Around 12,000 bars, cafes and restaurants will each face minimum compliance costs of $20,000 if they are forced to implement the Government's anti-smoking plans, ACT Internal Affairs spokesman Penny Webster said today.

"The Government has not even consulted HANZ, yet sells itself as pro-business," Penny Webster said.

"If this is truly a health issue, then the Government should create an air-quality standard which would apply not just to bars, cafes and restaurants, but also to nightclubs and clubs. These businesses could then meet this standard in their own way.

"Enforcing a $20,000 cost on every small bar- and café- owner is unfair. For many, it will be physically and financially impossible to create such a space.

"In provincial New Zealand, where the public will bypass their local pub and go down the road to clubs, their will be closures and job losses.

"Thousands of small business-owners will suffer because of an arrogant move by righteous Labour politicians," Penny Webster said.

Ends

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>