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

I want to start by thanking the shadow parliamentary secretary, Dr Southcott, for his work in this area. I also thank the shadow minister for small business and my other colleagues who have raised legitimate questions for the minister. There are serious concerns at a small business level. These are people who want to do the right thing, who have the right intent, but do not have the great resources of government to introduce what are dramatic changes to the way in which they retail products. I endorse those calls and ask—I am sure the Minister for Health and Ageing will take up the request—that the minister directly respond to what are reasonable suggestions. I think they are a demonstration that the coalition does believe that small business are in a difficult space, and it is not unreasonable in the circumstances to ask the minister to respond accordingly.

I also wanted to touch on two other issues. I know that time is against us at the moment, but I want to say to the minister that the government's attention must redouble in terms of Indigenous smoking rates in this country. People can be optimistic or pessimistic about the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 and the measures. My judgment is that, in Indigenous communities, this will have very little impact; nonetheless, it is for government—and for the opposition, in a constructive way, to support government—to introduce changes which will have tangible and positive outcomes for people living in Indigenous communities, particularly young people living in Indigenous communities, as well as young people living across the country.

The take-up rate is still too high, although much of the work that we did when we were in government and that Tony Abbott did when he was health minister has resulted in positive outcomes, downward trends, that have put us in a position that the world is enviable of. But we need to make sure that as a country we continue to put in place mechanisms which will have positive outcomes in those particular hot spots of tobacco use. A significant cultural change needs to take place. It will provide government with ongoing difficulties—there is no question about that. It will provide government with resourcing questions.

But what we do not need in this space is more health bureaucrats, which is what we have seen in other parts of this health portfolio. I want to make sure that the measures the government puts forward—and the coalition would be happy to support—are practical measures which would go to reducing smoking rates, particularly, as I say, in Indigenous communities. I might close on this note. I do not wish to seek to raise the tempo in this chamber. I think the member for Boothby aptly put the argument before. But the fact is that the coalition has not sought to block or slow down the passage of this legislation in the Senate. I thought it was churlish, I might say, for the minister to put out a press release—I am sure it was done by a junior staffer in her office—to suggest that somehow we were complicit with big tobacco or other companies in slowing down the process. Of course the truth came to the surface when within a matter of days the minister was out making a plea on ABC radio, asking health groups and other informed constituents to lobby her own Senate colleagues to get out of the way, to stop slowing down their own bill and to get on with the passage of the legislation. Eventually the minister came clean. I think that is worth putting on the record, because those sorts of press statements I do not think add to the maturity of this debate. The coalition's position has been made very clear by Dr Southcott and others as part of their contributions.

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