Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on this motion today. Tobacco products have a negative impact on the health of Australians. There is significant evidence to suggest that the packet in particular—the creative design, branding and promotion of tobacco—influences nonsmokers to take up smoking. Tobacco smoking remains one of the leading causes of preventable death and disease among Australians, killing over 15,000 Australians every year and costing our economy close to $31.5 billion annually. Tobacco products can have a devastating impact on the lives of Australian smokers and their families, with smoking being the leading cause of cancer, accounting for approximately 20 to 30 per cent of all cancers. Both active and passive smoking increase the risk of lung cancer and a number of other life-threatening diseases, including cardiovascular disease, stomach cancer, pancreatic cancer, liver cancer, cervical cancer, leukaemia and oral cancers. We also know that most Australian smokers regret ever having started smoking and have made at least one attempt to quit. It is for these important reasons that the Gillard Labor government is committed to decreasing smoking rates in Australia.

The motion before us today does acknowledge that there is significant, compelling evidence to suggest that creative design, branding and promotion of tobacco through packaging reduces the impact of graphic health warnings, increases the attractiveness of tobacco products for adolescents and misleads consumers to believe that some products are less harmful than others. A report prepared by Quit and the Cancer Council of Australia called Plain packaging of tobacco products: a review of the evidence draws on some 24 studies over two decades to show that the packaging of tobacco products is a very powerful marketing tool, particularly for recruiting new smokers. Studies have shown that health warnings are significantly more effective in causing the smoker to consider the health risks of their behaviour and to consider quitting when they appear against the background of a plain packet. The evidence suggests that innovative brand imagery works to defuse the impact of these serious messages that health warnings seek to communicate to customers. Furthermore, removing brand imagery means that there is more space available to increase the prominence of graphic health warnings.

It is also common knowledge that packaging is a highly effective marketing tool used to link particular brands with desirable attributes such as status, identity, values and style. A study conducted in 2009 revealed that removing brand elements such as colour, branded font and imagery from cigarette packets resulted in adolescent smokers seeing packs as less appealing, associating typical smokers of that brand of cigarette with less positive attributes and having negative expectations of cigarette quality and taste. Thus, plain packaging reduces the attractiveness of tobacco products for adolescents in particular.

There is also considerable evidence that unregulated packaging colour and imagery mislead consumers to believe that some tobacco products are less harmful than others. A study conducted in 2006 of 8,243 smokers in a number of countries, including Australia, found that smokers of gold, silver, blue or purple brands were more likely than smokers of either red or black brands to believe that their own brand might be less harmful. Researchers also conclude that removing colours, as well as terms such as 'smooth', 'gold' or 'silver', from cigarette packs would reduce these kinds of false beliefs.

It is important to acknowledge that there is strong evidence to support the view that plain packaging is an effective means of reducing smoking rates, and I am pleased the opposition have decided to get on board. I am sure we will hear from the opposition that there is no evidence and that this is just a fad that the Gillard government is going with. I ask them to seriously look at the Cancer Council's review of these studies, where there are good, peer-reviewed journal articles that support the positive impact that plain packaging can have against attractiveness of cigarettes and for the importance of communicating those health warnings.

It is this government that is committed to taking action to reduce smoking, and this motion, importantly, recognises the many reforms that this government has already implemented with the aim of reducing smoking and its harmful effects. On 1 January this government established the National Preventive Health Agency. There are a lot of things. I cannot go into all of them, but I commend the motion to the House. (Time expired)

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Regional Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to join the debate and to add, perhaps, a healthy dose of reality to this whole debate and the motion before the House, because unfortunately this debate has been more about the government's political stunts than actually developing good public health policy. I acknowledge the member for Kingston and the comments she made in relation to the need to drive down the horrific toll that tobacco related products have on the health of our nation, and I certainly commend her for those comments and associate myself with those remarks. It is also worth noting that the coalition itself has a very proud history in reducing the smoking toll in this nation. The former Minister for Health and Ageing and now Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, was a critical player in increasing the size of the graphic warnings on cigarette packs and helping to drive down the rates of smoking in Australia. We do understand the need to drive down smoking rates, which is for the good of the individuals concerned and also for the overall health of the nation.

