Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Boothby, someone who has been championing prevention for his entire career. I acknowledge his former profession as a doctor and I also acknowledge the contribution that he has made to prevention during his time here in the parliament.

I rise to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2014 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (Tobacco) Bill 2014, which amend the Excise Tariff Act and the Customs Tariff Act. Both of these bills increase the rates of excise and excise equivalent Customs duty on tobacco through a series of four-staged increases of 12.5 per cent commencing on 1 December 2013 and index the rates of excise and excise equivalent Customs duty on tobacco to average weekly ordinary time earnings instead of the CPI. The last CPI indexation occurred on 1 August 2013 and the first average weekly ordinary time earnings indexation occurs on 1 March 2014. The previous Labor government announced these measures as part of the 2013-14 budget and the 2013-14 economic statement. These measures continue to implement Labor's world-leading approach to tobacco control and measures to reduce tobacco consumption.

World-wide tobacco continues to be the leading preventable cause of death, killing approximately six million people each year—a staggering number—including 600,000 deaths from second-hand smoke; all of which is preventable. According to current projections, tobacco will kill one billion people in this century. In Australia over 15,000 people die each year from smoking related illness, and in 2003 tobacco smoking accounted for nearly eight per cent of the entire total burden of disease. We know tobacco smoking is a major risk factor in coronary heart disease, stroke, peripheral vascular disease and numerous cancers, including mouth, lung, oesophagus, larynx, kidney, pancreas, bladder, stomach and cervical cancer. The health problems linked to passive smoking or second-hand smoke are just as serious: asthma in children, lower respiratory tract infections, lung cancer and coronary heart disease.

In recognition of the devastating impact of tobacco consumption on health, the previous Labor government made significant efforts to reduce tobacco consumption, which included the world's first tobacco plain packaging legislation. The objectives of plain packaging tobacco included: reducing the attractiveness and appeal of tobacco products to consumers, particularly young people—in other words, to remove the last form of advertising the tobacco companies had, particularly when marketing to young people; increasing the noticeability and effectiveness of mandated health warnings; reducing the ability of retail packaging of tobacco products to mislead consumers about the harms smoking; and contributing to efforts to reduce smoking rates in combination with a broader suite of tobacco control measures.

Australia is now recognised as a world leader in tobacco control, and around the world we are seeing a number of other countries, including New Zealand, Ireland and Scotland, following suit with plain packaging laws of their own. Results from behavioural research on the implementation of plain packaging indicate that those who are smoking from plain packs as compared with branded-pack smokers perceived that their cigarettes were of a lower quality, perceived that their cigarettes were less satisfying than a year ago, were more likely to have thought about quitting at least once a day in the past week and rated quitting as a higher priority in their lives. These results certainly suggest that plain packaging is meeting the original objectives that I outlined earlier.

Plain packaging was not the only measure we took to reduce tobacco consumption. This bill in fact goes to the heart of that matter. Increasing tobacco prices through effective taxation is one of the most effective measures that can be taken to reduce premature death and disease due to smoking. Price increases on tobacco products reduce cigarette consumption, increase attempts to quit and reduce smoking prevalence. We know it is an effective measure that works, and it has been working increasingly across the world.

This measure increases the percentage of excise tax on the retail price of a mainstream pack of 20 cigarettes from around 49 per cent to 62 per cent by 1 September 2016. After the first rise of 12.5 per cent on 1 December last year, the Treasury had estimated the number of Australians aged 18 and over who smoke would decrease by around 60,000. In fact, when tobacco excise was last increased under Labor in April 2010, a post-implementation review conducted two years later by Treasury showed a decrease in consumption of tobacco by 11 per cent, as compared to consumption immediately prior to the increase. In the coming years, further estimates by Treasury suggest that as excise increases tobacco consumption will decrease by as much as a further seven per cent by September 2016.

Modelling aside, and despite what we are still seeing from big tobacco as recently as today, we do know that taxation measures on tobacco control are already working. It is certainly one of the most effective measures in making the decision that people need to make to quit and in making the uptake of cigarette smoking less attractive, particularly to young people. For example, in the State of preventative health 2013report, the Australian National Preventive Health Agency outlined that there had been relatively large drop in smoking prevalence in the most disadvantaged areas between 2007-08 and 2011-12, and the National Prevention Health Taskforce reported that cost is a major trigger to quit smoking among smokers of lower socioeconomic status, who often bear the largest part of the burden of disease for smoking-related illnesses. Further, a study of Victorian smokers by the Cancer Council Victoria showed that after the April 2010 excise increases heavy smokers reduced consumption dramatically.

