Christopher Luxon. Photo: Phil Smith
The new government is committed to reducing tobacco use, despite plans to repeal smokefree legislation, incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon says.
National has formed a government alongside ACT and New Zealand First, but it comes with a number of concessions around proposed tax cuts, as well as climate, Treaty and health issues.
The tax cuts National campaigned on will go ahead, but they will no longer be funded through a tax on foreign buyers.
Instead, amendments to the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Act 1990, which underpin New Zealand's world-first smokefree laws, will be repealed.
Luxon told Morning Report there were "some practical issues" with the amendments to legislation passed last year that National, ACT and New Zealand First disagreed with, such as reducing the number of retailers that could sell tobacco.
The amendments, parts of which are yet to come into force, would also have created a generation of young New Zealanders who would never legally be able to buy cigarettes.
"To say that actually, you can concentrate all that distribution in a few shops and you have one smoke shop in one small town in New Zealand, you can't not tell me that will be a massive target for ramraids and crime; there will be an increased black market - an untaxed black market - for cigarette smokes," he said.
"The issue is the component parts of the programme, how does it ultimately get enforced? A 36-year-old can smoke, but a 35-year-old can't smoke down the road? That doesn't sort of make a lot of sense."
Speaking to media after the government's swearing-in, Luxon was asked how he was not putting the tobacco industry's interests ahead of people's health.
He said the new government would "continue to make sure we've got good education programmes, encourage people to take up vapes as a cessation tool, and make sure that we protect vapes for under-18s".
But Labour's Health spokesperson Ayesha Verrall told RNZ the policy flew in the face of National's previous position and would set New Zealand back a long way.
"The smokefree 2025 goal was actually set by National when they were in government with the Māori Party," she said.
"It was surprising, I've travelled with Dr Reti around the country at health fora where he expressed his commitment to Smokefree 2025, was a supporter particularly of the intiative of taking nicotine out of cigarettes so that would help people quit.
"While these are new measures, all of them have been trialled in various forms internationally - so they will work, but I think what's going on here is that we had a set of measures that would have substantially reduced smoking, was modelled to save 8000 lives and they've reversed it. And they're doing it just to fund tax cuts.
"Treasury did show that over time this policy would have cost over $1 billion in foregone tobacco excise durty, so that is a cost to the government books but the moral issue here is that we shouldn't be helping the National Party make its tax cut promises by keeping people smoking."
'No co-governance of public services'
Programmes like Whānau Ora would be able to continue despite the incoming government's plans to direct agencies not to target race, Luxon said.
Whānau Ora is a programme that funds Māori groups providing community services including health, education, housing and employment.
The coalition deal states that all agencies must provide funding on the basis of need, rather than race.
Luxon said Whānau Ora and other community groups providing useful services would not be affected.
"We support that, that is about local devolution of being able to use community organisations to get services to community groups," he said.
"There are great organisations up and down the country; Māori organisations, Māori housing organisations, that actually can deliver housing, can deliver healthcare services."
But Luxon said the incoming government wanted "national public services" to be delivered to people on the basis of people's needs, not their race.
"We've said that all the way through, all of [the coalition partners] have said no co-governance of public services."
Luxon said the incoming government wanted "to see Māori do incredibly well in this country".
"The sad story is that after six years of this government, Māori haven't done well."
As part of the coalition arrangement, the parties have agreed to introduce a Treaty Principles Bill and support it to select committee stage.
Asked whether the potential scrapping of the principle of partnership as part of those discussions could see Oranga Tamariki no longer having an obligation to work with iwi to help with vulnerable children, Luxon said that should not be the agency's main focus.
"The primary focus has to be the safety of that child, that has to be the number one priority, that's all that matters.
"The number two priority, if they can work with families - fantastic, but if they don't, that's fine too. What we care about is the safety of that child first and foremost."
Health levy on the cards for those on parental visas
Luxon said the incoming government would look at introducing a health levy for people moving to New Zealand on a parental visa.
Parents would be able come to New Zealand on a multiple-entry visa provided they stayed with their family and had either health insurance or paid a levy to cover their health costs.
Luxon said the details of how the levy could work were yet to be decided, but it could be "a simple question of which is the best mechanic and most easy to implement".
Luxon said such visas already existed in Australia and Canada and the visa would not offer a pathway to citizenship.
'Our public service is not delivering'
Plans to cut civil servant numbers would go ahead under the incoming government, Luxon said.
"What we know is that our public service is not delivering ... the policy is exactly as we talked about before the election, we want a six-and-a-half percent saving across the public service."
There were various ways those savings could be achieved, he said, including not filling some vacancies.
"We want to stop a lot of the projects that Labour were working on that's sucking up a lot of resource, we wanna focus on some new things."
Fair pay agreements and Labour's replacements for the RMA are also on the chopping block under the incoming government.
And National has promised New Zealand First and ACT to introduce legislation on a referendum to extend the Parliamentary term to four years.
Luxon will be sworn in as New Zealand's 42nd prime minister today.