I just encourage the government in this place to ensure that the measures we take are evidence based and scientifically proven. I have some concerns that the measures we are talking about today and will be talking about in the near future fail both those tests. Also, while I have the opportunity to speak: I do not appreciate the way the Minister for Health and Ageing has gone about this. Her self-righteousness and the sanctimonious way she has tried to belittle members on this side of the House in relation to the whole issue of tobacco products I think reflects very poorly on her and reflects poorly on the position she holds in this chamber. If she really wanted to build some consensus on this issue, she would start engaging with us in a much more constructive manner, because there are people on this side of the House who are very passionate about reducing the rates of smoking. I think the minister has done herself a great disservice by trying to score some cheap political points when she should be focused on improving the health outcomes for the Australian people. There is a consensus, I believe, in this place to drive down smoking rates, and I urge the health minister to start engaging with us in a more constructive manner.

This motion claims that there is 'significant evidence' to suggest that plain packaging will work—that it will actually drive down the use of tobacco products. I have read a lot of the research that the member referred to and I have read the research material that the minister tabled in the House. It is fair to say that a lot of that evidence is inconclusive at best. It puts forward a range of hypotheses which I am afraid do not come up with a definite conclusion which is quite as convincing as the government would have us believe, so I have some significant doubts about where the government is trying to take us in that regard.

Having said that, I note that the problem the government has in this space is that we are talking about a legal product. I am uneasy about any attempts by a government to strip away the property rights of an individual or a company without any suggestion of any compensation. The concern there is always going to be about what is next. We know that high-fat, high-sugar foods are not necessarily good for us. Are we going to put plain-packaging bans on hamburgers? Is that where we are heading to with this nanny state type of regulation?

I make these comments in a constructive way, because I abhor smoking. My own father died from lung cancer. It is something that I personally feel very strongly about. But I am worried that the government is investing a lot of time and effort in a particular initiative without the evidence base or scientifically proven results that would be worth the expense and the effort of the path we are heading down.

My other key concern is that there is a real concern in the community that Australian taxpayers are being exposed to a potentially massive legal bill. I hope the minister is right when she reassures the Australian people that she has strong legal advice that her position is sound, but I am afraid that the past record of this government and its ineptitude give me no reason whatsoever to be reassured by the minister and her stated confidence on that issue.

There are also some very genuine concerns being put forward by the small-business sector. I do not think the government should be flippant in disregarding the concerns being put forward by these small-business operators. They have concerns about the productivity of their own enterprises, and they are facing really tough times in the small-business sector. They are also making the point that the cigarettes in many states are already behind screens. You cannot see them anyway, so their argument is: how does the plain packaging reduce the incidence of smoking in that regard? There is also a question about the practicalities of how you deal with that in a small-business environment. You need to turn your back on the customer for a longer period. The concern amongst small businesses is that they expose themselves to a security risk for an extra five or 10 seconds while sorting through for the brand they are trying to find when it is plain packaged. Those are legitimate concerns, and I think the government really should listen to the small-business sector and understand why they have such reservations about this issue.

I am not here to ridicule the government or to condemn the motion; I am simply saying that there are some unanswered questions and that I would like to see the government become more constructively engaged with the coalition on this issue. I think the government needs to consult more with the small-business sector, consult more with the coalition and people who are interested in finding some outcomes here, and actually give us some proof that this will work. Maybe a trial is a better way of introducing this particular legislation. (Time expired)

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is no surprise that we have a contribution like we have just had from the member for Gippsland, given that he is a member of a party that accepts donations from tobacco companies. When we are referring to the fact that we need evidence based research—

Mr Chester interjecting—

Mr Neumann interjecting—

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It is highly disorderly to interject!

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to refer everyone to the contribution that has just been made by the member who moved the motion here in the chamber. The other piece of information I would like to refer to in talking about the evidence base—which the member for Gippsland was so very upset about because his party does accept those political donations from tobacco companies—is that the Cancer Council is very supportive of this move and sees this as being very much evidence based. So you can take the words of the tobacco companies and say that it is not evidence based, or you can take the word of researchers and the Cancer Council. I know that when I stand up in this place I would much rather take the word of and look at the research that has been done by people who have training and qualifications in that area and of the Cancer Council than take the hearsay of the tobacco companies that have a long record of opposing any information getting out about the harm that tobacco does.

