February 01, 2024
Tobacco war toll climbing
Former Mana MP Hone Harawira says Health Minister Shane Reti is standing idly by as the coalition Government attacks Māori health by rolling back smokefree legislation.
Mr Harawira, who chaired the 2010 Maori affairs select committee inquiry into tobacco control, has lodged a Waitangi Tribunal claim along with Sue Taylor from Te Rōpū Tupeka Kore and long time anti-smoking campaigner Shane Bradbrook against the repeal of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Smoked Tobacco) Amendment Act 2022.
They argue repealing the Act will prejudice all Māori, breach Te Tiriti o Waitangi and cause preventable disease and death within Māori communities.
“I mean we laud the efforts of the Māori Battalion in the Second World War but more of their descendants are killed every single year by bloody tobacco than were killed in the whole of the Second World War,” Mr Harawira says.
He says Shane Reti has let politics dominate what he knows to be true.