Ok, you will all remember that Casey Costello was accused of sending a letter arguing for Tobacco tax cuts but then claimed she didn’t send it at all…
A politically charged document arguing for tobacco tax cuts was sent to health officials by a NZ First minister – even though she says she has no idea who wrote it or how it ended up in her office.
In December 2023, Associate Health Minister Casey Costello gave health officials the document which claimed “nicotine is as harmful as caffeine” and argued Labour’s smokefree generation policy was “nanny state nonsense”.
Earlier this year, Costello denied the document existed. Now, she has released it with parts redacted even though she says she does not know who wrote it.
Costello has consistently said she has had nothing to do with the tobacco industry.
Labour’s health spokeswoman, Ayesha Verrall, said Costello’s actions gave the opposite impression.
“Surely a bit of transparency would help the minister. But instead, she’s hidden documents, claimed not to know where they came from, [and] misrepresented them in Parliament. That’s not the behaviour of a minister who has got nothing to hide.”
…so what was Casey Costello, the former Tobacco lobbyist hiding?
What Costello hid from the public in the mystery document
While Costello released the document with parts of it hidden, RNZ has the original, unredacted document and so can compare the versions.
The redactions in the documents released under the OIA by Costello included censoring all the material pushing for tobacco tax cuts and the claims that nicotine is no more harmful than caffeine and that the last government’s policy was “nanny state nonsense”.
It argued strongly for tax cuts for Heated Tobacco Products – although this too was redacted.
“Smokeless tobacco is a vaping product, it does not combust and should not be taxed like combustible cigarettes, but instead like other vaping products that are not subject to excise,” the original document said.
“Giving up smoking should also mean giving up paying huge excise taxes. Excise tax is a tool to discourage use, we want to encourage smokers to use these products and one of the best ways to do that is to make it cheaper than cigarettes.”
Costello recently cut the excise tax on HTPs by 50 percent and set aside a contingency fund of $216 million to cover the tobacco tax cuts.
She did this despite health officials saying there was no strong evidence either that they worked as a smoking cessation tool or that they were significantly safer than cigarettes.
Ministers have to cite specific grounds for withholding information. Costello said redactions were made under a clause of the OIA which protects the “confidentiality of advice tendered by Ministers of the Crown and officials”.
Costello’s office did not address questions from RNZ about how she could use this clause if she did not know who wrote the document.
…she has been caught out lying and she has been caught out trying to censor all her lobbying for the tax cut!!!
What the fuck does she have to do to get sacked?
If only this Government treated beneficiaries and the disabled the way they lovingly do for cigarettes.
How much must you hate Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives during a once in a century pandemic for this outright corruption by National/ACT/NZF to be acceptable?
“What on earth does Casey Costello have to do to get sacked?”
Eat luxon head first then claim she thought he was a potato?
Gosh that’s funny.
The real joke is ‘The Coalition of Chaos’ …and the power of propaganda….funny ..but dangerously bad
Some way in the future, a longtitudinal study will be carried out to determine how anybody could have been so stupid as to vote for any one of this terrible troika ..
Great to see you have a sense of humour at last
Contrived far left abusive non-humour is the pits.
I’m beginning to wonder if she is just plain corrupt which is a worry given she was a Detective in NZ Police prior to being elected to Parliament.
If she is not corrupt then she is just plain dumb and incompetent which further indicates how dumb our PM is.
This is just outright corruption.
Of course it’s corruption. Corruption is a policy of the right.
Corruption is a defining trait of politics under a Westminster System.
Maybe Costello herself wrote or compiled it…in any event she will certainly go for a skate if the truth does finally emerge. Redactions on a “non existent” document?–wtf–do we have a functioning media… and does the Cabinet Manual not apply to these fuckers?.
It is not a good look when the CoC reduces school lunches from nutritious hot meals and fruit to dried out sandwiches to save money, but can still afford a $216 mill subsidy for the Tobacco Industry.
