Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be able to speak to this motion that the honourable member for Blair has put before the House, because tobacco fundraising is really not something that we should be making money out of or taking money from. I am also pleased that on 23 June 2011 this House endorsed, without dissent, that all political parties should stop accepting donations from big tobacco. This is one of the current debates in public life and an issue that goes to integrity. There are also these debates going on about superannuation funds and other things like that, about where money is invested and where we put our money. Even though that went through the House, I know that the same cannot be said for the coalition because it seems that the long arm of big tobacco reaches into this chamber.

I say this knowing that over the years political parties have taken donations from all sorts of companies, but there comes a time when you draw a line in the sand and you say, 'Enough.' You refuse it, you withdraw from it and you say, 'I will not be taking any money.' It is really time that everybody in this place, including the coalition, took heed of that as an issue of integrity and also took heed of that motion that actually did go through the House.

New figures from the Australian Electoral Commission show that big tobacco has invested at least $7 million to influence Canberra since 2004. One of the things that has been interesting with the whole debate on plain packaging and all of that was the extent that the big tobacco companies went to in trying to influence and lobby people and the way they used the legal system to try to stop that as well. They talked about it in terms of free trade, which was really just a lot of nonsense. It just shows the extent they will go to.

It is not as if we are talking about something that is benign; we are talking about something that kills and we know that it kills. We are not talking about banning it, even though some people say, 'If you are going to do this, you should.' We should not, because there has to be a way that we can deal with it—but it does kill. Even though it is in decline in a lot of areas of Australia, South-East Asia—our region, our neighbours—is now big tobacco's biggest market, with six million new smokers recruited in 2009 and another 30 million expected to be added by 2014. The World Health Organization calculates that, of the six million people who will die from tobacco use each year, 80 per cent of them will be in the developing world. So, really, it is an industry that has no moral compass at all. There is no responsibility taken for the lives that it affects.

When I was said 'all of us in this place, including the coalition', I did mean the Liberals but also the National Party. When I look at the list of donations that go to the political parties, I see that they go to the National Party as well. I think I have heard people say here that it does not, but it actually does. It is something that should be stopped.

Dr Southcott interjecting—

Look, the Australian Electoral Commission website—

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