Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

This might come as a surprise, but there was a lot of content in the environment minister's speech with which I heartily agreed. Indeed, the contaminants in those single-use vapes are of danger, not only to the users but to the environment as well. The lithium ion batteries, as she mentioned, and the toxic chemicals contained therein are so harmful to the ground and groundwater. Goodness knows what they are doing to the young people and to the older people—to anyone actually using these vapes. That is why we need to do something about the manufacture of these vapes and do it very fast, because if anyone thinks that our Border Force, our border patrol and our authorities at the docks can in any way, shape or form manage the great influx of these in the containers that are coming in on the various vessels, well, they are just seriously kidding themselves. The minister was right when she said they come in all shapes and forms, such as USBs or highlighter pens, with the various flavours there not to induce but to seduce children, with unicorns and rainbows and all sorts of tropical and exciting-sounding flavours and colours. This is just an attempt to get people hooked on smoking. We know that, after vapes, it'll be nicotine, and it is dangerous. There is absolutely no question.

But, if you suggest that we should then be getting our authorities, be they border control or be they state police, to try to limit the spread of these, I say: well, good luck with that. The genie is out of the bottle—some might say the puff is out of the vape. I went to a wedding not that long ago where just about every person was vaping. We know that currently the estimate is that 1.7 million adults in Australia are believed to vape. It's a big number. Ten per cent of those have a current GP prescription, as required by law, to vape. So that's a very small percentage of the number of people who are, in fact, vaping every day—as the minister said, almost every hour of every day.

Labor has pushed ahead with doubling down on the failed prescription-only approach to vaping. I know former health minister Greg Hunt meant well—the intention was right—in doing what he did at the time. But what we've seen is a massive billion-dollar black market underpinned by more than 100 million illegal vapes every year, and these are being sold to children. Who is running this racket, largely? It's the bikie gangs, and bikie gangs are scum. With the number of molotov cocktails being thrown into legal tobacco shops and the bullyboy tactics that these bikie gangs bring to this, this is the new Underbelly crime series waiting and already unfolding, sadly, in our capital cities and perhaps, some might even suggest, elsewhere.

The hypocrisy of banning a substance in one form while allowing the legal sale of it in a known, more harmful form cannot be overstated. To the Australian public, it just doesn't add up. It simply doesn't.

We do need to address the realities of the current e-cigarette climate and the prevalence of usage in Australia, amongst all age groups but particularly amongst our young people. The minister mentioned schoolchildren and how they were defying their parents and fooling their teachers. Many of us will remember the kids who used to go and have a fag behind the school toilets and get in awful trouble for it. Back when I was at school, you used to get belted for it—not that I've so much as put a cigarette to my lips, I have to say. Some might say I'm very much in the minority there, but I saw the effects that smoking had on my father. It killed him. He went to an early grave because of the effects of smoking. I do not like vaping. I do not like smoking, although people have a legal right to smoke and I acknowledge that. People have a legal right, and it should be a prescriptive right, to vape, and I understand that too. But there are more than a million Australians who are vaping illegally.

I want to commend the work done by the member for Cowper, who has looked into this and who has, I know, been torn, in his own conscience, as to what the best and right outcome is for all Australians. He has worked across the aisle, across the political divide, to try and bring about the best possible resolution. I know members come to the debate on this bill, the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, and this motion in good faith. I understand that people have different views and that people are very torn by what those views are. But I do want to commend the member for Cowper, because if anybody in this place, the House of Representatives, understands the significance of it, along with the legal implications, it is the member for Cowper. He's a dad and a former police officer who went undercover to attempt to flush out drug barons and the like. He comes to this place with a world of experience and a world of legal know-how behind him. I have to say that when he speaks on this topic I listen, because I know the time and effort he has put into reaching what he believes is the best conclusion.

I know, too, that the Nationals are in a coalition. I respect that. But, with our individual right to look at policy and determine our position as a party, albeit a party in a coalition, we looked at this very early on because it was a massive issue in regional Australia. We believe the regulation and taxing of government-approved nicotine vapes should follow the same general principles as alcohol and cigarette sales. That includes licensed retail outlets, supply chains and manufacturing.