Luxon does not have the balls to sack her .He is the PM so has the power to kick her to the curb .He iclearly complicit in the lies and maybe he is the mystery author
While right wingers have no problem with sacking others for next to nothing they struggle to sack another right winger as they know they don’t have the numbers
Ludicrous.
Correct Bob
Baldrick 7 Pads Luxon needs to grow a pair of gonads.
She also a spokesperson for “Hobsons Pledge” This woman has been saying and promoting outrageous shit for years and shouldn’t be near the leverages of power.
Martyn – Does not feel right regarding her borderline lobbying for the tobacco industry
There is a difference between lobbying and being a f’ing liar
She’s doing a fine job.
…for the tobacco industry.
Reading your comments here I have to ask … are you a professional moron, or just a gifted amateur?
Yep doing a fine job of lying and being useless which is par for the course with Luxon’s coalition of chaos.
You have no standards at all Bob.
Golly gosh, gee whizz. Bob the fisted
More idiot commentry from Bob the Fisted.
Not a very LWQqwerTy friendly comment there bud.
Agreed. Bob the gimp is far more accurate.
Bob the fart would likely have endorsed anyone from Mussolini to Pinochet to Putin as doing “a fine job”. This MP, another bent ex copper like Sabin–who the conservatives and Torys seem to love selecting as candidates, has at the very best interpretation…misled both the public and Parliament.
She is up for the high jump if a proper forensic investigation is run on the document that she claims not to know who wrote or delivered to her office…
Show her Detective skill.
It’s left me speechless…
hate to break it chaps nic has no harmful (the other chems in fags are another question) however it is highly addictive as is caffine and we KNOW coffee contains carcogenians.
I have severe problems with the govts vaping moral panic but the minister is clearly corrupt and in the pay of the fag companies
nicotine/coffee which is worse you tell me?
It’s simply incorrect to claim or insinuate that aside from having addictive properties nicotine is harmless.
It causes vascular constriction and interferes with cardiac function. Overdoses can be fatal. In all, nicotine alone can raise the risk of cardiac disease, and if coupled with pulmonary damage from the combustible products of tobacco, the risk of even greater harm is well established.
It surprises me how being smoke free but ingesting the same chemicals and still being addicted via the nicotine is somehow considered to be healthy. Thankfully I had enough sense to never smoke tobacco and it is wrong that the government is more interested in improving tobacco companies profit than looking after the health of the population.
Probably caffeine. I recommend nicotine gums to those who need a little bump to focus and don’t have access to reliable and safe amphetamines, prescribed or otherwise. Quitline will give you a voucher to get hundreds of them for $5 if you tell them you smoke five packs a day on their website.
Everyone except Bob the idiot thinks she fucking useless, thankfully he’s the common denominator. Another day, another Bob troll.
Fabulous chaps I love to wallow in the attention you afford me,keep it up please.
Of course you do, you’re an egotistical maniac, who still sucks from his mother’s tit and doesn’t have a single thought of your own. You’re a gold medal winner in that department.
Of course you do, you’re an egotistical maniac, who still sucks from his mother’s tit and doesn’t have a single thought of your own. You’re a gold medal winner in that department.
when I step in dog shit it gets my attention, bob the last
Wallowing!!…Only David Seymour could come up with that childish shite.
Fuck me fuckin hell he IS David Seymour
Bob the fucking fart is David Seymour
Bob Allan Gibbs Toy Boy ?
” How much must you hate Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives during a once in a century pandemic for this outright corruption by National/ACT/NZF to be acceptable ” ?
Jacinda’s first deliberate error was getting carried away and promising to be the most transparent government ever. Completely naive.
