Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to 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.

Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 before the House, which is to amend the Commonwealth Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 to prohibit the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of non-therapeutic and disposable vaping goods. I'm happy to do so as I'm horrified by the blatant marketing of vaping to our youth, especially in light of the advice from Australian Medical Association and other reputable health groups regarding the significant risk to the population's health.

This legislation breaks new ground to protect Australians from the harms of vaping, particularly children. Vaping—the act of inhalation and exhalation of vapour produced by electronic cigarettes or similar device—has gained popularity in recent years, especially among adolescents and young adults. However, this trend comes with significant dangers to individual health and to the broader population. Let us address the misconception that vaping is a harmless alternative to traditional smoking. While some may argue that vaping eliminates the harmful tar and chemicals found in cigarettes, it is crucial to recognise that vaping still poses serious health risks.

It is also worth noting that most e-cigarettes in Australia contain nicotine even when their packaging says they don't. Nicotine is a highly addictive and toxic drug that can harm brain development and impact attention, learning and memory and cause changes in mood. Vaping involves inhaling a plethora of harmful chemicals, including listed poisons, heavy metals such as nickel and chromium, and chemical by-products produced during heating. We're advised by the International Agency for Research on Cancer that acrolein, aldehydes and polycyclic hydrocarbons are probably carcinogenic, while nicotine derivatives are known carcinogens in humans. Further, low concentrations of toxic chemicals in vaping substances convert to high concentrations when aerosolised after heating and as the chemicals combine.

Evidence suggests that vaping by nonsmokers results in dependence and that vaping can cause respiratory disease, severe burns, poisoning, seizures, acute nicotine toxicity and increased uptake of cigarette smoking. Furthermore, the long-term effects of vaping are still not fully understood, making it risky behaviour with potentially dire consequences for those who engage in it. Labor has a long history of pioneering tobacco control reforms, dating back 50 years to the Whitlam government's introduction of restrictions on tobacco advertising. That legacy certainly continued with the introduction of Australia's world-leading tobacco plain-packaging reforms over 10 years ago.

The Pearce electorate includes many families and a growing youth population. The 2021 census registered in excess of 23,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 24, so I find the evidence of increasing vaping to be a worrying trend that certainly requires our attention. Given these findings, it is not surprising that grave concern is widespread amongst public health policymakers and practitioners about the increased use of marketing and vaping goods. There are reports from parents, teachers and doctors that nicotine dependence is impacting learning behaviours and wellbeing in our schools. The Australian Dental Association warns that vaping may cause oral health issues. The use of vapes can mean a decreased blood supply to gum tissue, which can result in difficulty getting oxygen and nutrients to this important tissue as well as trouble healing, increasing the risk of gum disease, which often results in significant tooth loss.

Vaping is rapidly rising in Australia—which is of great concern—among our youth and young adults, who are particularly susceptible to the allure of vaping, thanks in part to clever marketing tactics that glamorise vaping as a trendy and harmless activity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Marketing intentionally targets youth and young adults, with advertising spending often focused on social media promotion, allowing for lower costs and wider reach. Flavoured e-cigarettes in particular have been heavily marketed toward the youth, enticing them with flavours like strawberry, ice mango, blueberry, grape and watermelon. This has led to a concerning rise in vaping among teenagers, with many viewing it as a harmless habit or even a social status symbol. However, once again, the reality is far from benign. Nicotine addiction impairs brain development and is a gateway to traditional smoking. These are just some of the dangers that young vapers face.

We cannot sit idly by while our youth fall victim to the deceptive allure of vaping. We must educate our young people about the dangers of vaping, equipping them with the knowledge and skills to make informed decisions about their own health. The Albanese Labor government is implementing a comprehensive range of regulatory and non-regulatory measures in parallel with this bill. The Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023 from 1 April 2024 streamlines and modernises existing Commonwealth tobacco control laws. It also extends advertising regulations to vaping goods and includes new tobacco excise measures, which were announced last year, to further reduce the affordability of tobacco products. The government will also provide $29.5 million over four years to help Australians quit, and it will invest a further $63.4 million in public health information campaigns to discourage Australians from taking up vaping and smoking and to encourage quitting. The government will provide $141.2 million to extend the successful Tackling Indigenous Smoking program to reduce the uptake of vaping and reduce smoking among First Nations people. Funding also includes support for regulatory and enforcement activities, with $56.9 million for the Therapeutic Goods Administration and $25 million for the Australian Border Force.

The new ban on possession includes an exception for personal use, including young Australians who are being deliberately targeted. This bill is not about penalising vape users, whether they be adults or children. The focus of the bill is to criminalise the illicit importation, manufacture, supply, advertisement and commercial possession of vapes, to help protect young Australians. I want to repeat that: the focus of the bill is to criminalise the illicit importation, manufacture, supply, advertisement and commercial possession of vapes. The priority is to help protect young Australians.

