Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. I have reflected on the remarks of the member who spoke immediately before me, and I would like to draw a distinction between where cigarettes have been and where vaping is now. I think cigarettes have been built into the culture of Australia over many, many decades, and we are doing our very best, through regulation, to reduce that dependence on cigarettes. Vaping is a new form of nicotine dependence that has emerged very quickly and very strongly, and very much amongst our young people. My nervousness about what the member suggested, in terms of pursuing a purely regulatory model, is that it misses the opportunity to stamp out vape dependence more broadly, except in the case of nicotine cessation or smoking cessation. If we look back in time, 100 years ago, if we had the opportunity to stop smoking before the dependence started, would we have jumped in—and should we have jumped in? I think the answer is actually yes in that situation. I think it is going to be very hard for us, given the extent to which vaping has taken hold, to take it away from our society. At the same time, I think we should still try, because this is a relatively new area. It is an area that is still emerging, and habits haven't been formed over a lifetime in the same way that they have for cigarette smoking.

To come back to the reason why I support this bill, the availability of vapes is of enormous concern to my community. The approach has been low regulation—you can't sell nicotine vapes in our stores; you have to get a prescription for that. But these nicotine vapes are absolutely everywhere. In my electorate of Wentworth I was appalled, as was the principal, to find that a tobacco shop had opened just two doors down from the entrance to my old school, with tobacco vapes out the front. In that particular situation, I know that the store was approached by the health department. They looked at it and found that they were selling nicotine vapes. My community is very concerned that that shop and other shops like it couldn't be closed down and that very little action could be taken. I think my community is looking for much stronger action on vapes. Vaping is being directed at our children, and it is unacceptable. We see the nicotine vapes, in bright colours and in flavours like bubblegum and banana milkshake, stacked on shelves alongside lollies and chocolates. That's exactly what I saw in my community. Parents were outraged.

This is not a story that's unique to Wentworth. Across New South Wales one-third of 14- to 17-year-olds have used vaping products, and more than half of that group have used a product they know to have contained nicotine. Under the current regulations, which aren't working, they should only have been able to get those through their GP, but that is not how it is currently working. The current regulations are not fit for purpose, and so I applaud the government for trying to take action.

Among other things, this bill implements a general definition of vaping products, accounting for the rapidly evolving market determined to avoid regulation. It places penalties on the importation and manufacture of vapes as well as significantly restricting the advertisement and spread of health misinformation regarding these products. I think these changes will help put an end to the tobacco industry's insidious marketing of vaping products to children, which is putting the health and wellbeing of our young people at risk, but I acknowledge this is going to be hard to implement, and I think the devil is absolutely going to be in whether we can actually implement this effectively. This is an area where I'll be following the government actions very closely, because I think we would like to remove the prevalence of vaping across our community and really reduce that, but how we do that is not going to be simple. This legislation is a start, but it is going to be all in the implementation in terms of whether it has the impact that we across the community want it to have. But the legislation is, at least, a first step.

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