Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Hansard source

I too would like to commend the member for Kingston for bringing this motion forward and for the opportunity to outline the Liberal and National parties' position on tobacco control. I would like to first put on record the proven track record of the coalition with regard to reducing smoking rates in Australia. It was the Fraser government in 1976 that first banned cigarette advertising. In 1998, the Howard government reformed cigarette taxation from a weight basis to a per stick basis, a recommendation of many health organisations at the time: ASH, the Cancer Council, as well as all of the health peak bodies. It was the Howard government, and Tony Abbott as health minister, who introduced the graphic health warnings on cigarette packets in 2006. And it was the coalition who first proposed an increase in the tobacco excise in 2009—a measure later adopted by the government. Under the coalition government, the rates of smoking in Australia declined from 21.5 per cent in 1998 to 16.6 per cent in 2007. This is one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. The decline in smoking rates between 1989 and 2007, a fall of 40 per cent for men and 44 per cent for women, was amongst the biggest in the OECD. This fall in smoking for women was the biggest in the world.

Even though these falls are significant, and we do have one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world, there is no cause for complacency. It is worth noting that several European countries over this time frame saw increases in the smoking rates and some, such as Greece, saw substantial increases in smoking rates, especially amongst women. It should be a national goal to ensure that smoking rates for adult Australians fall below 10 per cent. This has been a bipartisan position for a long time and one of the disgusting and despicable aspects of this debate has been the way the Minister for Health and Ageing has sought to politicise the issues surrounding tobacco control for her own political gain rather than taking an approach where the country's health interests are the core focus. If she had only spent 10 per cent of the time that she spent talking about the Liberal Party and what it should do and how it should interact with the tobacco companies and actually got on with it, we would be in a much better position today.

Let us remember that the idea of plain packaging was first suggested by the National Preventative Health Taskforce on 30 June 2009. It is more than two years later and the parliament has been given no opportunity to vote on the legislation. And it is not as if the last two years have been taken up with extensive consultation with stakeholders. The department has revealed at estimates that the consultation they consider was done by the Preventative Health Task Force, so the minister and the government have not been out there talking to small business and talking to the various stakeholders about this move. As I said before, the minister has had a lot to say about the Liberal Party and what it should do rather than getting on with actually doing something.

I have looked at the research on the effects of plain packaging and the effects of graphic health warnings on consumer choice and behaviours. There is no doubt that increasing the size of graphic health warnings will reduce the rates of smoking. There is no doubt that reducing the size and locations of branding will also have an impact. But my reading of the research is that the increasing of the graphic health warning from 30 per cent to 70 per cent on the front of the packets will be the most effective measure any government could take, and it is one the government could have taken two years ago. The impact of plain packaging I think will be quite marginal after that. These measures will help to reduce the incidence of new people taking up smoking and will also help those people who are thinking about quitting to ditch the packet for good. There is no silver bullet to reduce the rate of smoking in Australia. This is but one tool in the armoury in the push to reduce the rates of smoking in the community.

The Leader of the Opposition has said that the Liberal and National parties will be moving amendments when we do finally see the plain packaging legislation to make it more practical. If those amendments are not successful, we will not be opposing the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill as the Liberal and National parties do support practical measures to reduce the rates of smoking in Australia. As I said before, it is a worthy goal for us to aim to have not just the third lowest rate of smoking in the world but the lowest rate and rates below 10 per cent.

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