The left-wing media pack wasted no time identifying the new government’s weakest point.
Seething over an election result that they didn’t like, they have searched for a convenient line of attack and found one in the proposed repeal of Labour’s extremist smokefree legislation.
This has been a running story for the past two days. The media have collectively decided to frame the government’s proposal as an attack on the poor to benefit the rich. Even the BBC picked up on it.
National obligingly played into their hands when Nicola Willis acknowledged on Newshub Nation that money saved by scrapping the laws, and therefore restoring $1 billion worth of government revenue from tobacco sales, will go toward tax cuts that National previously hoped to fund with a tax on wealthy overseas home buyers – a plan vetoed by New Zealand First.
It will have been a sharp lesson for the inexperienced and possibly over-confident new Minister of Finance. Never give the media pack an opening.
Predictably conspicuous by its absence from the media furore is any consideration of the flaws in Labour’s legislative package, which would cut the number of tobacco outlets from 6000 to 600, ban sales to anyone born after 2008 and cut the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco.
Retailers breaching the law would face fines of up to $150,000 and a lifetime ban. Regardless of your personal attitude toward tobacco, which I regard as a pernicious addiction, it’s a piece of legislation that uses the pretext of good intentions to justify authoritarian overkill. As C S Lewis wrote, “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.”
Who decides which corner dairies will be allowed to sell cigarettes and which won’t, and on what basis? What will be the impact on local communities if store owners, deprived of vital revenue from tobacco sales, go out of business? What are the risks of even more ram raids, given that tobacco will become an even more precious commodity? And how did Labour propose to counter the black market, doubtless controlled by gangs, that would inevitably flourish?
Obviously these are minor technicalities that must not be allowed to intrude on the dreamy idealistic vision of a tobacco-free New Zealand. Neither should they get in the way of the media’s determination to portray the new government as unfeeling and regressive.
10 comments:
Labour wanted to take the cigarette trade away from the dairies and give it to the gangs, who were among their staunchest supporters at the election. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. If you are going to ban cigarettes for everyone born after an arbitrary date however, you create two classes of citizens, just like the mandates. Another example of Labour's simplemindedly authoritarian, Manichean worldview.
The real reason, of course, is that Labour's legislation is unworkable - as Luxon drily states. And, yes, so is the United Kingdom's - as Sunak will shortly discover.
Bravo to Winston Peters - who has very obviously managed to convince both Seymour and Luxon of the plain inanity of Labour's ideology
"and cut the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco"
...to negligible levels. Media's still lying about that I see, at least this particular article didn't omit it entirely.
I wonder how the public would have reacted if Labour cut alcoholic beverages to 1% max?
There is something obscene about using the misery and suffering of smokers to fund tax cuts. Why not also remove the bans on asbestos and lead -- surely there would be potential superannuation cost savings from the untimely deaths from asbestosis and lead poisoning?
Tobacco is a low margin product. Relatively few people go into dairies to buy it and even fewer of those buy anything other than tobacco. Tobacco sales are therefore not essential for the economic viability of dairies.
Despite the very high price of tobacco in New Zealand, illegal tobacco sales have remained low and constant. Every time tobacco control laws are introduced, the tobacco industry ignores these facts and trots out this old black market chestnut. There is no reason to believe illegal sales will increase under the proposed legislation; in fact, the logical outcome is a decline in black market sales as the number of people smoking rapidly heads to less than 5% and there is no market for illegal sales.
Presumably, one of the criteria for allocating tobacco licences would be security. Consequently, the spectre of ram raids is just another tobacco industry bogey man. In any case, when did we abdicate decisions about our retail landscape to juvenile ram raiders?
Tobacco kills half of its users so the tobacco industry has to replace these casualties with
new addicted users, invariably young people. For young people, taking up smoking is not an informed choice, they have no idea of the consequences of addiction or the long term harm of smoking. If they think about the consequences at all, they think "It won't happen to me", until they realise, too late, that it has. The legislation the new government proposes to repeal would help to protect young people from this fate.