I say manufacturing because, as even the minister acknowledged, this is an environmental disaster that, I would suggest, is not waiting to happen but happening. I know, having spoken to Jill Ludford and others in the Murrumbidgee Local Health District, in the electorate of Riverina that I represent, that there are tens of thousands of these vapes, many of which have been confiscated but many of which have been put in the recycling bin, in good faith by people who thought they could be recycled, and are now going to end up in landfill. In fact, nobody quite knows what should be done with them. This is a crisis, as I say, that is unfolding as we speak.

There should be strict age verification requirements for vapes as part of what the Nationals believe should be the correct legislation. There should be plain packaging, mandatory health warnings, approved labelling with full ingredients—nicotine content et cetera—restricted flavours approved by the TGA, a subjection to excise, a properly funded and constructed compliance and enforcement regime, and harsh penalties for those who flout the law. But our state police can't be expected to go around and get the prescriptions from everybody who might be puffing away on a vape.

The Nationals are proposing to continue a ban on single-use vapes, because of the availability of disposables presenting a low barrier for young people to enter into vaping, and the waste and environmental implications, as I said before, around the disposal of these units, which is complex, costly and poses risks with, as the environment minister quite correctly pointed out, the lithium battery contained therein. Germany and France have recently banned single-use vapes. That was in December last year. Vaping needs to be viewed in the full context of law enforcement and harm reduction. I do worry earnestly about what we are seeing at the moment with bikie gangs and others. It has become a great cash cow for them and their nefarious activities.

Also, more locally—and politics is local—the environment minister talked about young people having to have a puff in the middle of the night because they couldn't get through the night. These are kids as young as 13, as the member for Kooyong mentioned. I would argue that some are even younger. At Young High School, in the Riverina, in 2022 a student was caught selling vapes to another student. The boy admitted to selling them and said he found them in a park. Police were contacted and a wellbeing nurse was contacted as well, and the student was rightly suspended. At Parkes High School—I don't want to be seen to be picking on these high schools but these are well-known and publicised incidents—a student was recorded as being absent the day he arrived at school to hand another student a vape. He left and returned again with another vape for another student. These are not isolated one-off incidents. It is not just happening at public high schools. It's happening at private high schools. It is probably happening at primary schools. You only need to walk down the main street of any town anywhere and you will see young people—way too young—on their vapes. It is a major, major issue. Vaping has just exploded, with teachers reporting students using classrooms, toilets and playgrounds to sell them. It is beyond belief, really.

We know from good research that vaping is medically harmful, and we also know that people who are vaping are going to have the harmful effects come back at them later in life. I mentioned my father Lance earlier on. At the time he started lighting up in probably the late 40s or early 50s, there wasn't the knowledge. There was certainly the advertising then that told people that it was harmful but, on the other hand, there was all the advertising that was almost encouraging and enticing people by saying that it was the way to live your life—that it was a lifestyle choice that was going to make you more attractive and all the rest. Of course, we know that a number of people who are now in their elderly years are suffering emphysema and other ailments like cancer et cetera—and, dare I say, there are a number of people in cemeteries around the place who ought not be there—because of cigarette smoking and their use of nicotine when they weren't aware of the dangers. These days, people are aware of the dangers of vaping, of the companies selling them and the bikie gangs who are using these as a cash cow.

This needs proper, tight legislation that is going to control the sale and usage and certainly put a thumb down on the bikie gangs' ability to reap rewards, ill-gotten gains, from vaping.

The Nationals have, in good faith and led by the member for Cowper, put forward what we believe is a strong alternative to what the government is proposing to ensure that the manufacture of vapes is regulated, that it is Australian and that it is done with the best possible outcomes in mind. There's no easy answer to this. There's no easy fix. In my final few seconds, I would urge anybody who is considering either taking it up or doing it not to do it. It's not good for you and it will lead to an untimely death.

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