Integrity Briefing: Verrall's Tobacco Bill a chink of light in the lobbying gloom
The political agenda has been dominated recently by the oversized influence of corporate interests and the seemingly unstoppable march of lobbyists shaping policy behind closed doors. Over the last year, the rollback of New Zealand's world-leading smokefree policies, amidst a flurry of controversy and accusations of tobacco industry influence, has been one of the trends that has most strongly illustrated the problem. The dominance of tobacco interests – amongst many other industry lobbyists – has been depressing for those concerned about the public interest and integrity.
However, a welcome, if small, chink of light has appeared on the horizon with Labour MP Ayesha Verrall’s proposed Tobacco Transparency Bill. This is undoubtedly a step forward for the transparency agenda, and it’s a testament to the growing public and political pressure to better regulate the often-murky world of corporate lobbying.
Shining a light on Big Tobacco
Verrall's bill, announced this month, aims to tackle the specific, and egregious, influence of the tobacco industry head-on. The need for such legislation is stark. Tobacco is, as Verrall herself points out, kills half of the people who use it. The industry has a long and well-documented global history of using its financial might and lobbying prowess to weaken health policies and protect its profits.
The proposed legislation seeks to bring these activities out of the “smoke-filled rooms and into the light”. It would prohibit government support for tobacco industry interests. For instance, Verrall suggests it could have prevented the controversial tax cut for Heated Tobacco Products, a move seen to primarily benefit Philip Morris.
Crucially, the bill mandates greater transparency. Ministers and officials would be required to declare any links to, or engagements with, the tobacco industry, with ministers' conflicts of interest listed in a public register. It also proposes a “revolving door prohibition”, preventing former ministers and officials from immediately moving into lobbying roles for tobacco companies. Furthermore, tobacco companies themselves would need to report annually on activities like political donations and marketing.
This is all positive. As Professor Janet Hoek from the University of Otago argues, the bill is “long overdue” and would help reveal whether political parties are benefiting from tobacco industry connections, something currently shrouded in secrecy. The intense redaction of documents released under the Official Information Act regarding the smokefree repeal only fuels these suspicions. Hoek believes the bill could help restore some of the public trust lost following policy decisions that align suspiciously well with tobacco industry interests, rather than research evidence or expert advice.
A Stunt, or a starting point?
However, not all transparency advocates are singing its praises unreservedly. Transparency International New Zealand (TINZ), a group that often takes a more moderate, even Establishment, stance on lobbying, has been somewhat dismissive. Their chair, former National Government Cabinet Minister Anne Tolley, was interviewed on Newstalk ZB last week about the new bill, and she labelled it “a bit of a PR stunt” and dismissed it as being primarily “about politics”.
Tolley, while acknowledging the general need for more regulation and transparency in lobbying, also downplayed the idea that tobacco or health industry lobbyists are unduly influencing health policy like smoking laws. The former National Minister said: “Honestly, I've never met a health minister of any political colour who doesn't really care about the health of New Zealand. So we've got to be careful that we don't insult them by saying that they make decisions based on lobbyists rather than putting the health of New Zealanders first.”
This is a classic deflection. Tolley might not doubt the personal intentions of ministers, but the issue is systemic influence and the subtle, pervasive ways corporate interests can shape the policy landscape.
Tolley also raises concerns about over-regulating lobbyists, warning against creating a situation where some voices are deemed “bad” and therefore less entitled to be heard: “That's the problem. You say, these people are bad, therefore they can't have as much time as these people... that's the difficulty you get into and that's not the sort of country that we want”.
She muddies the waters further by reminding us that her own organisation, TINZ, is a lobby group, and that even ordinary citizens engage in lobbying when they voice concerns to their MPs. This argument, while containing a kernel of truth about the broad nature of political advocacy, risks obscuring the vast power imbalance between well-resourced corporate lobbyists and ordinary citizens or public interest groups. It’s an argument that often serves to protect the status quo.
Does the Tobacco Transparency Bill go far enough?
This brings us to a key question about Verrall's bill: while a positive development, does it go far enough? Shouldn't any serious attempt at lobbying reform be concerned with all lobbying, rather than singling out just one industry, however harmful? If transparency is good for tobacco, why not shine the light on all lobbyists?
Many in the transparency and health advocacy community want broader reform. They applaud the bill’s intent but see it as “only scratching the surface” of New Zealand’s lobbying problems. From this perspective, a tobacco-specific law could be seen as a missed opportunity. If passed, New Zealand still wouldn’t have a general lobbying register or a beefed-up anti-corruption agency like other countries do.