This legislation does not say: 'You can't smoke.' This legislation does say that there must be plain packaging of cigarettes and that the packages must have graphic health warnings. Why? The attractiveness of a packet leads to young people taking up smoking. The members on the other side may be supportive of more young people starting to smoke, but we on this side of the chamber believe that there should be a disincentive for people to smoke.

As I said earlier, it was in about 1602 that the first concerns were raised about smoking and this has continued right through until the 1950s and 1960s, when it was established that smoking was a major health risk. One of the things that really highlights where we are today is the response of the tobacco industry at that time. First of all they tried to say that nicotine was not addictive and that there was no link between cancer and smoking. The industry had recruited young people to smoke. Some of the things they did were horrendous. But, in 1998, thousands of previously confidential internal tobacco industry documents became public and revealed the extent of misconduct by the industry.

The campaign that is being waged at the moment is just a further example of misconduct by the industry. It is all about profit at the cost of health in our community. These documents revealed the extent of deceptions; attempts to manipulate scientific research; industry's attempts to create a debate on the health impacts of smoking, not including attacks on epidemiology and epidemiologists; recruiting young smokers, as I have already mentioned; marketing targeted at women, and at Asian and more disadvantaged, poorer communities—and there is a connection between poverty levels and socioeconomic factors and levels of smoking; efforts to influence national tobacco controls; industry efforts to influence national legislation; and campaigns to circumvent advertising bans. The thing that marks the tobacco industry's response to anything at all to curb the smoking rates is the fact that they oppose it. But the one thing that they are not doing is offering to put their hands in their pockets and pay— (Time expired)

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is an issue that resonates deeply with me, and I commend the member for Kingston for her concerns. But I also associate myself with the remarks of the member for Gippsland, for the reservations that he has. My father, Lance, died of lung cancer aged 76, on the first day of spring in 2008, after a lifetime of smoking. His last words to my then 10-year-old son, Nicholas, were: 'Don't ever smoke.' To watch my father go downhill as the cancer took over his body is not something anyone wants their loved ones to have to endure. It is a cruel, torturous death.

Tobacco smoking is one of the largest preventable causes of disease and premature death in Australia. About 15,500 Australians die from smoking related illnesses each year. The coalition has always acted decisively while in government to address the prevalence of smoking. Opposition leader, Tony Abbott, played a significant role when he was minister for health, with graphic health warnings on cigarette packets in addition to other antismoking initiatives. As a result of these initiatives the prevalence of smoking in Australia declined to being amongst the lowest in the world. In fact, between 1998 and 2007 alone, smoking prevalence in people 14 years and older fell from 20.8 per cent to 16.6 per cent. The coalition continues to support sensible measures that actively discourage smoking—it has recently supported legislation to tighten electronic advertising restrictions—and for this reason we will not oppose the government's plain-packaging legislation but will seek to move amendments; sensible changes to make any laws more workable and more practicable.

While smoking is on the decline in Australia, it is still particularly concerning that almost 60,000 teenagers aged between 15 and 17 are regular smokers, and five per cent of 12- to 15-year-olds smoke. Unfortunately, and inexplicably, with all the warnings and education around, it seems the smoking take-up rate is higher amongst young girls than boys. Often these are well-informed girls from affluent families who know the damage smoking can do to them, yet they still decide to light up. It simply beggars belief. We need to learn what the underlying reasons for this are. I find it hard to believe that it is just to be cool, but as we all know, because we have all been there, peer pressure is a major influence on many adolescent decision-making thought processes. I believe more education is needed about smoking, both at secondary school and at primary school. We need to be better at getting through to children and teenagers the message about the obvious dangers that smoking poses to them, the long-term health complications of smoking and the fact that it will kill you before your time.

