Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 insofar as the impacts that smoking has on the health of Australians, the long-term cost to Australian society and the healthcare system are significant. I have been involved with the work of the Preventative Health Taskforce and some of the representations made to that task force on the arguments for the reduction in the levels of smoking within Australian society and the need to consider strategies that would reduce the level of uptake of smoking, particularly amongst young people, and also prevention programs that see a downturn in the number of Australians who smoke. Part of the interest in the discussions with the Preventative Health Taskforce was in some of their thinking around some of the strategies, and we were certainly exploring the need for well-informed awareness programs that provide an educative process that would enable people to give greater consideration to the risks and health impacts that smoking has on them.

One of the arguments that are always straightforward and simple is to increase the excise, but one of the alternative debates to that is that those who tend to live in low-socioeconomic circumstances will reduce smoking for a period of time but do not sustain it; they return to their smoking practice or habit. In making that decision, they then make decisions about what they alleviate when they need to set money aside in order to pay for the cigarettes that they buy. Often choices are made around prescription medications or a child's excursions. So there are a whole range of factors where, if you have a limited budget and you want to continue smoking even though the price has gone up, you start to make choices, and some of them are the wrong choices.

I had the privilege of working on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework, in which we looked at why we needed measures, the findings for each of the measures and then the policy implications. What struck me when I was working through that was the impact of tobacco or smoking on health—both passive smoking and direct smoking in which an individual chose to expose themselves to risks. Even though they had the knowledge from what they had seen and what was on cigarette packets, that did not cause them to diminish that harmful behaviour.

In this whole debate I have wondered about the impact of the plain packaging. Certainly, when I look at the mock-ups of the plain packages, the visual images of the types of cancer or other health problems you can have with smoking are extremely graphic, but I also accept that you can switch those off after a while, or you find a container that you can fit these into and it alleviates that message.

I also talked to retailers within Hasluck and sought their views on a range of issues around what it would mean for them, and the first thing they said to me was that the plain packaging may not make a difference. They had all run straw polls just to see if people would stop smoking or reduce their smoking with plain packaging. They indicated to me that in each of their stores or outlets the indication was that people would not change. What they were annoyed about was the fact that the colouring of their packet would be affected, but it would not alter their smoking. There were a couple of very key, important issues that the retailers raised with me. They made the point that, as my colleague who spoke previously said, cigarettes are locked behind doors. From their perspective the retailers saw that as workable and they also saw it as helpful, because when you run a business every second and every minute is money to you. They said it was easy just to scan the shelves and see cigarette packets by colour. They said that if we go to plain packaging then their problem would be that those customers who are illiterate or who have English as a second language identify their packets by colour. So they put to me a number of propositions that would impact on their time. But, strangely enough, they also conceded that the importance of health was a significant factor that should be considered. Their argument was for better awareness programs and more funding. To that end, I had some degree of empathy for their needs given the task that they will have in having the base of their packages roughly the same in visual appearance, which makes it a detraction from their time—although by human nature we adjust, and they would tend to find ways of being very effective and efficient in the way that they would dispense cigarettes. But I do have some degree of sympathy for their situation. Tax versus plain packaging? I certainly would not support an increase in excise on tobacco and its supply at this time and would lean towards plain packaging, because I think that that is far better to alleviate some of the cost of living stresses that families within my electorate who do smoke will experience, particularly in the context of rising prices with the onset of a potential carbon tax that will have an impact. Also, I think that the initiatives of the Australian health ministers, certainly of the Council of Australian Governments, have strengthened an awareness around the need for people to weigh up and consider their health in the context of smoking and the impact of tobacco. What I have been pleased to see is the focus on passive smoking. Certainly the Preventative Health Taskforce and the work led by Professor Michael Daube and many others has highlighted the need for very considered thinking by those in households where there are children about the impact on them of tobacco smoke. If this approach to plain packaging works and helps further to decrease the number of people smoking then it is at least a constructive outcome.

By the same token, I have a concern about the way in which we can become a nanny state. At times we have to give people responsibility for their decisions. It is easy for governments to legislate on a range of factors in which we become protective in a way that sees the state intrude on the choices that people make. To that end I would not want to see a further reduction in the way that Australians do have a choice. However, I do see the benefits of at least plain packaging that might make that difference.

Another element that is of interest to me is that, when I walk past hospitals, I am always fascinated to see people standing there with drips in their arms and bandaged getting in as many cigarettes as they can in the short period of time they can stand out the front of the hospital.

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