Medics try to smoke out Costello

Casey Costello, the Associate Minister of Health with responsibility for tobacco control and achieving our 2025 smokefree goal, gave a short address at Health Coalition Aotearoa’s annual forum.
The health coalition is an organisation with a wide membership base and a kaupapa to advocate for evidence-based policies to reduce and prevent harm from tobacco, unhealthy foods and alcohol. 
These are some of the more significant commercial determinants of health that on the one hand generate huge profits for corporates and a tax return to the Government while on the other cause misery for many New Zealanders, shortening their lives and creating a massive burden on our already overburdened health system.
In late 2022, the Labour government, supported by National, introduced and passed the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Act 2022 which had three key measures: to reduce access to tobacco products, progressively decrease the nicotine content of those products, and to create a smokefree generation.
This Act was repealed by the current coalition government earlier this year as part of National’s coalition agreement with NZ First. It was a move that disregarded decades of cross-party commitment to evidence-based comprehensive tobacco control strategies and an intervention that continues to create widespread public outrage. That outrage remains well-founded. As previously stated by many expert groups and neatly summarised by Professor Chris Bullen from Auckland University in his address to the forum, the repeal lacked evidence and transparency, ignored expert advice, was a breach of Te Tiriti, and will absolutely lead to the deaths of many New Zealanders, harm many more, and create massive and ongoing consequences for our public and health services.
For her part, Costello stuck to the coalition Government’s playbook in a tactic we all now know only too well: to categorically state the Government’s commitment to an end or an issue, in this case a smokefree NZ, whilst at the same time repealing existing, effective, evidence-based legislation that will lead to that, or replacing it with initiatives without evidence of effectiveness – or worse still, initiatives that we know simply won’t work.
Costello even went further, trying her best to show her human side by looking up into the audience saying, hand-on-heart, that we all wanted the same thing but just had different ways of getting there.
When questioned about the evidence that supported her repeal of the Act, it was clear there was none. This, despite NZ First’s coalition agreement with National saying the coalition would make evidence-based decisions.
When asked about her own links with Big Tobacco, she once again asserted she’d had no personal involvement with those involved. When asked about her party’s links with the tobacco industry, and in particular about David Broome and Apirana Dawson, previous NZ First staffers with links to Philip Morris, she was evasive, saying that she was simply following through on the coalition agreement between the parties.
As for the now famous document that mysteriously appeared on her desk suggesting an approach mirroring the tobacco industry line with respect to “harm reduction” and becoming “smokefree” – terms now appropriated by Philip Morris et al – she demurred, saying all sorts of documents come into a Minister’s office.
Never did she explain why the repeal of this Act was so important to NZ First or why and how that became part of their coalition agreement with National.
At one stage an exasperated member of the audience called out to her, “it’s about your credibility, minister”. She then stopped briefly, affronted (“You’re not in Parliament now, Ms Costello”), before she returned to type, becoming even more evasive.
Credibility is an important element for the survival of a politician and in gaining the trust of the people. It’s about being truthful, honest and open in how you conduct yourself, especially in how you deal with questions of public interest and in how decisions affecting the public are made. Being serially evasive suggests the opposite.
Here, the evidence pointing to the direct influence of corporates with power, wealth and access is everywhere, and the claims of this minister are simply not believable.