Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Hansard source

I want to start with a statement of the bleeding obvious, that all members in this place recognise there is a major issue with vaping in Australia. You only need to visit a school in your electorate to hear from the education sector that use of mobile phones and vapes are the two major behavioural issues that our schools are dealing with today in the playground.

I would also say that all members in this place would support a harm minimisation approach, particularly as it relates to our young people, and members of this place would support doing whatever we can to discourage young Australians from using these products and becoming addicted to these products. The key question is how we achieve these mutually agreed outcomes.

In seconding the amendment moved by my good friend and colleague the member for Cowper, I want to reflect on his contribution to this debate. Keep in mind that the member for Cowper's contribution to this debate came from a very strong lived experience as an undercover police officer and someone who has worked in the legal fraternity. In his amendments the member for Cowper highlighted the need to criticise the government for failing to control the illicit vaping market and failing to protect our children against the proliferation of vaping products, which have exploded in availability through a black market driven by organised crime.

His amendments also indicated that we have to acknowledge the existence and the strength of the $1 billion black-market vape trade in Australia, which is fuelled by the importation of more than 100 million illicit disposable devices each year. He also called on the government to consider all policies to prevent children from accessing and becoming addicted to vaping products. It is easy on the side of the chamber to come to this place and criticise the government. It's very easy to do that. But we also need to acknowledge all the things that we got wrong when we were in government. The policies we made as a coalition in government haven't worked. Effectively a prohibition model has failed. We have seen a proliferation of vaping products. It has flourished and become one of the biggest behavioural problems in our education sector, as I indicated previously. Crime has flourished, attracted by incredible profits. We still don't know what the long-term and unknown health impacts might be on young Australians.

I make my position very clear: I hate cigarette smoking. My father died from smoking related lung cancer. I accepted several years ago the rhetoric and the lived experience of many smokers who told me that they believed vaping was actually helping them to get off cigarettes. That's how it was explained to me. It was explained to me as a pathway to better health by getting addicted smokers of their cigarettes and onto the vaping products. We agreed in government that it was somewhat of a necessary evil to help reduce the harmful rates of smoking in our community, because we knew what impact cigarette smoking was having on the health budget.

But I fear we were sold a pup. Prohibition simply hasn't worked. In an ideal world no-one would be smoking tobacco and no-one would be addicted to nicotine. But we don't live in an ideal world; we live in the real world. In the real world we need to address the realities of the current e-cigarette climate and the prevalence of their use amongst all age groups, particularly among young Australians. Currently 1.7 million adults are believed to vape in Australia. Approximately just 10 per cent have current GP's prescription, as required by the law. The GP model has not worked. We have to be honest with the Australian public: it simply has not worked. Australia is the only country to adopt the GP restriction model, which has not worked.

What has actually happened under the current policy settings—and the member for Cowper explained it perfectly—is that we have effectively outsourced public policy to organised crime. They love it. They love the current policy. Criminal syndicates have flourished under the current legislative regime, and we have seen countless firebombings, particularly in Melbourne but also in my electorate of Gippsland. There have been firebombings of tobacconists as there's been a turf war amongst organised crime figures to protect their own profits associated with the e-cigarettes. It's virtually impossible to counter the organised crime elements, as the member for Cowper has explained, and, as I said at the outset, he would know better than anyone in this place how hard that is. He has lived experience as an undercover drugs operative in the New South Wales Police Force.

For, I think, at least five years, I have been writing to the previous government and the current government about my concerns about illegal tobacconists operating in my electorate and have basically been told the resources aren't available. The resources aren't available to tackle this scourge. Continuing with this prohibition model is playing right into the hands of the organised crime gangs and the violent steps they're prepared to take to protect their revenue streams. This is by no means any criticism of any police force in the country, but the reality is our overworked police officers won't be prioritising raids on tobacconists when they have priorities around protecting Australians from family violence, when they have other illicit drugs they're meant to be policing and when they have street crime issues such as people being assaulted. These issues will take priority over raids on tobacconists, and we simply cannot be putting more pressure on our overworked police officers to try and enforce this prohibition model. It really is public policy madness to keep going down this prohibition pathway.

