. I am the ACT member supporting this bill, and I say this very proudly. It makes me sad because I wish I could have convinced some more of my colleagues to support this bill, but before I explain why I am supporting this bill, I will make a few introductory remarks.
It is an absolute privilege to be a member of Parliament. Every day I come into this Chamber I remind myself of how privileged I am to be here, and of the people who have elected me here. The speech I give tonight is a speech that I knew I would be making at one stage during my career in Parliament, and I do it with a great deal of pride and a great deal of thought. I would also like to acknowledge two of my colleagues. I consider David Garrett and myself to be very lucky. We have come into Parliament and we represent a very small party, but it is a party that does not whip its members. We have a confidence and supply agreement with the National Party, and under the terms of that agreement we are committed to supporting the National Party in various matters. Beyond that, however, we are entitled to have a free vote. We have often had a split vote, as we did this evening. I would like to acknowledge the leader of the ACT Party, Rodney Hide, who has voted against this bill. Rodney Hide is a very astute politician. Rodney Hide opposes tax increases, and if there has been any disappointment about this debate so far it has been those seeking to score political points through members, such as Bill English, changing their position. I am very grateful for Rodney, because he has to go to the media and explain why the ACT Party has a vote. He is prepared to do that so that I have the ability and the right to stand up and state the comments I am making this evening.
The second colleague I would like to acknowledge is Sir Roger Douglas. Many people forget that Sir Roger Douglas was a former Labour MP. His grandfather, father, and his brother were Labour MPs. He was the MP for Ōtara for many years. When I joined the ACT Party in 1995 I was attracted to the philosophy of Roger Douglas and his vision for the party, which he recently restated in his book, No Second Class Citizens. I can assure members of the public and parliamentarians that even though it may well be the public perception that the ACT Party is not overly concerned with poor people, that is what motivates Roger, that is what motivates me, and that is why I am in this Parliament. Roger has a very sincere conviction that increasing the tobacco tax is a tax on the poor. It is interesting that Tariana acknowledged that and acknowledged some of the alternative arguments we put up.
Let us go back through some of the issues we have heard tonight. We have heard that approximately 5,000 people die each year as a result of tobacco or tobacco-related causes such as lung cancer and many other diseases. That is 14 people per day. We have heard that people who smoke regularly throughout their life have a one in two chance that they will die prematurely—one chance in two. On average, smoking cuts the life expectancy of an individual by 15 years; rather than a woman living to the average age of 80, she might die prematurely at 65, and, sadly, for Māori it is a lot younger. We have also heard that smoking disproportionately affects large numbers of low-income people, large numbers of Māori, particularly large numbers of Māori women, and, worse still, large numbers of young Māori women. I had a friend for dinner last night and he explained that his stepdaughter goes to a high school in Rotorua where she is one of just three people in her secondary school class who do not smoke. I do not know how many are in her secondary school class; I would imaging there are 15, 20, or maybe 25 people. She is just one of three 14-year-olds who do not smoke.
Why are we discussing this issue? The blunt reality is that tobacco companies kill their customers. It is simple as that. Tobacco companies kill their customers. The only way they can survive is if they get new, young, fresh customers coming in the front door. I believe that this Parliament, this Government, needs to take every step it can take to reduce the number of new young people coming in the door. I see Mr Lees-Galloway nodding this evening. He made the point that this is just one of many things that this Government could be doing. For example, this Government could have adopted Mr Lees-Galloway’s member’s bill to put restrictions on the retail display of tobacco. Every day that we have a ballot, I look with interest to see if Mr Lees-Galloway’s bill has been drawn. Sadly, it has not. I hope that Tariana Turia, who I understand is also looking at this area, will soon have a bill before Parliament that will significantly restrict the retail display of tobacco, the packaging, or the way the product is put.
I focus on young people because the reality is that the new customers who come in, as the old ones die, are not people in their 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s; they are young people. Yes, it is illegal to sell tobacco to children under the age of 18, but does that stop them from smoking? Does that stop that class of 14-year-olds in Rotorua, where all but three of them are smoking? No, it does not. To my mind, smoking is an absolute tragedy. It is a waste. It is an absolute waste of human life. Tariana Turia has put the arguments eloquently this evening and I can not possibly repeat them in the way that she has. Luckily, I have not had someone in my immediate family die from tobacco. However, I did have to help my mother nurse my late grandmother, Mona Wheeler, in January and February of 1985. Luckily for my grandmother, her bad turn of health was very severe, very sudden, and it lasted only about 6 weeks. I cannot imagine anything worse than having to look after and nurse a child or parent, month after month, and see the decline in their health. I acknowledge Tariana Turia talking about how she had to nurse her mother. She had to nurse her mother, she saw her decline, and she was brought up by her grandmother. Today, she is the last alive of all of her cousins; all of the others have been taken by tobacco.
I would like to devote the last part of my speech to acknowledging the efforts of the Labour Party and Helen Clark. I stood up at an ACT conference in 2001 to challenge ACT members who were opposing at that time the previous Labour Government’s Smoke-free Environments Act, and I asked them to justify their decision. One by one, those ACT members got up and justified their decision. To be fair to them, I thought that Muriel Newman had a very valid point when she talked about RSAs and people who had gone off to war, and the ability for them to smoke in their RSA rooms. I thought she had a very valid point, and so, arguably, with cigarette bars. But I will never forget the first time I met the Rt Hon Helen Clark. It was in 1990. She was a young Minister of Health and she was asked to justify her decision to make it illegal for cigarette and tobacco companies to sponsor sport when she was not prepared to do the same for liquor companies. The point she made 20 years ago sticks with me today. I say to Mr Anderton that the reality is that he can have a glass of wine every night for the rest of his life, and the odds are that it will not kill him. But if he tried to smoke a packet of cigarettes every day for the rest of his life, the odds are that there is a one in two chance of it killing him.
I vote for this bill with a great deal of pride. I realise that there are many ACT supporters who voted for me and gave me this privilege, and I apologise to those who do not understand my actions. But I am doing this because I believe that it is right and the best thing to do. Thank you