It also concerns me that in my electorate of Riverina it is not an uncommon sight in the main street of any city or town you care to visit to see pregnant women lighting up. It is not just a Riverina habit. Right across the country mothers-to-be continue to defy the health and welfare of their unborn babies, and themselves, by smoking. Despite the advertisements on TV and the graphic warnings advising of the risks smoking has to a baby, the addiction factor is so strong that they continue to smoke even though it is so harmful. We need to invest more into education of these women, too, and help them to kick the habit, through a QUIT program with the appropriate support required. Not only will these mothers require medical attention in the future, due to their smoking, but so too will their children, if they continue. It is a huge financial burden to the Australian taxpayer.

The health benefits of quitting smoking are tremendous. The human body is remarkably resilient. It begins to repair the damage from the very first day a smoker quits. Within eight hours the excess carbon monoxide is out of the bloodstream, within five days the nicotine has left the body and in three months lung function starts to improve. If a person quits at the age of 50 they halve the risk of smoking related death, but if a person quits at the age of 30 they avoid almost all of the excess risk, on average.

Education and support are vital to helping a smoker quit, but at the end of the day it is up to the individual to want to quit and then it is a matter of having the inner will power, or won't power, if you like, to do so. We cannot force someone to quit, but government should do all in its power to help educate against starting a practice that becomes a habit—a highly addictive and deadly one. Tobacco control is an important measure but we must tread carefully, because we also must not become a nanny state. No-one wants or needs that. We live in a democratic society for which brave men and women fought and died so that today we may have freedom of expression and freedom of choice.

It is important to remember that while a product is legally available for sale, it is legally available to buy and use. It worries me that this government, having pushed this legislation through, will move to do similar nanny-state legislation for alcohol products and possibly some food products that can cause obesity. Where do you start and where do you stop? This government, unfortunately, cannot be trusted and this is why there is so much scepticism from the general public towards everything this government does.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

First of all, I congratulate the member for Kingston for bringing this private member's motion to this place. I think most of us know about the health impacts of smoking and passive smoking. We have heard for years all the findings and all the results so I do not think we need to review the science on this topic. I hope that, at least here, people are prepared to accept what scientists have put forward over many years—even if people feel a need to doubt the outcomes of scientific research in other areas of human inquiry. So I propose not to review the proposition that smoking is harmful.

The motion before us states there is significant evidence of the effects of tobacco packaging. A not insubstantial number of references are listed in the Cancer Council Victoria's publication of May 2011 entitled Plain packaging of tobacco products: a review of the evidence. The publication is available online at cancer.org.au. This publication cited the 1995 Canadian review of the role of tobacco packaging entitled When packages can't speak: possible impacts of plain and generic packaging of tobacco products. This review's conclusion pretty much sets the scene for all subsequent papers. I quote:

Plain and generic packaging of tobacco products, through its impact on image formation and retention, recall and recognition, knowledge, and consumer attitudes and perceived utilities, would likely depress the incidence of smoking uptake by non-smoking teens, and increase the incidence of smoking cessation by teen and adult smokers.

Since then, Canada has produced at least half a dozen papers: 'Plain packaging and other tobacco issues: a survey of grade 7 and grade 9 Ontario students',Institute for Social Research Newsletter, 1995; 'Impact of plain packaging of tobacco on youth perceptions and behaviour, Report of study 1', Health Management Associates, 1993; 'A study on youth smoking: plain packaging, health warnings, event marketing and price reductions', University of Toronto, 1995; 'The effect of plain packaging on response to health warnings', American Journal of Public Health; 1999; 'The impact of cigarette package design on perceptions of risk', Journal of Public Health, 2009; and a very important one, 'Deadly in pink: the impact of cigarette packaging among young women', Tobacco Control, 2011.

Australian researchers have published: 'Smokers' and non-smokers' reactions to standard packaging of cigarettes', University of Western Australia, 1993; 'How does increasingly plainer cigarette packaging influence adult smokers' perceptions about brand image? An experimental study', Tobacco Control, 2008; and the list goes on. 'Adolescents' perceptions of cigarette brand image: does plain packaging make a difference?' Journal of Adolescent Health, 2009; and 'Effects of increasing size of health warnings on plain vs branded packs', Society for Research in Nicotine and Tobacco 17th Annual Meeting, Toronto, 2011. And New Zealand published 'Effects of dissuasive packaging on young adult smokers', Tobacco Control, 2010.

