Early Edition with Kate Hawkesby

Nicola Willis is blaming ACT and NZ First for the momentous dismantling of Smokefree laws. That's what she said over the weekend, telling Newshub the minor parties were insistent on reversing the amendments, not even a year after they were passed.  ACT says tobacco taxes bring in about 1.8 billion all up, and we're given to believe taking those new restrictions away will be worth about a billion.  So, handy money...especially when you've just had to sacrifice a different cash raising scheme which you'd hoped would help fund tax cuts.  But what do we read from this? Isn't this a matter of principle, a moral issue even, and where was this in the manifestos?  Are we to infer that delivering tax cuts is now more important than saving thousands from the misery of being addicted to tobacco? And if you haven't been there...believe me...it's a miserable addiction.  Are we to infer that it's really Act and New Zealand First in the driving seat...and if so...what further horrors are to come?  There'll be a lot of dairy