Jacinda and her colleagues saved lives Bomber but it has already been forgotten in the world and reality we exist in post 2020
If we had a credible , non corrupt , opposition that thinks beyond their own personal property entitled six figure managerial class portfolios then the oppressed and bottom feeders that are enticed to vote for the managerial class dressed up as a front for all the thousands of Luxon , Willis’s and Hipkin’s hard working poor that he thought he was representing when he joined the managerial neo liberal market workers party.
If only your friend and leader of the neo liberal Labour party Bomber had accomplished what her and her well funded corporate LINO party has promised with # lets do this ..what we will lie and promise to solicit votes from LINO’s bottom feeders and then turn their backs on those nasty , smelly working poor and their kids who are human beings but their only value to Adern and her parasites is their party vote.
You know its true Bomber.
The left is dead comrade and the Casey’s are the new politicians who now call the shots and no one in this country cares what she does. We signed it all away a long time a go. 45 % responding to political poll questions support this current direction and that’s all that matters.
NACTFIST are constantly lying about everything. when is a pothole fund not a pothole fund? when it’s bob the fisted’s. he loves his hole being filled with a big fat baloney. as for the other big C conservative sycophants – they just love lapping up the bullshit. their (w)hole fucking house is built on a floating raft of it tied together with obfuscation and malice
Worst Government Ever – it’s like a wet dream and we’re the idiots who are going to clean the fucking sheets
” How much must you hate Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives during a once in a century pandemic for this outright corruption by National/ACT/NZF to be acceptable ” ?
Jacinda’s first deliberate error was getting carried away and promising to be the most transparent government ever. Completely naive.
Jacinda and her colleagues saved lives Bomber but it has already been forgotten in the world and reality we exist in post 2020
If we had a credible , non corrupt , opposition that thinks beyond their own personal property entitled six figure managerial class portfolios then the oppressed and bottom feeders that are enticed to vote for the managerial class dressed up as a front for all the thousands of Luxon , Willis’s and Hipkin’s hard working poor that he thought he was representing when he joined the managerial neo liberal market workers party.
If only your friend and leader of the neo liberal Labour party Bomber had accomplished what her and her well funded corporate LINO party has promised with # lets do this ..what we will lie and promise to solicit votes from LINO’s bottom feeders and then turn their backs on those nasty , smelly working poor and their kids who are human beings but their only value to Adern and her parasites is their party vote.
You know its true Bomber.
The left is dead comrade and the Casey’s are the new politicians who now call the shots and no one in this country cares what she does. We signed it all away a long time a go. 45 % responding to political poll questions support this current direction and that’s all that matters.
Its over comrade and deep down you have accepted it.
Don’t be such a Palpatine.
” How much must you hate Jacinda for having the temerity to save 20 000 lives during a once in a century pandemic for this outright corruption by National/ACT/NZF to be acceptable ” ?
Jacinda’s first deliberate error was getting carried away and promising to be the most transparent government ever. Completely naive.
Jacinda and her colleagues saved lives Bomber but it has already been forgotten in the world and reality we exist in post 2020
If we had a credible , non corrupt , opposition that thinks beyond their own personal property entitled six figure managerial class portfolios then the oppressed and bottom feeders that are enticed to vote for the managerial class dressed up as a front for all the thousands of Luxon , Willis’s and Hipkin’s hard working poor that he thought he was representing when he joined the managerial neo liberal market workers party.
If only your friend and leader of the neo liberal Labour party Bomber had accomplished what her and her well funded corporate LINO party has promised with # lets do this ..what we will lie and promise to solicit votes from LINO’s bottom feeders and then turn their backs on those nasty , smelly working poor and their kids who are human beings but their only value to Adern and her parasites is their party vote.
You know its true Bomber.
The left is dead comrade and the Casey’s are the new politicians who now call the shots and no one in this country cares what she does. We signed it all away a long time a go. 45 % responding to political poll questions support this current direction and that’s all that matters.
Its over comrade and deep down you have accepted it.
She is utterly despicable.
Another outstanding NZ First Minister doing a great job.
Winsston Hand picks the best.