The Nationals position on this issue has been developed over a period of several years. This is not a position we have reached overnight. It took a lot of research and consultation with key stakeholders. I do take great exception when I read the comments from the captain of Sanctimony Corner over there: the member for Kooyong. This member publicly alleged that we, the Nationals, reached our position because big tobacco companies have provided financial support to the Nationals, and I find that both hypocritical and offensive.

On her logic, our position on a matter of incredible importance to public health has been effectively bought by big tobacco companies for a few thousand dollars. That is the allegation we are wearing from the captain of Sanctimony Corner, the member for Kooyong. So let's just extend that logic to her own circumstances. The Australian Election Commission financial disclosures that are released after each election indicate that the member for Kooyong spent more than $2.1 million to get elected, including a quite extraordinary $749,000 donation from Climate 200. The difference between me and the member for Kooyong is I wouldn't suggest for a second that the member for Kooyong has been bought off or that her donors have some sort of control over her. I wouldn't suggest that for a second, because—quite the opposite—I think it's actually good when people donate to political parties and candidates. That's active participation in our democratic system, in the electoral system, and that transparency in the way the political donations have to be declared are important. It means we know what funding candidates have received.

Again, I absolutely reject the suggestion that our position as the National Party to regulate vapes, in much the same way that cigarettes and alcohol are regulated, is kowtowing in any way to big tobacco companies. Our position, as I said earlier, came about after years of consideration of the data and consultation with stakeholders, including in the education sector and families. It's a position that I believe is based on common sense, lived experience and a desire to get crime bosses out of the sector and focus on harm minimisation, which I believe every member of this place supports. We want to see fewer young people vaping. We want to see the health and the harmful impacts being reduced in our community.

The prescription and prohibition model will just clog our already overstretched GP clinics and will be welcomed by the crime bosses, who will continue to enjoy the flourishing black market in vape products. A key benefit to our approach and the approach being proposed by the Nationals is that we actually trust our health authorities to run prevention awareness campaigns, because they're pretty good at them here in Australia. We've had great success in Australia with health prevention awareness campaigns in reducing harmful smoking. Regulation has been successful in significantly reducing tobacco smoking rates across Australia, and the take-up amongst young smokers has also been reduced by good health awareness and prevention campaigns. If you follow this approach, duplicate this approach, we believe that vaping products should be regulated and sold as adult consumer products from licensed retail outlets with strict age verification measures in place, similar to tobacco and alcohol. It's been a proven model. Aggressive media campaigns, no doubt, funded from the revenue received from a regulated industry, would be more effective than the failed prohibition approach.

I'm not standing here today and pretending this is perfect, but we don't live in an ideal world, and to continue down this pathway is public policy madness. Introducing a tightly controlled regulatory model brings our nation into line with the existing policies in place in other comparable countries such as the UK, USA, Canada, New Zealand and the EU. The Nationals propose the legalisation, regulation and taxing of government-approved nicotine vapes that follow the same general principles of alcohol and cigarette sales. These principles are pretty clear. They include: licensed retail outlets, supply chains and manufacturing of the goods; availability restricted to people aged 18 and above; strict age verification requirements; plain packaged with mandatory warnings, just like we have on cigarette packets and alcoholic goods; approved labelling; and restricted flavours approved by the TGA. The products would be subject to excise duty which will help to fund the prevention campaigns and there would be enforcement regimes and harsh penalties for offenders.

The Nationals' approach, which has been driven from a position of lived experience, honesty and transparency in recognising what we're doing right now hasn't worked, and a determination to support harm minimisation and protect our kids from these products, is an approach that I believe has more chance of achieving success in this space. So in supporting these amendments put by the member for Cowper, I want to return to where I started. I hate cigarette smoking. I support a harm-minimisation approach to vaping, and the government needs to step in to squeeze the organised crime figures out of the market and take away their rivers of cash which are funding violence and other criminal activities. I thank the House.

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