Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
31 MAY 2016
Tobacco Tax All About Money; Not Public Health
The government is clearly not concerned about health issues, if they were honest they would ban it, but they won’t
because they want to keep tapping into a goldmine in taxation, says New Zealand First Leader and Northland Member of
Parliament, Rt Hon Winston Peters.
“The government is putting on their bogus mask of moral probity again saying they are hiking tobacco taxes to make the
public stub out cigarettes.
“They are deluding people; it’s not about the public’s health; it’s all about the taxation dollars the government wants
to flood into the public kitty – which at the moment is $1.620 billion a year and will rise to $1.857 billion in 2020.
“If they were really serious about the public’s health they would ban tobacco smoking entirely.
“When asked in Parliament why the government wouldn’t ban smoking, the Associate Minister of Health Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga
would not answer the question.
“The government is picking on smokers while letting the multinationals get away with paying only a pittance of less than
.38 per cent in taxation.
“In New Zealand the price of a packet of cigarettes is made up of 80 per cent taxes. That’s just a greedy government
hammering a legal product.
“Hiking taxation on tobacco is just another PC attack on working people in particular who have few enough pleasures as
it is,” Mr Peters says.
ENDS