Labor's announcements of tobacco excise increases over the coming four years, and the government's commitment in these bills to implement that decision, will contribute to achieving the Council of Australian Governments' targets for smoking. It is a very important measure and, again, a measure the complements all of the measures that are across the suite of trying to reduce rates of smoking and uptake of smoking in Australia.

In addition to the measures that I have already mentioned, Labor's tobacco control package included investment of more than $135 million in anti-smoking social marketing campaigns—important campaigns to start targeting those population groups, particularly groups of young men aged 18 to 25, that have been more difficult to get the message to with regard to smoking. It is very important to try and work with them using methods that they would understand and hear to make sure that they actually understand what smoking is doing.

Labor also introduced updated and expanded graphic health warnings on tobacco products. I particularly reflect on my own experience internationally. I was asked to represent the then Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, in Moscow at the WHO precursor to the noncommunicable diseases convention, which was to be held in New York later in that year. One of the topics I was asked to speak on was plain packaging. Being in Moscow, a city that has very high smoking rates, and presenting before an international audience, I remember the complete silence in the room when I displayed the plain packaging tobacco pack that has the eye on it. Most people will be familiar with that particular one. They found it absolutely fantastic that Australia had gone this far, but it was incredibly confronting for those countries that had only just started on the pathway of tobacco reform, many of which had, in the first instance, only just started to introduce taxes on tobacco and introduce these price measures. Labor and the Australian people should be justifiably proud. In tackling the issue in the way that we have, we are in fact influencing the world and the world's rate of smoking.

The other measures that Labor introduced were the comprehensive advertising restrictions under the Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Act 1992, including internet advertising in Australia; a really important health measure of listing of nicotine replacement therapies on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, something long advocated for by those in the medical community and certainly by Quit; and the extended listings of smoking cessation drugs. We also saw under Labor the largest ever investment in support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to reduce their smoking rates, including $14.5 million for the Indigenous Tobacco Control Initiative, which funded innovative tobacco control projects in 18 Indigenous communities. This is an initiative which I must admit is not sitting within the health portfolio anymore, and I have some concerns about what may be happening with that project. There was also $100.6 million for the tackling smoking measure and $35.6 million for the healthy lifestyle measure to support Regional Tackling Smoking and Healthy Lifestyle program teams in 57 regions around Australia. Through Medicare Local networks, not-for-profit organisations and through medical organisations, we need to be able to look at those communities where we have not been as successful in getting smoking rates down and introduce initiatives specifically trying to assist those communities and those people to reduce smoking.

These measures were all included as endorsed strategies for reducing tobacco consumption under the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. That convention is a treaty to address the health, social, environmental and economic consequences of tobacco consumption and exposure to tobacco smoke worldwide, a very important convention that has set the framework for all of the measures introduced in Australia and the measures that are progressively being introduced internationally.

As I have said, Labor made significant efforts to reduce tobacco consumption and the harms associated with it. I have high hopes that these efforts will not be wasted, and it is great to see the Liberal Party make the decision to no longer accept tobacco donations. That has long been an issue and I am very pleased to see that the Liberal Party have finally made that very important decision. I do have to point out that, unfortunately, the National Party have stated that they will continue to take tobacco donations. In this day and age, when we have so much research linking tobacco consumption to such poor health outcomes, and the big numbers of people in Australia and worldwide that are dying from tobacco related illness, it leaves me wondering how any political party would willingly accept financial donations from a company associated with such a product, frankly. I have said in this place before that I think it is untenable when you have an Assistant Minister for Health who is meant to be responsible for prevention accepting that her party will continue to accept tobacco donations. It is something that is untenable and I certainly hope very much that the National Party reflects upon the very difficult position in which they have placed that Assistant Minister for Health. I have had other things to say about her, but they have placed her in a difficult position.

Unlike this government, Labor does put health as a priority. It was a priority for us when we were in government and it remains absolutely a priority for us now. We support the measures in this bill, no less than the World Bank and the World Health Organization supported Labor's position on tobacco control. It was Labor who committed to the most comprehensive suite of tobacco reform measures in order to reduce tobacco consumption in Australia, and the increase in tobacco excise over the next three years will continue this tobacco control legacy. I am pleased to see on the list of speakers that the former Minister for Health, the member for Sydney, will also contribute to this debate. I want to particularly pay tribute to both her and, before her, Nicola Roxon for staring down industry and many people on tobacco control initiatives. It took some tough negotiations and tough leadership to get those through and I think that is a legacy that Labor is truly and justly proud of.

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