Vaping poses a great threat to the health and wellbeing of our people. It is not a harmless habit but, rather, a dangerous addiction with potentially life-altering consequences. We are committed to measures that will ban all vapes, other than therapeutic vapes imported, manufactured or supplied in accordance with the Therapeutic Goods Act. It is important to note that this bill does not take away the ability for patients to legitimately access therapeutic vapes to help them quit smoking or manage their nicotine dependency. If that is deemed to be clinically appropriate for a patient, then so be it. As the Australian Medical Association has stated, the government's reforms will support people to cease smoking and/or vaping by retaining access to prescription e-cigarettes and making these more accessible to patients, where clinically appropriate, through any GP—and GPs are experts in smoking cessation—and backed by new guidelines that are well placed to help patients quit.

We are committed to Australia's international obligations as a party to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, under which parties are obliged to develop and implement effective policies to prevent and reduce tobacco consumption and exposure and nicotine addiction. As a cancer survivor myself, it is clear to me that the health risks posed by vaping are totally unacceptable. I urge you all to support the bill. I'd also like to share a story with you. My young grandson is a type 1 diabetic, and it's very clear in the research that vaping increases spiking in type 1 diabetics, which is life threatening in itself. Please, I urge you to support the bill to help protect our youth from the dangers of vaping and ensure a healthier future for generations to come. I commend the bill to the House.

Sophie Scamps (Mackellar, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, and I commend the government and the health minister for introducing this much-needed public health intervention. I'm proud that, as a nation, we are building on the world-leading role Australia has already played in tobacco control.

Unrestricted, unregulated vaping is seriously harmful to the health of too many Australians, particularly young Australians. There is a widespread and serious concern among health policy makers, practitioners and academics about the growing use of disposable, single-use e-cigarettes, particularly amongst young people. In addition to the significant health concerns is the fact that the plastic waste from these hundreds of thousands of single-use vapes often end up in our waterways and in our landfill and take a thousand years to decompose. This is not acceptable, when microplastics are already found throughout our bodies and our environment. I would like to note upfront the near unanimous support this legislation has in the public health community. Very broadly, academics, civil society organisations and medical practitioners are delighted that this legislation has been introduced and look forward to the positive impact it will have on the health of Australians, particularly young Australians, both now and into the future.

The Cancer Council, a leading expert group on tobacco control with decades of experience in this field, wrote to me to confirm that they and other members of the public health community are united in their strong support for these reforms. The Cancer Council's view is that the reforms will reduce the easy availability of e-cigarettes in our community and to our young people and children. Our children simply should not be able to hop off their school bus, go to the local convenience store and buy e-cigarettes whenever they wish. The Cancer Council also commends the fact that this bill will strengthen and streamline the pathway to access therapeutic e-cigarettes so that prescriptions for them will be more easily and more broadly accessible for those who need them for smoking cessation. It is simply misinformation by vested interests to say that GPs will not be able to keep up with demand. The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners strongly refutes this claim, saying, 'This is our bread and butter.' And don't forget: nicotine replacement products are widely available in every pharmacy in the country. The Australian Medical Association was also vociferous in its support for this legislation.

I have spoken many times in this place on my significant concerns about the rise of vaping in Australia, particularly amongst young people and children. I'm a mother of teenagers and have practised as a GP for years. I understand the dangers of vaping, both from a health perspective and from a parental one. Those dangers include negative impacts on adolescent brain development, worsened pregnancy outcomes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. Other, less direct health risks include severe burns, poisoning and seizures.

And don't be fooled by the sweet smell of the emissions. E-cigarettes contain as many as 200 toxic chemicals. The World Health Organization has confirmed:

E-cigarette emissions typically contain nicotine and other toxic substances that are harmful to both users and non-users who are exposed to the aerosols second-hand.

These chemicals include carcinogens, chemicals known to cause cancer, such as acetaldehyde and formaldehyde. They also contain acrolein, a herbicide primarily used to kill weeds, which can cause irreversible lung damage. They contain diacetyl, a chemical linked to a lung disease called bronchiolitis obliterans—meaning it destroys lung tissue. This disease is also called popcorn lung. And then there's acetone—yes, nail polish remover. Yum! A single disposable product can contain as much nicotine as 50 traditional cigarettes and cost as little as $5. That's what our children are ingesting. Commonly, they contain nicotine even if they are labelled 'nicotine free'. And nicotine—let's be clear—is one of the most addictive substances in existence, comparable to opioids and cocaine—not quite the cookies and cream and strawberry kisses that you read on the label.

