New Zealand: Tobacco Giant Challenges Bill

Source from:  stuff.co.nz 05/14/2014

New Zealand's only major tobacco manufacturer claims legislation imposing plain packaging may breach the Bill of Rights and that it may seek compensation through the courts, despite losing a challenge in Australia.

The health select committee will today continue hearing submissions on the Smokefree Environments (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Amendment Bill, including from Imperial Tobacco, the Bristol-based giant which employs 220 people at its factory in Petone, the only of its kind in New Zealand.

The company was a party in a legal challenge against similar legislation in Australia, which introduced plain packaging at the start of 2013. The courts ruled in favour of the Australian Government.

However, Axel Gietz, Imperial Tobacco's director of corporate affairs, who has travelled to Wellington to present the company's submission, said that this did not mean that a challenge could not win in New Zealand.

"I'm not a lawyer, but in Australia it was a technicality on which the industry lost their legal challenge, which is peculiar to the Australian legal system. In New Zealand ... I understand there is a Bill of Rights which guarantees freedom of expression. This is commercial freedom of expression and under that aspect we would surely have to look into doing something about that," he said.

"As a matter of principle we cannot accept expropriation of our intellectual property rights."

Activists were now turning their attention to other industries such as alcohol, he said.

Imperial Tobacco, which has a market share of about 22 per cent in New Zealand, claims that plain packaging has done little to stop smoking in Australia, but could be counter-productive because it encourages the illicit tobacco trade.

The company claims that consumers are "trading down" by going for cheaper brands, hurting the company's margins and making it difficult to compete with one another. Enditem