Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This motion, as all of us on this side of the House know, is about one thing: backbone. Either you accept donations from the tobacco industry and compromise your political views and your judgment on important issues of public policy or you take a stand and say that no amount of money is worth compromising good policy. Despite fairly valiant but quite sad attempts by the coalition to avoid taking a position on political donations from tobacco companies, this is an issue that we know all parties must face up to. If the coalition cannot stand up to big tobacco, how can we ever believe that it will stand up to big polluters? How will it ever stand up to people who do not want to distribute the profits and the benefits of the mining boom amongst ordinary Australians?

We have already seen in the last couple of weeks that the coalition will not even stand up for mum and dad shareholders on the issue of excessive executive pay. When it came to the vote, they backed executives over consumers and shareholders. They tried very hard to camouflage their position. They made all the right noises about the forgotten shareholders and standing up for forgotten consumers, forgotten employees and forgotten customers, but when it came to the vote they voted to look after executives.

This motion is yet another a litmus test for the coalition. Are they able to take tough decisions or will they simply dance for the highest bidder? Will they oppose good policy because their wealthy benefactors crack the whip? Who is in fact running the show for the opposition? Is it the member for Warringah? Is it Senator Minchin? Is it big tobacco or big polluters? Is it tobacco sceptics this week, or climate sceptics? Which big lobby group has its hands on the purse strings this week?

In this parliament we are dealing with the tough issues—issues that cannot and should not be determined by vested interests; issues that test all of us. It is important to listen to community perspectives in the policy debate and to listen to different perspectives, but there is a vast difference between taking advice and taking orders. We know that tobacco smoking is the leading preventable cause of premature death and disease in Australia. We know that smoking leads to a wide range of diseases, including many types of cancer, heart disease and stroke. We know that tobacco smoking costs our economy around $31.5 billion and that 84 per cent of new lung cancers in men and 77 per cent of new lung cancers in women result from smoking. We have heard that the Cancer Council of Australia estimates that smoking claims the lives of more than 15,000 Australians each year. If we are really talking about forgotten families, let us have a chat about the families of those 15,000. Let us talk about their dependants—their kids, their husbands, their wives—their friends and the colleagues they leave behind.

That is why those of us on this side of the House decided it was impossible to accept political donations from tobacco interests. I am confident that some on the other side of the House share that view, but unfortunately the vast majority of those on the other side of the House appear to have ducked the issue. The ALP knows it is not possible to legislate effectively to decrease the effects of tobacco while accepting donations from tobacco companies. Australians should be asking why other political parties do not do the same.

We know that tobacco companies have donated $3 million to the Liberal and National parties over the last 12 years. We also know that those parties are dragging their feet on the issue of plain packaging for cigarettes, something that doctors and other health professionals have been calling for to try to curb the rate of smoking, particularly in the group most vulnerable to tobacco marketing: young people. British American Tobacco states clearly in its charter that the political donations it makes are given specifically to influence the debate on issues affecting the company and its business. In fact, its website states:

Such payments can only be made for the purpose of influencing the debate on issues affecting the company or Group.

There is no escaping it: tobacco companies expect results from their donations. Tobacco companies expect to sway the views of political parties that accept their donations. They have no other purpose. There can be no other conclusion.

When questioned about all of this, all the Leader of the Opposition can feebly say is, 'They've wasted their money.' I think most of us would consider that money given to the coalition is a complete waste, but it really is insulting to the Australian public to expect them to believe that political donations from tobacco companies will not have an influence on the opposition's policy position. Australians need to ask themselves how a party that can do the bidding of tobacco companies, polluters and other big vested interests can still say that they stand for forgotten families.

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