Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

I want to firstly commend the contribution by shadow parliamentary secretary Dr Southcott, who I think gave a very wise contribution to this debate. I want to address some of the issues which have been raised by others in this debate. Before I do that, I want—and I think it is important to do so in this process—to inform the public of how we got to this point. There has, for generations, been bipartisan support to address the issue of tobacco usage and uptake, in particular in Indigenous communities and among young Australians. That has matured over a period of time to a sensible point now where all stakeholders in this debate want to see a reduction wherever possible in smoking. We do not want to see increasing numbers of young people in particular take up smoking. They know cigarettes are a scourge and the health outcomes of smoking in a much better and a more informed way than did their parents or grandparents.

One of the remarkable aspects of this debate has been how the government has, in its desperation, in its flapping about from one issue to the next, tried to politicise this issue. I agree with much of what the health minister has said about the aspirations of this government to reduce smoking rates. It was the aspiration of her predecessor, the current Leader of the Opposition, and health ministers back as far as any of us can recall. But what has been different in this debate has been the way in which the current health minister has sought to denigrate the position of others in this debate, both in this chamber and outside, and the way in which the health minister has sought to discount views which might differ even slightly from her own.

It has been quite unhelpful because the opposition, when we were in government and as far back as the Fraser government, introduced measures and reforms in this area which we can be rightly proud of. The fact that smoking rates have declined over that period make us stand out in the western world in how low our smoking rates are. I have said in this place and to the media before that it is unfortunate that this government would seek to try and distract from other deficiencies—and there are many—that they have on their books at the moment. This is a government that by anybody's account has been the most incompetent, the most unable to implement change since the Whitlam government.

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