Anne Stanley (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make my contribution to the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Bill 2023. Tobacco smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disability in Australia. It is a sad problem, and tackling this remains one of the great unfinished challenges of our times. But this government is committed to doing its part to continue to push forward and meet the challenge in the many modern forms it takes.

When Labor was last in government 10 years ago, it launched the plain packaging reform. Since then, there's been a drop in smoking rates equivalent to one million fewer Australians smoking. This government will recognise what has worked in the past and improve on what has not. Our current tobacco related measures are split across as many as eight different laws, regulations, instruments and court decisions. For example, the government's legislation prohibiting certain forms of tobacco advertising is now 30 years old. This convoluted patchwork of regulations has created gaps and has meant that the regulations have failed to meet their potential.

This bill brings together tobacco measures with 11 new measures into a single streamlined and effective act of parliament which will strength the fight against tobacco and nicotine addiction. It consolidates various tobacco related laws, regulations and instruments and formalises requirements previously addressed through the court enforceable undertakings. It modifies and simplifies additional provisions and introduces new measures to discourage smoking and tobacco use and prevent the promotion of e-cigarettes. The bill supports the National Tobacco Strategy 2023-2030, which commits to reducing daily smoking prevalence to below 10 per cent by 2025 and five per cent by 2030. It also prioritises tackling smoking in First Nations communities to reduce smoking rates to 27 per cent by 2030.

Without action by government, current tobacco control measures are unlikely to achieve these targets. That's why the Albanese government is introducing a suite of tobacco control reforms to provide a renewed focus on improving the public health of Australians by discouraging smoking and the use of tobacco or e-cigarette products. We'll do this by updating and improving graphic health warnings on packaging to better inform consumers of the effects of tobacco use. We will do this by improving coverage, enforcement and compliance for tobacco control through updating advertising restrictions, definitions and the movement to the civil penalties regime. We will do this by expanding existing advertising prohibitions to reduce the public's exposure to advertising and promotion of e-cigarettes and other novel and emerging products, particularly for young and vulnerable people.

We will also restrict the use of additives and ingredients that enhance the attractiveness and palatability of tobacco products by bettering the regulation of production design features that make tobacco products more attractive to consumers, including crush balls and novel filters. We will also do this by prohibiting the use of brand and variant names that falsely imply reduced harm, by requiring health promotion inserts to encourage and empower people who smoke to quit, by enforcing the mandatory disclosure of sales volume and pricing, as well as expenditure on advertising and promotion, and by putting in place dissuasive measures on factory-made cigarettes to help increase knowledge of health harms of smoking, reduce the appeal of smoking, reduce smoking uptake and encourage smoking cessation. As you can see, we're taking a substantial amount of action on the issue, because we know this is a serious issue and we are treating it that way.

The government is also committed to introducing new controls on e-cigarette importation, contents and packaging. We will work with the states and territories to address the black market for e-cigarettes through the therapeutic goods framework and through stronger border measures. The bill modernises our regulation of tobacco products consistent with the international best practice, ensuring Australia remains at the forefront of public health and tobacco control.

The bill specifies a number of requirements that tobacco products must comply with, including requirements and limitations relating to plain packaging, health warnings and the terms that can be used on product packaging. In addition, the bill facilitates the minister imposing a permanent ban on chewing tobacco and snuffs intended for oral use, consistent with the existing ban in the Trade Practices Act 1974 Consumer Protection Notice No. 10 of 1991, 'Permanent Ban on Goods'. The bill obliges certain persons to report to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Aged Care on a variety of matters, including ingredients used in tobacco products, volumes of sales, imports, marketing and promotional expenditure. The minister is required to publish these reports or part thereof if it is appropriate in the circumstances to do so.

A range of compliance and enforcement powers are provided for this bill, including by applying the regulatory powers in the Regulatory Powers (Standard Provisions) Act 2014 to ensure an enhanced compliance with new laws. Among other things, new civil penalty provisions have been introduced for greater flexibility to facilitate compliance with legislative requirements without the need to resort to criminal prosecution. The new maximum penalty for bodies corporate, which is 10 times higher than the maximum penalty for individuals, has also been included to deter noncompliance by ensuring that a penalty cannot be considered an acceptable cost of doing business.

The Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2023 deals with the consequential and transitional matters arising from the enactment of this bill. It provides application, savings and transitional provisions to allow a smooth transition to the new requirements, including a main transitional period of 12 months, along with a retailer transition of a further three months. The introduction and passage of these bills during the 2023 spring sitting period is required to support the timely implementation of these measures prior to the sunsetting of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Regulations 2011 and the Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Regulation 1993 on 1 April 2024.

Regulatory burdens are likely to be most concentrated on the tobacco industry, with minimal impacts on retailers or individual users. These impacts on industry will include the cost of planning and modifying the manufacturing process. However, this government knows that it can look out for the health and wellbeing of its citizens while also being economically responsible. Due to the high costs resulting from tobacco use, including health, economic, social and environmental costs, it would require just 73 people to permanently quit smoking to cover the $21.77 million annual placeholder estimate for the regulatory burden. As 73 people represent approximately 0.028 per cent of the Australian smoking people, this means that the benefits of lower smoking rates are likely to offset the regulatory burden estimates if the policies encourage just one out of every 37,420 smokers to quit. The Albanese government has consulted broadly on these reforms and the draft of this legislative scheme. Briefings have been provided to all interested parties.

From 31 May 2023 the department of health conducted a public submission process seeking stakeholder feedback on the proposed reforms, including exposure drafts. Targeted consultation workshops with key stakeholders were also conducted. Online submissions were received from individual consumers, academics, public health organisations, state and territory health departments, Commonwealth agencies, tobacco manufacturers, importers, wholesalers, packagers and retailers. In general, public health stakeholders were supportive of the proposed reforms and amendments to the draft legislation, and some concerns were addressed. These included changes to the definition of an e-cigarette to ensure that vaping devices which resemble toys, food, drinks, cartoon characters, animals, musical instruments—the list goes on—are captured by the advertising and sponsorship prohibition.

Additionally, changes were made to the definition of 'prohibited term' to ensure that terms that imply a positive quality are captured. The bill provides limits on matters that will be included in the delegated legislation. The provisions in the bill specify the subject content and, in turn, what is included in the regulations. Some of the provisions in the bill relating to retail-packaging requirements include the content of tobacco information standard, which will be in the regulations. Due to its nature in including the level of detail, this material is more appropriately contained in an instrument rather than an act of parliament.

As a public health measure, directing to discourage the uptake and encouraging the cessation of smoking, the product and packaging requirements need to be adaptable. The substantive ability to prescribe such requirements are included in the bill, while the requirements themselves will be contained in the regulations, which are subject to disallowance. This supports an approach that is adaptive to an evolving public health issue, contemporary political advice and changes in technology and the market more generally. These reforms are supported by robust evidence of the impact of the measures on smoking. The long-term objectives are to reduce the prevalence by reducing uptake with a particular focus on youths and young adults. These measures will further strengthen gains made by Australia's world-leading reforms, such as plain packaging.

Labor has a proud history when it comes to tobacco control and is creating world-leading policy. We know this because 26 countries have followed Australia's example on plain packaging. Australia was once a world leader on tobacco control, and we will be again. The 11 measures in the government's tobacco reforms will put us back into a world-leading position alongside fellow OECD nations such as New Zealand and Canada. The Albanese government is determined to do all it can to tackle the harms that are caused by smoking. We want to ensure that in the future people don't take up smoking in the first place. I commend the bill to the House.

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