Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's been a little over 10 years since the introduction of Nicola Roxon's plain packaging laws in Australia. I didn't hear all the speeches from the doctors on this side or from the speakers on that side. My understanding is, if the question is 'did it work', the answer is a very emphatic yes. Plain packaging has helped reduce smoking and passive smoking right across the country. Not only that, but Australia's world-leading approach has now been adopted by countries right across the globe. France, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Norway, Ireland, Thailand, Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, Slovenia, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Singapore, Belgium, Netherlands, Hungary, Denmark, Guernsey and Jersey all have it in law. Myanmar, Finland, Armenia and Georgia will very soon follow in Nicola Roxon's giant footsteps.

I was in this House 10 years ago when this ground-breaking and world-leading legislation was introduced and, of course, as you would have expected, big tobacco and its supporters, such as the IPA, were bleating the loudest about how horrible this was and that it would not work. The Liberals, led by Tony Abbott, a former health minister, and the shadow health minister Peter Dutton, who later went on to be voted the worst health minister ever, initially refused to support this measure until they faced dissension in their ranks. I rarely saw eye to eye with the former member for Bowman, Andrew Laming—for many reasons—but he was one of the biggest supporters of the plain packaging legislation and his strident support forced the Liberals to eventually support it. It is interesting that there are no speakers from the Liberal Party on this topic today, which may explain why the seats of North Sydney, Mackellar and Higgins have changed. Of course, the Nationals weren't fans either but that is to be expected considering they were still taking money from Phillip Morris in 2020, so that's why the LNP were so hesitant to support this world-leading measure. But when you go back to the record, it's easy to see that back then they were repeating the speaking points of big tobacco. They said it would breach trademark law, international trade agreements and intellectual property rights. They said plain packaging was paternalistic and a nanny-state measure and it would reduce its goal of reducing smoking rates.

There were some memorable contributions provided by the LNP during the debate. The former member for Dawson, George Christensen, said that smoking was fun—yes, that's right. Forget that smoking increases your chances of cancer, lung disease, heart disease and almost anything that will kill you: hey, kids, it's fun. What a joke. Another lowlight was the member for Mitchell, who said:

I have got news for the minister for health and the government: life kills people. Life is a dangerous activity. There are no laws that we can pass to prevent that.

The member for Mitchell is still in the parliament. The rest of the LNP MPs and senators, who in 2012 were still taking tobacco money, lined up to promote big tobacco's talking points in parliament. They talked about big tobacco suing the Australian government and threw around numbers provided by those same companies, including Senator John Williams, who said:

… Philip Morris Asia has lodged a claim for compensation of some $67.5 billion. … Tobacco companies are wealthy, which means they can employ good solicitors … it will cost Australian taxpayers billions and billions.

Senators Cash and Birmingham, as well as the member for Mitchell, joined the conga line, channelling Chicken Little and claiming the sky was falling. Ultimately, big tobacco did get their day in court and lost.

The other big tobacco talking points were about taking away people's freedoms as part of a nanny state. George Christensen and the members for Riverina and Leichhardt all bemoaned how plain packaging was the start of the slippery slope to removing people's choice. I think this was some of the same rubbish being spouted during the same-sex marriage debate—not by the member for Leichhardt; I will point that out. Again they leaned on the IPA to support their case. As we know, there isn't a bigger supporter of big tobacco than the IPA. At the time its poster boy was Tim Wilson—do you remember him?—who eventually briefly became the member for Goldstein, leading the charge for the IPA and big tobacco.

Thankfully, the Labor government stood strong, and a big thankyou does need to go out to Nicola Roxon, former health minister and former Attorney-General, who stayed the path and got this important health measure through at the time. Australia is a healthier place for it. Judging by that list of countries, the world is a healthier place because of the work of Nicola Roxon and that adventurous Labor government that challenged big tobacco and won.

Debate adjourned.

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