In my own literature search, I happened to find: 'Effects of dissuasive packaging on young adult smokers', by Hoek et al, October 2010, which concluded:

Plain packs that feature large graphic health warnings are significantly more likely to promote cessation among young adult smokers than fully or partially branded packs. The findings support the introduction of plain packaging and suggest use of unbranded package space to feature larger health warnings would further promote cessation.

The research is substantial. We have seen research that has been done for well over a decade on this particular issue. There is no escaping the reality that packaging itself positively markets tobacco, and that this marketing also detracts from our health warnings on that packaging.

Australians want neither pro-tobacco marketing nor nobbled health warnings. I note that even the opposition now, only now, agrees with us. I have had a number of constituents contact me as instructed by Big Tobacco, campaigning against the government's policy of plain packaging. Most have been fearful of the measure, but have not really been able to explain why. Other constituents support the policy. One wrote on 29 June:

The tobacco companies are asking us to contact our MPs regarding plain packets on tobacco. Anything the Government of any colour does to annoy and do down the tobacco lobby is OK with me, so go ahead.

I commend the motion to the House. (Time expired)

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In looking at this motion, I was immediately drawn to the opportunity to speak on the dangers of tobacco and cigarette use. I do not do so because of any personal experiences, fortunately. I have never smoked and I appreciate that avoiding the stuff rates as one of the best decisions that I ever made in my life. It helps, of course, that my parents did not smoke and that few of my friends at school smoked. My involvement in the highly arduous sport of rowing would have been completely undermined had I been a smoker. And the member from South Australia here is another good rower. It was the case that among those who did rowing there were very few who ever smoked. If they did, they did not go very far. Overall, I have never faced the peer group pressure that others have faced. I always saw smoking as a pointless venture.

I am speaking today because, like all members of this House, I want to see fewer Australians smoking and less demand on our health resources in the future. I am confident that my children will never smoke, and I want to keep it that way. I am keen to ensure that the children in Cowan do not take up this pastime, which will become an addiction for those who start. That is why I am increasingly including an antismoking message in the talks that I give in the schools in my electorate. Smoking represents an expensive avenue to life-threatening diseases, such as the cancers and other ailments described in this motion. There is no value in it and there are no benefits, and I am keen to reinforce that message wherever I go in Cowan.

I remember from my youth the catchy jingles of the smoking commercials, but I never felt influenced by them. My personal opposition to smoking was reinforced by the introduction of the graphic warnings on cigarette packets by the Howard government and which saw a cut in the number of smokers in this country. I am pleased to be on the side of politics that acted and got things done to improve health outcomes in this country.

This motion also speaks of 'significant evidence to suggest promotion of tobacco is achieved through branding, creative design and packaging'. I have read of the studies that constitute such evidence. There are opposing views on that evidence in the form of other studies. My personal approach here is that the removal of all copyrighted markings from packages exposes the taxpayers to a financial risk through litigation. I would therefore suggest that this can be overcome by allowing some strip of a brand to remain. I know that this government has had to clean up many messes before with the taxpayers' cash, but blundering in once more is not in the national interest.

Leaving that factor aside, I want to return to the realities of the situation. The first paragraph of this motion speaks of the diseases and the ailments that come from smoking. The graphic warnings show the outcomes of smoking and it is horrendous stuff indeed. But it begs the question, does it not, as the government and the minister repeatedly deliver the sermons on this evil, about the one action that everyone would see as the commitment to match the rhetoric: to actually ban tobacco. If this is so bad, why doesn't the government cut to the chase and introduce legislation to ban tobacco? There would be an instant result with massive health and budgetary benefits over time.

That would, of course, involve forgoing some $5 billion in excise, which would immediately disappear. That might be a reason for some part of this window dressing before us today, this illusion of a solution, this plan of smoke and mirrors. I therefore question the authenticity of the government on this matter. There has been much breast beating and rattling of sabres on this issue, and yet when it comes to a logical conclusion there does not seem to be the action that is required.

