NEW ZEALAND – New Zealand is likely to become the third nation to introduce plain packaged cigarettes after MPs voted on legislation that had sat on ice for three years.

It is part of a push for the whole country to be smoke free by 2025.

A bill was introduced to New Zealand’s Parliament in 2013, but legislators decided to wait for Australia’s legal battle with British American Tobacco to be resolved before pushing ahead with their own laws.

Australia has successfully defended constitutional challenges to its plain packaging legislation, as well as action brought against it by Philip Morris Asia, using secretive Investor State Dispute Settlement clauses contained in a 1993 treaty with Hong Kong.

Australia is still dealing with a dispute at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but New Zealand felt confident enough to proceed.

Assistant health minister Sam Lotu-liga told the Parliament on Thursday night that smoking led to between 4500 and 5000 premature deaths in New Zealand annually.

“There are already significant restrictions on advertising and promotion, increases in taxation and a consultation paper on e-cigarettes,” he said.

“But this bill takes away the last means of promoting tobacco as a desirable product.”

The laws are part of a push to eliminate smoking in New Zealand – accompanied by sales restrictions and excise hikes.

“Along with the existing sweep of tobacco control measures and quit smoking services, standardised packaging is a logical step towards our 2025 goal,” Lotu-liga said.

Earlier this year, British company Imperial Tobacco said it would not rule out legal action against the New Zealand Government if the laws were passed, on the basis they infringe on intellectual property rights.

Tobacco companies also argue that the reduction in smoking rates seen since Australia’s legislation was introduced could not be attributed solely to plain packaging, because their introduction was accompanied by a hike in excise rates.

According to figures from the OECD published last year, the prevalence of daily smokers is slightly higher in New Zealand (males, 17 per cent, females, 14 per cent) than it is in Australia (males, 15 per cent, females 11 per cent).

“Australia has had standardised packaging in place since December 2012 and in less than four years this has already reduced the number of smokers by at least 108,000 people,” Lotu-liga said.

New Zealand Department of Health figures show smoking rates among adult Australians dropped from 16.1 per cent in 2011-12 to 14.7 per cent in 2014-15.

But British American Tobacco’s Australian spokesman Nick Booth told the ABC the reduction could not be solely attributed to plain packaging and New Zealand should not follow the same path.

“There are a number of concerns which we hold in regards to tobacco plain packaging, one of which is stripping intellectual property from legitimate organisations, another is the growth in the illegal market,” he said.

“Since the introduction of plain packaging in Australia, we’ve seen that market grow substantially.”

The world’s fourth largest cigarette company, Imperial Tobacco, told Radio New Zealand in June it would not rule out legal action against the Government over the changes.

With the final legislative hurdles cleared, New Zealand regulators are now looking at designs indicating they will draw heavily from the Australian experience.

“So when cigarette packs come out of a smoker’s pocket, or are left lying around on a table where others will see it, there will be nothing but a drab, ugly background cover and large, prominent, graphic pictorial warnings,” Lotu-liga said.

Despite first recommending plain packaging in 1989, New Zealand has now become the third country to adopt the reform, behind Australia and the United Kingdom.

- ABC