What worries me particularly about vaping is the immediate adverse impacts on adolescent and teen brains—the impact on their concentration, their behaviour and their ability to learn. I've heard stories from schoolteachers about schoolkids who have to wear nicotine patches just so they can make it through the exam period and about the behavioural issues and impaired concentration that nicotine dependence and withdrawal lead to in schoolchildren. I've heard from local schools that they have had to install vapour detectors in bathrooms because the use of vapes during class is so prolific. A scientific article on the toxicology of e-cigarette constituents concluded:

The adolescent brain is particularly sensitive to the effects of nicotine.

It said:

This may help explain altered cognitive function and attention performance in adolescents who smoke.

It said:

Studies in human subjects indicate that smoking during adolescence increases the risk of developing psychiatric disorders and cognitive impairment in later life. In addition, adolescent smokers suffer from attention deficits, which aggravate with the years of smoking.

It would simply be irresponsible not to act now when we know this.

It is simply not correct to say that vapes are being used by young people as a strategy to quit smoking cigarettes. A recent study of adolescents in New South Wales reported that half of the kids who were regularly consuming e-cigarettes had never smoked. In fact, people who use e-cigarettes are around three times more likely to take up tobacco smoking compared to those who have never vaped. Research published in December 2022 concluded that vaping is the strongest risk factor for smoking. In other words, vaping is a gateway drug to smoking cigarettes. Sadly, it seems to me there has been a cynical strategy to move our children from e-cigarettes to cigarettes by getting them hooked on nicotine. In fact, in Australia there are currently no therapeutic vapes that have been evaluated by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for smoking cessation or the management of nicotine dependence. GPs already have several effective ways to help people quit smoking, including nicotine replacement therapy, medications to help manage cravings and counselling. These methods have actually got the evidence behind them that they work. In fact, in my many years as a GP I don't recall a single patient coming to me and asking for a script for an e-cigarette to help them quit smoking.

Further, the very idea of vaping as a cigarette cessation tool has been bolstered by—you guessed it—the tobacco industry. Four years after announcing it would move into the e-cigarette market, Philip Morris launched the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World. It is the sole founder of that foundation to which, as reported by the Australian newspaper, it contributes an astonishing $80 million annually. The foundation has financed more than 70 academic papers on e-cigarettes and smoking cessation. It seems to me the tobacco industry is reinventing itself and crafting its own narrative. And it's not just the academic and scientific community that the tobacco industry seeks to capture with its ill-gotten wealth; it's our politicians, too. Firstly, I'll say that the Greens have never accepted donations from tobacco companies. The Labor Party announced 20 years ago that they would no longer accept donations from tobacco companies, and the Liberal Party followed suit in 2013. But, between 2013 and 2023, the Nationals have accepted over $385,000 in donations from the tobacco company Philip Morris. It will be interesting to see how the Nationals vote on this issue.

The changes being introduced by this bill have not come a moment too soon, as so-called convenience stores, which are poorly disguised facades for selling e-cigarettes, have popped up in communities all over Australia. In my own electorate of Mackellar, there are at least eight such stores, many of them springing up soon after the government announced, last year, their intention to phase out the use of disposable vapes. These stores are typically located near schools and near stops for buses and trains that ferry our children to and from school.

This bill is the next step in the government's efforts to arrest and reverse the increasing rates of vaping and smoking. At its most basic, the bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 to ban the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of disposable, single-use non-therapeutic vapes. The bill also requires pharmaceutical-like packaging for e-cigarettes and makes them available only through pharmacies. I congratulate the government for continuing its world leadership in public health by acting swiftly to curb dangerous cigarette products.

As part of that sentiment, it's worth taking the opportunity to reflect on the many successful public health initiatives that Australian health professionals have fought for so tenaciously to reduce smoking related harms to Australians, including cancer and emphysema. As a doctor, having witnessed the distress of many patients with emphysema, in my opinion it is one of the cruellest ways to die. We must also remember the health professionals who helped Australia join the front line of global tobacco control. Professor Simon Chapman, world renowned tobacco-control academic and activist, deserves a special mention, as does Professor Melanie Wakefield and her team at the Cancer Council, whose work established the vital negative link between plain packaging and cigarette smoking.

The approach to cutting smoking rates in this country has been multifaceted and grew momentum over time. In 1976 the ban on advertising of tobacco products on TV and radio was implemented. Later, cigarette ads were also banned at sporting events. Then tobacco company sponsorship of sport was proscribed, and smoking in workplaces and restaurants and on planes was forbidden. Taxes on tobacco products were gradually increased and graphic warnings on packets mandated. Then in December 2012 Australia became the first country in the world to implement plain-packaging laws. Within three years of this legislation being introduced an estimated 100,000 fewer Australians smoked.

This legislation builds on that leadership, and I congratulate and thank this government, and Minister Butler in particular, for their hard work and vision. This is a Sliding Doors moment for tens of thousands of people in Australia who will be spared years of suffering. I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

Debate adjourned.