I know we cannot expect our politicians to keep their word but Health Minister Dr Shane Reti previuosly stated: "National has never disagreed with the end point of nicotine reduction—never have, and we don’t here today" and went on to note "National supports nicotine reduction" before affirming "We’ll denicotinise—now, that does have some weight to it: it’s being deployed in Colorado as we speak. It actually does have a pathway that is successful". Associate Minister Matt Doocey also claimed: "As Dr Reti clearly outlined, the National Party agrees with the end goals. In fact, to a point, we actually even agree with the three policy levers of reducing retail shops, denicotisation, and making it illegal for a certain cohort of New Zealanders born after 2009 to buy cigarettes".
Perhaps, for the first and only time in the last six years, the mainstream media are on the right side of a debate.
That so many in the media are hunting like a pack about this is a sign they can’t find anything substantive to criticise in the new government’s other plans.
Stuff's attacks are becoming even more boring ....the TDN here in NP has a columnist who for the past five years has been a staunch advocate for the previous govt on a regular basis now berating Winston for his ''rudeness'' to respected media. Fine he can have his views but had they been even mildly dissident he would never have got published nor received a gong
If you want to protect young people from addiction then tax unhealthy food and make caffeine R18.
We have just surfaced from the biggest health scam (racket) of all time, bought about by the shysters that make up shysterville.
And here we are 5 minutes into a new regime with the chances of any retribution from those accountable amounting to nil.... and we are full throttle into the next health scam.
ffs.
A quick look tells any seeker:
An average amount of nicotine in a typical cigarette is 12 to 15mg of nicotine.
An e-cigarette (Vape) contains a user electable amount of liquid nicotine ranging from naught to 20mg of nicotine.
So you are able to pick the strength of obtaining your jollies. All gracias of our grubment
Now you can ponce and you can dance to your hearts content, but I will lay odds the dickheads making the rules down there in shysterville (Welly) could not give a rats arse as to how many cigarettes, or how much vape, of any denomination, may or may not kill you.
Why should some Gov't goon, with but a half assed interest in your health do anything else but legislate/rule in the interests of the lobby group.
How often does the relationship of basic economics to that of human nature need to be spelt out in detail to folk.
Why is it we elect these ridiculous excuses for intelligence to make the rules. Why do we show concern by continually consenting to the demands of irresponsible deaf idiots.
Labor have been the lame brains in shysterland since they arrived on our doorstep 90 odd years ago.
Not a brain to be seen.... they conned their way into parliament.
Then came the rules, giving out licenses (monopolies by way of import controls ) so enabling those so anointed souls to thieve from all and sundry.
Then they had the audacity to call it protecting the working man.
Nothing has changed.... apart from the fact that the cancer (protection racket) Labor introduced became malignant and spread throughout our society.
See Andy Shaw of On Air NZ just quit after an attack on Peters that simply helps confirm what Peters says .
In the case of Stuff, the fund was helpful. And they were willing partners on the treaty/race issues. But the changes occurring within that organisation to turn it into what is is today, an activist site mainly, plus odd bits of news like car crashes and celebrity tosh , were under way already.
It is free to be whatever it wants but please stop saying you are fiercely independent . Of what? You serve various aligned causes, be honest about it . Independent does not mean unbiased. My impression is many New Zealanders , unlike those in the UK, tended to believe their news media was unbiased.
The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, NYT etc are anything but ''unbiased''. They do not pretend to be neutral, however.
BTW I am not related to Winston but we both have Scottish ancestry and I have Maori relatives. And the actions of the previous govt, academia and its media apologists have sure driven wedges among them that were not there six years ago.
As regards smoking, I saw what it did to my dad (from a diffent era born 1924) and I see what it is doing to patients around me who rely on a ciggie as their only outlet , only pleasure. I see youngsters in town ...they even try to cadge money off security for ciggies . Vaping is becoming worse.
Freedom of choice and tax arguments aside I wish (naively) smoking would vanish. It won't. A black market and crims will fill the void as they do with other drugs. Same with the booze prohibition era is the US.
How to tackle this?
I note a comment from Andy Espersen that it was good that NZ First convinced ACT to come on board. This is an incorrect slant. ACT/David Seymour have continuously opposed all recent Smoke free legislation. In fact in many instances they have been the sole party voting against said legislation. They have long been of the opinion that punitive taxes on cigarettes and just create a bigger black market and the ensuing crime that eventuates.
Pre election I was well aware of ACTs policy to reverse the recent legislative change. In fact it came as a surprise to me that it this was NZ Firsts policy as well.
So totally incorrect to link ACTS opposition as anything to do with NZ Firsts.
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