Barry Soper: How Māori Party hopes went up in smokes

Tariana Turia set a silly target of a smoke free New Zealand by 2025. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Opinion

The Māori Party will have done a lot of reflection as to why it's no longer in politics. The answer's pretty obvious, they didn't represent the wishes of their people even though they felt they had their best interests at heart.

Their former co leader Tariana Turia, a fierce advocate for all things Maori, wanted better health for her people and one of the best ways to do that she believed was to stop them from smoking, setting silly target of a smoke free New Zealand by 2025.

As the target became more elusive, Turia wanted to ban tobacco products, to make them illegal. When that failed they began pricing them off the market.

The only thing that's achieved is making Maori poorer along with their Pacific cousins who remain the heaviest smoking groups by far in the country - 35 per cent of Maori adults smoke and a quarter of Pacific people are addicted.

The number of people smoking may be marginally dropping, mainly for health reasons but not it seems for the crippling cost.

Excise tax on tobacco has been increasing by ten percent a year since 2010, add inflation to that and of course 15 per cent GST and ciggies have become a luxury item, which of course they're not.

The Government takes 85 percent on each $35 pack of cigs in excise tax alone.

There have been all sorts of arguments put forward over the years to stop people smoking and save the money they drain from the health budget.

But with the more than $2 billion they pay a year through excise tax alone they will have more than covered their costs.

Cigarettes aren't attractive to be around for those of us who haven't acquired the habit but think about the other vice that's prevalent in this country, booze, and think about the damage that's caused compared to smoking.

Take just one area alone. The only violence cigarettes cause is the robbery of dairies which of course is unacceptable and Government subsidised work is underway to make them safer.

The violence caused by alcohol, particularly in families, is horrendous and in both cases poverty generally has a part to play.

So Winston Peters says the Government is now looking at whether the annual increases in excise tax on tobacco is achieving its purpose and he's adamant on that, it isn't, it's just making people poorer. They'll consider that, he says, before the next increase is due in January.

But Grant Robertson has said there are no plans to reverse the annual increase in tobacco tax.

If you want any more confirmation on who controls this Government's purse strings you'll again find out then!