this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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The legislation being repealed was brought in by Labour though.
Well, yeah but when SmokeFree Aotearoa was introduced I distinctly remember Tariana Turia talking about how it was a long-term plan that was going to have incremental law changes including that one.
I'm not a smoker but I have noticed it over the years because I had smokers (and lung cancer) in my family, and as far as I could see it had been ticking along and slowly ramping up its taxes, protections, and legislations under both National and Labour.
I actually think if Labour had toned down a lot of their policies, they wouldn't be getting them repealed now. If they'd continued with the increased excise, and perhaps reduced the number of outlets that can sell them, the law would have stuck around.
Maybe. I'm not convinced this particular repeal was due to majority/popular demand.
The only campaign I ever saw about repealing turned out to be astroturfing by a tobacco company pretending to be a dairy owner.
It seems way more like the sort of thing Seymour and ACT would be interested in. So I think it was a coalition agreement issue. Here's my reasoning:
The average voter isn't affected by the law change personally so the only point of repealing it would be to fight for your children to smoke tobacco. Parents mostly don't especially want their own kids to risk lung cancer, and it's also not a tangible improvement to communities.
That leaves fighting for it as a matter of ideological principle. I.e ACT.
Winnie has made some surprisingly pro smoking statements during his career, so he would likely have been on board as well.
Good point, it could even originate with him - I saw someone saying Winston has links with tobacco companies. Not sure how true that is.
Also Winston himself smokes. If he is using transfusions from blood boys or something to stay immortal, maybe he needs them to be able to smoke too?
That would explain a lot actually.