Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Kooyong for that excellent contribution. Congratulations, Member for Kooyong.

I'm very proud of the fact that the Albanese government has introduced to parliament world-leading vaping legislation. As well as complimenting the member for Kooyong and the many members who have made excellent contributions, I really want to pay tribute to the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler. This is legislation that will save lives. Without question this legislation, if passed by this parliament, will save lives. We know that vaping has already killed people. In the United States there are documented cases of people dying of lung disease. the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have pointed this out. Doctors here are already seeing significant lung problems from vaping, including what is colloquially called 'vaper's cough'. There are plenty of 14-year-olds and 16-year-olds who are turning up with vaper's cough, and with psychological problems. As the member for Kooyong said, there's anxiety when people—kids—can't get their vapes. They're waking up in the middle of the night, with the vape under the pillow, vaping in bed in the middle of the night because they can't get through the night without the nicotine. The Australian panel on tobacco reforms heard that these children were sleeping with vaping devices under their pillows because they are so addicted to nicotine that they can't sleep a night without vaping. It's a public health menace.

We see vapes in stores, right across Australia, next to the chocolates, next to the soft drinks and next to the toys. There is absolutely no question that, in the sale of these products, the presentation of these products—the colours, the flavours, the unicorns—is absolutely designed to appeal to children, and also to fool their parents. We've seen vapes in the shape of highlighter pens or in the shape of computer data sticks that can be popped in the pencil case so you can vape at school without your parents and teachers knowing that you're doing it.

At least 2,000 chemicals can be found in vaping fluid, according to Johns Hopkins University, and as additives in the plastic casings, including chemicals that are used in embalming, in nail polish remover and in weedkiller. How can we possibly know the extent of setting these chemicals on fire and ingesting them into our lungs? As health minister Mark Butler told the House this week, the Dental Association has warned about an alarming rate of increase in black gum disease in 12- to 15-year-olds, which the dentists connect to vaping.

It is extremely disappointing that we have seen reports over the previous weekend that some in the coalition think that it is a good idea to entrench vaping and then milk it for the tax revenue that it can bring in. This is building our tax revenue on the basis of ignoring the impacts on our children's health.

We need strong and decisive action to arrest and reverse the increase in vaping and to prevent the long-term adverse impacts on the health of the population, before it's too late. The latest national data showed that one in six high school students had recently vaped, a fourfold increase since the previous survey in 2017. This new law is not about punishing those young people who are vaping. It's about making sure that those who sell, manufacture and hope to profit from the vapes actually face the consequences.

Of course, this is mostly about the health of our children. We know that people who start vaping are three times more likely to go on to be smokers. And, in fact, from the most recent year, we've got figures to say that, in New South Wales, there were 170 calls to the poisons line about children ingesting the solution in vapes. Seventeen of those calls were about children under the age of one.

We will always act to protect the health of Australians, but I just want to conclude with a few comments about the environmental concerns related to vaping. There is no safe way of dealing with the waste that is created by these single-use vapes. The lithium-ion batteries and the chemical contamination of the devices mean that they can't be recycled. You'd need to manually disassemble them to remove the lithium-ion batteries. You can't do that.

Without banning them, they will continue to end up in landfill. In landfill, the plastic will last for a thousand years. The toxic chemicals leach into the soil and the waterways, the devices degrade and microplastics enter the environment. The average Australian consumes a credit card's worth of microplastics every week.

People 'wishcycle' the vapes into the plastic, thinking that they'll be recycled. Instead what happens is that they're compacted in the recycling equipment, the lithium-ion batteries explode and the recycling facility catches fire. In Canberra in 2022, a fire knocked out the recycling facility for a year—a fire that was caused by a lithium-ion battery. If they go into landfill, they're also under compression; they heat up, they explode and they cause landfill fires. The National Waste and Recycling Industry Council has indicated that an average of three fires per day in Australia are attributed to batteries being incorrectly disposed off. Lithium ion batteries create intense and persistent fires that are difficult and dangerous for firefighters to extinguish.

I will finish by saying this: by 2025, it's estimated that 99 per cent of seabirds will have ingested plastics. In 2050, plastics in the ocean are expected to outweigh fish. When these items enter our environment, they are environmentally catastrophic. I commend the bill to the House.

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