Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

One of the values that is most widely shared amongst Australians is that we care about animals. As parents, one of the first things we teach our children is unnecessary cruelty to animals is simply wrong.

Like most busy Australians, when I am grabbing a new bottle of shampoo in the supermarket or rushing to put on my makeup in the morning, animal welfare is not the first thing on my mind. But it probably should be.

Every year, thousands of animals suffer tremendous pain—and many die—to make the cosmetics that sit on supermarket and chemist shelves around this country. Today, the vast majority of cosmetics in Australian chemists and supermarkets contain ingredients that have been tested on animals at some point in time. It is a practice that—like nine in 10 Australians—I think should be illegal.

What Australians rightly expect is that instead of having to read the fine print of every item in the supermarket aisle, the law will simply reflect the fundamental belief—that unnecessary cruelty to animals is wrong.

Animal testing for cosmetics is unnecessary, it is wrong, and today, the law does not reflect the ethics of the community. I think that needs to change.

Labor, along with the vast majority of Australians, shares the view that animals should not have to suffer for better lipstick or moisturiser.

Today, I am pleased to introduce into the House the Ethical Cosmetics Bill that would have the precise effect of bringing those shared values into law.

The Ethical Cosmetics Bill would ban animal testing for cosmetics in Australia, and ban the manufacture and importation into Australia of cosmetics that have been tested on animals elsewhere.

I want to outline the case for why Labor thinks the practice of animal testing for cosmetics should end.

Developing the b ill

In 2013 Labor's deputy leader and the member for Sydney, who is here with us in the chamber and has been very passionately concerned about this issue for a long period, announced that Labor would conduct a national consultation on the importation and sale of cosmetics tested on animals.

Throughout 2014 I worked very closely with the member for Throsby, who is the relevant shadow assistant minister, to lead that consultation.

The public response to our animal testing consultation was really quite extraordinary. We received more than 14,000 submissions and spoke to hundreds of ordinary Australians at public forums held in six locations around Australia.

What did we learn through this consultation? Banning animal-tested cosmetics in Australia has massive community support. More than 90 per cent of submissions to this consultation argued that animal-tested cosmetics should be banned in Australia. In fact, a lot of people we talked to were shocked that this process is still occurring. One of the other things that I thought was really interesting was that this ban is supported by a very wide range of Australians. It is not just people who have built their life with a passion for animal welfare and animal activism. We spoke to grandparents, school children and people from every walk of life who came to us saying that they believe this practice is wrong. In fact, many of the people who talked to us through the consultation process told us that this was the first time they had ever participated in a policy development process in their lives.

We consulted very widely with industry and due to that were able to come to grips with a number of very genuine complications in legislating in this area. I will explain how our bill manages those complications. One of the enduring refrains and one of the critical things that we want people at home to understand is that, while this is a complex area of policy, these challenges have been overcome. They have been overcome in the entire European Union, which was a real trailblazer in banning animal-tested cosmetics in the past. As we see around the world, countries are legislating for this or moving towards that new type of policy, which is very exciting to see. I would say as a final point on the consultation process that people were so energised to be a part of this. They want to see action now, and that is why Labor is taking this step of supporting me to introduce a private member's bill today. We think this has gone on for too long. Now is the time and now is the opportunity.

We heard quite a bit of detail about why animal testing is no longer necessary to prove that cosmetics are safe for human use. I want to quickly touch on some of those reasons. The first thing to note is that it is very clear that animal-tested cosmetics create incredibly high degrees of pain for the animals that are being used for the testing. There are really awful practices that those at home can look up on the internet: things like dripping very painful substances into the eyes of small animals, and things like repeatedly putting irritating lotions on the skin to determine how long it is before really serious consequences occur. We know that animals cannot be anaesthetised in any way, because that might interfere with the results, so we are really talking about a very cruel practice.

We also heard a lot of scientists who came to us and said, 'You know, there's actually no need for this anymore, because we can provide better testing, more accurate testing, of human response without using animals.' There are lots of alternative tests, and again I would point to the European Union as a jurisdiction where they have been able to put those into place.

The consultation pointed us to some difficulties of legislating in this area, and it is incredibly important that the public understand that, while you should have the rightful expectation that the law should reflect your ethics, it is not always as straightforward as it sounds, and that is certainly the case with the regulation of cosmetics. In Australia, cosmetics are regulated as industrial chemicals, so they are not really designed to have specific rules applied just to them. Probably one of the most significant complications is that animal testing is not occurring in Australia today for cosmetic purposes; it is occurring a lot overseas, and of course it is very hard for the Australian parliament to create laws that affect what goes on overseas.

The final complication that I will mention is this notion of dual purpose of testing. One of the things that we learned through the consultation is that most ingredients that are used in cosmetics are actually used in many other substances, and often in medicines. What we want to do with this legislation is actually carve out that bit of testing that is happening purely for cosmetic reasons, and that is a complex thing to do but something that I think we have managed to do in the Ethical Cosmetics Bill which is before the House today.

Our solution

The Ethical Cosmetics Bill bans, and creates offences, for testing cosmetics on animals within Australia.

The bill bans and creates offences for importing into Australia any new cosmetics (or existing cosmetics featuring new ingredients) that have been tested on animals overseas.

The bill before us is prospective only, so that means that anything that is on the shelves of Priceline or Coles at the moment will continue to be there, and in fact we have given the regulator and industry a three-year phase-in period in this bill so that new systems can be put in place and the industry can come to terms with the new standards.

Our bill amends the assessment process for new industrial chemicals which are intended to be used as cosmetics. What that means is that now, to apply for a new cosmetic ingredient to be registered in Australia, the regulator must be provided with the full list of the substance's animal test history and, for any live tests that are conducted, industry must bring forward the reasons why the test was conducted, and if the regulator believes that the dominant purpose for the testing being conducted is for that product's use as a cosmetic then that product cannot be listed to be sold in Australia at all.

In addition to these measures, the regulator, NICNAS, can no longer accept any evidence from animal tests to support the registration of a new cosmetic ingredient.

The Ethical Cosmetics Bill is a piece of legislation that—for the first time in this parliament—genuinely grapples with the difficulties of legislating in this area.

In 2014, a bill to ban animal testing was introduced in the other place. And I want to acknowledge Senator Rhiannon in moving that bill. But it was a piece of legislation that was manifestly inadequate.

If I can point to just a couple of issues, the current IC(NA) Act, which the Ethical Cosmetics Bill would seek to amend, actually requires animal testing in one of its schedules, yet the legislation put forward by the Greens made it an offence to test on animals. So, in essence, to comply with the law you would have to be breaking the law—clearly not a sustainable position for the industry.

We also heard very clearly that no industry consultation was undertaken by the Greens, and in fact the peak body for cosmetics manufacturers in Australia did not learn about the legislation until it was introduced into the Senate, and that is just not good policymaking. We have to work with all of the stakeholders who are in this space if we want to get a deal that is actually going to properly work, and that is what Labor have done: we have worked through a proper process. We did not rush in some poorly thought-through legislation. We methodically worked through the issues.

I want to make a quick final point on why this matters. Some people have said, in the course of this consultation, that this is not a very important issue.

But I want to say to those people that, if that is your view, I encourage you to get out there into your community and talk to people about what matters to them. So much of what we deal with in this parliament feels really esoteric to the people that we represent. This is not one of those issues.

Ninety per cent of Australians want this to happen.

We have the power to do something about it.

We have people on all sides of this parliament and chamber who believe it should be done.

So I am very glad to present the Ethical Cosmetics Bill to the House for consideration.

Debate adjourned.

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