Outrage from the New Zealand First leader as the Budget week drew to a close.

Winston Peters slammed his colleagues for planning to take more than 425 million bucks out of the pockets, mainly of the poor. They passed into law a ten percent increase in the excise tax on tobacco in each of the next four years.

That'll take a packet of fags from around $20 now to $32. Peters rushed out a statement, headed Fat People Hitting Smokers in the Pocket.

In what he's dubbed the Get Stuffed Budget, he says a lot of fat people are sitting in their ivory towers (very Muldoon) telling smokers what to do. Peters says the Beehive burglars are ignoring the huge health problems we have with obesity and are picking on low income people again.

There are probably 550,000 people who'd agree with him, which is the number who light up every day, or 15 percent of adult Kiwis.

Peter claims his stand's got nothing to do with supporting smoking, which he himself is rather partial to, but maintains it's about fairness and speaking up for people's personal freedoms.

Any liberally minded person would agree with him, just as they'd agree that people have the freedom to eat what they like.

In reality they're as bad as each other, fagging and fat that is, and worse still when it comes to Maori and Pacific Islanders. With obesity it starts before they move on to fags, with 60 percent of Pacific Island kids overweight or obese and 40 percent of Maori. Overall we're the third fattest nation on earth after the United States and Mexico.

When they do take up the wicked weed, they again feature disproportionately in the statistics again, 35 percent of adult Maori and 22 percent of Pacific Islanders puff their way to an early grave.

Without knowing it, Peters may have provided part of the solution. If people are spending so much more on fags, they'll have to scrimp on food!

But this is no joking matter. While it's difficult to come up with the exact number of people dying from being obese, mainly because there are a myriad of fatal conditions associated with it, the stats on smoking are more stark.

Up to 5000, or a dozen people every day, die from smoking related disease.

And in both conditions it's preventable by adhering to one word, discipline!