Some also argue that other harmful industries deserve equal scrutiny. Tobacco may be uniquely deadly, but alcohol and gambling cause immense social harm too, and climate polluters or other corporate lobbies can arguably inflict generational damage.
If the principle is guarding policy against vested interests, why give those industries a pass? Therefore, while Verrall’s bill should be welcomed, there needs to be more discussion about why it is so narrow in scope.
Of course, part of the answer is that is that this bill is more about tobacco control than lobbying per se. The New Zealand government is a signatory to the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and Article 5.3 of this mandates that signatory parties protect their public health policies “from commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry”. So, in this sense, Verrall’s bill deals with fulfilling obligations signed two decades ago.
The Labour Party could have dealt with this by simply proposing a comprehensive lobbying law instead of a single-industry focus. Verrall has anticipated this challenge – saying that tobacco is a special case, a “uniquely harmful” product meriting a trial-run of tougher lobbying rules. “Gambling and alcohol are not like that,” she has said, “There is nothing else like [tobacco]. It is the only product that kills half the people that use it.” In other words, tobacco control sits in a category of its own in public health – a stance in line with WHO agreements that isolate tobacco as beyond the pale of normal industry-government relations.
The need to extend the Tobacco Transparency Bill to all lobbying
Labour’s decision to focus just on tobacco also relates to the fact that a broader lobbying law reform would be a harder sell. Targeting Big Tobacco, long vilified and with virtually no social license left, is an easier sell to the public (and to other politicians) than a blanket rule that sweeps in every lobbyist from every sector.
Thus, some advocates see value in starting with tobacco: it sets a precedent that could later be expanded. For example, Professor Chris Bullen, an eminent tobacco control researcher, has said about this: “It opens the door to extending protections to cover emerging nicotine industries as well” – hinting that tomorrow’s fight might include vaping or other sectors once the principle is established.
With elections only a couple of years away, it might be useful if Labour and other parties campaign on full-scale lobbying transparency so that it can be implemented if the government changes. In that sense, Verrall’s bill might be seen as a first volley in a longer war – a useful way to keep the issue alive and signal to voters where Labour stands on the nexus of money and politics.
The current Government’s slow progress, or rather, non-progress, on broader lobbying reform is, as I’ve previously described, “farcical”. Despite promises from National in opposition for a lobbying register and stand-down periods, action has been glacial. The Ministry of Justice hasn't updated its lobbying reform project page in ages, and the Justice Minister has indicated it's not a priority. This, while New Zealand languishes near the bottom of OECD rankings for lobbying transparency.
Last month the Health Coalition Aotearoa came up with a comprehensive five-point plan for dealing with vested interests in the policy process. This includes a public register of all lobbyist meetings, a mandatory code of conduct, an Integrity Commission, a cooling-off period for all relevant officials, a modernised Official Information Act, and tighter political donation rules. Similarly, the Helen Clark Foundation’s 2024 anti-corruption report “Shining a Light” calls for broad changes to counter the risk of corruption in NZ’s policy process.
This is the direction we need to be heading. Verrall’s Tobacco Transparency Bill is a good, targeted initiative that addresses a particularly problematic sector. It should be celebrated as progress and supported. But it must also be seen as just one piece of a much larger puzzle. The fight for genuine, comprehensive lobbying reform across all sectors is far from over. We certainly need chinks of light like this; but ultimately we need the floodlights turned on.
Dr Bryce Edwards
Director of The Integrity Institute
Further reading:
RNZ: Labour proposes law to restrict big tobacco lobbyists influence on government
Danica Ludlow (Health Coalition Aotearoa): New Bill A Vital Step Towards Tobacco-Free Future In Aotearoa
Newstalk ZB: 'There needs to be regulation': Transparency International NZ calls for more reporting around lobbying
John Lewis (ODT): Tobacco Transparency Bill ‘will benefit all’ (paywalled)
I find it obscene that we allow the sale of both Tobacco and Vapes - and it is turning out that Vaping is just as bad for you as Tobacco smoking, the next Labour Gov't must lock in the nicotine reductions and limit the number of outlets selling both vapes and tobacco and ideally ban one of them.
For me, there is far too much political effort from the Left in seeking to 'eliminate' tobacco, compared to its residual ills, and, for example, versus the need to deal with obesity and its many causes (one of several big health issues to confront head on). 'Big tobacco' has become a bogeyman for mindless recitation, where it is actually being beaten year by year. The stats of (declining) smoking for NZ are impressive, heading down, and the health ills created by past levels of smoking will head down faster as the population ages. We are far ahead of almost all countries, but seem to be hung up on, frankly, minutiae, like the whether we could try heated tobacco - not at all something that is going to shift the major down trend but which might minimise damage (to be tested ongoing) for a small core of current smokers.