The priorities of this government and its instrumentalities are also wrong in regards to the approach to illicit drugs. As has been reported in the media, the National Drug Campaign website includes terminology and elements that are almost encouraging in relation to certain drugs. The website refers to heroin as producing a rush within minutes of taking it, leading to a feeling of warmth and contentment. It also says that heroin is also know to greatly reduce physical and psychological pain when taken. Cocaine is described on the website as producing an intense rush. Ice is described as producing a very intense rush. These are very disturbing descriptions. It does seem that the priorities should be shifted. I say that we should approach smoking with a very hard resolve. But we should also approach these other illicit drugs in the same manner: with a very hard resolve.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the outset, I will quote from two very timely documents. One is a letter from the Municipal Association of Victoria, indicating that its state council has endorsed this legislation on tobacco plain packaging and calling on all members of this parliament to support it. The other timely document is an article in today's Australian newspaper, citing a survey in relation to strokes in this country and the close correlation of strokes with socioeconomic circumstances. The article states:

PEOPLE living in deprived areas have a 70 per cent higher chance of suffering a stroke than those in wealthy suburbs.

It further notes:

Effective preventative measures in the more deprived areas of the community could substantially reduce rates of stroke.

It connects this socioeconomic reality of stroke prevalence to issues such as diabetes and smoking. It is not the first time that material from The George Institute for Global Health has come forward. Similarly, in the Australian Bureau of Statistics document Cardiovascular Disease in Australia: A Snapshot, 2004-05 we see similar references to the connection between, on the one hand, tobacco smoking, socioeconomic deprivation, uptake of smoking and, on the other hand, these health problems.

The previous speaker, the member for Cowan, put forward the proposition that if you do not ban cigarettes then you are not genuine about trying to do something about prevention. Prohibition of alcohol in the United States may have surrendered the Scotch market from Irish manufacturers to Scottish manufacturers and might have assisted organised crime, but I doubt whether it accomplished very much else. The reality was that it was driven underground and alcohol was available. Quite frankly, I believe that this measure, which follows a series of measures such as increased tobacco taxes, the introduction of smoke-free environments, stricter enforcement on the sale of tobacco to minors, regulations relating to public areas and tobacco-marketing restrictions is the solution.

As I said, the previous speaker joins a series of other coalition speakers who, on the one hand, have come in here and said: 'Yes, we disagree with smoking. It's dreadful and I'm against it. I give lectures in my electorate, and we're now going to go along with the government,' but, on the other hand, have come in here and quibbled about plain packaging. They put forward the proposition that the government cannot be trusted. I would say that we have more reasons to doubt the tobacco industry than this government.

An interesting article from Britain, which appeared in TheGuardian Weekly last week, referred to Robert Proctor, of Stanford University, and his term 'agnotology'. He was referring to the tobacco industry's expenditure on very worthwhile research. The article reads:

"It is less well known, but tobacco companies also spent large amounts subsidising good quality biomedical research in fields such as virology, genetics and immunology. They funded the work of several Nobel prize winners," Proctor says. "But they only encouraged this research to serve as a distraction. The idea was to build up a corpus of work on possible causes of diseases which could be attributed to cigarette-smoking.

In other words, this industry, which has a need to sell cigarettes and tobacco and promote them, seems to be doing this interesting research—left field funding it—with regard to other possibilities for various medical problems. The whole aim of the measure is to put a wealth of information out there so that people then think, 'My problem may not be caused by tobacco smoking.' That article also referred to a famous internal memo issued by the US cigarette manufacturer Brown and Williamson, which bluntly said, 'Doubt is our product'.

A series of people are coming here today, with the proposition that the government is not genuine about this endeavour. I say that most people, on both sides of politics, who have any interest in this field would genuinely seek to undermine the industry. In the case of plain packaging of tobacco products, Freeman, Chapman and Rimmer stated:

While the research body on the effects of plain packaging is small and necessarily experimental, industry candour in internal documents and trade literature shows that tobacco product packaging is seen by the industry to be a persuasive form of advertising. Plain packaging legislation remains an important but curiously under-explored part of comprehensive tobacco control legislation designed to eliminate all forms of tobacco advertising and promotion. Given the near universal appropriation by governments of sometimes substantial parts of tobacco packaging for health warnings, and the failure of any company to ever succeed in finally resisting this appropriation or in being compensated for any loss of trade predicted by the industry, the failure of international tobacco control to advance plain packaging is all the more remarkable.

They further commented:

While the industry promotes an unattainable high standard of proof for research showing that plain packaging would reduce smoking, they do not hold this same high standard with their own position that packaging only effects market share and only serves to encourage brand switching among adults.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Primary Healthcare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to commend the member for Kingston for bringing this motion forward and for the opportunity to outline the Liberal and National parties' position on tobacco control. I would like to first put on record the proven track record of the coalition with regard to reducing smoking rates in Australia. It was the Fraser government in 1976 that first banned cigarette advertising. In 1998, the Howard government reformed cigarette taxation from a weight basis to a per stick basis, a recommendation of many health organisations at the time: ASH, the Cancer Council, as well as all of the health peak bodies. It was the Howard government, and Tony Abbott as health minister, who introduced the graphic health warnings on cigarette packets in 2006. And it was the coalition who first proposed an increase in the tobacco excise in 2009—a measure later adopted by the government. Under the coalition government, the rates of smoking in Australia declined from 21.5 per cent in 1998 to 16.6 per cent in 2007. This is one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world. The decline in smoking rates between 1989 and 2007, a fall of 40 per cent for men and 44 per cent for women, was amongst the biggest in the OECD. This fall in smoking for women was the biggest in the world.

Even though these falls are significant, and we do have one of the lowest rates of smoking in the world, there is no cause for complacency. It is worth noting that several European countries over this time frame saw increases in the smoking rates and some, such as Greece, saw substantial increases in smoking rates, especially amongst women. It should be a national goal to ensure that smoking rates for adult Australians fall below 10 per cent. This has been a bipartisan position for a long time and one of the disgusting and despicable aspects of this debate has been the way the Minister for Health and Ageing has sought to politicise the issues surrounding tobacco control for her own political gain rather than taking an approach where the country's health interests are the core focus. If she had only spent 10 per cent of the time that she spent talking about the Liberal Party and what it should do and how it should interact with the tobacco companies and actually got on with it, we would be in a much better position today.

Let us remember that the idea of plain packaging was first suggested by the National Preventative Health Taskforce on 30 June 2009. It is more than two years later and the parliament has been given no opportunity to vote on the legislation. And it is not as if the last two years have been taken up with extensive consultation with stakeholders. The department has revealed at estimates that the consultation they consider was done by the Preventative Health Task Force, so the minister and the government have not been out there talking to small business and talking to the various stakeholders about this move. As I said before, the minister has had a lot to say about the Liberal Party and what it should do rather than getting on with actually doing something.

I have looked at the research on the effects of plain packaging and the effects of graphic health warnings on consumer choice and behaviours. There is no doubt that increasing the size of graphic health warnings will reduce the rates of smoking. There is no doubt that reducing the size and locations of branding will also have an impact. But my reading of the research is that the increasing of the graphic health warning from 30 per cent to 70 per cent on the front of the packets will be the most effective measure any government could take, and it is one the government could have taken two years ago. The impact of plain packaging I think will be quite marginal after that. These measures will help to reduce the incidence of new people taking up smoking and will also help those people who are thinking about quitting to ditch the packet for good. There is no silver bullet to reduce the rate of smoking in Australia. This is but one tool in the armoury in the push to reduce the rates of smoking in the community.

The Leader of the Opposition has said that the Liberal and National parties will be moving amendments when we do finally see the plain packaging legislation to make it more practical. If those amendments are not successful, we will not be opposing the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill as the Liberal and National parties do support practical measures to reduce the rates of smoking in Australia. As I said before, it is a worthy goal for us to aim to have not just the third lowest rate of smoking in the world but the lowest rate and rates below 10 per cent.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made in order of the day for the next sitting.