Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition will be supporting the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 but will be opposing the Trademarks Amendment (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Bill 2011. There are about 15,000 tobacco and smoking related deaths in Australia each year and there are many more cases of illness and hospital admission. It is sensible public policy to take action to reduce rates of smoking, as noted by the opposition's support for the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill. The Trademarks Amendment (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Bill, however, is not written to reduce rates of smoking. By the most generous interpretation it is designed to enable the Minister for Health and Ageing to make regulations with respect to anything related to trademarks. By the least generous interpretation the bill would enable the minister to make regulations significantly contrary to the Trademarks Act 1995. Before I explain the opposition's support for the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill and its opposition to the Trademarks Amendment (Tobacco Plain Packaging) Bill I must make mention of the Minister for Health and Ageing and her discussion of tobacco plain-packaging legislation.

While not discounting the public health benefits of reducing smoking, Ms Roxon has applied herself with incredible zeal to this task. Unfortunately, the zeal has sat uncomfortably beside the hypocrisy of the health minister. Ms Roxon, it was revealed, had sent a fundraising request to a major tobacco company in 2005, the year after Labor banned tobacco company donations. This was just a year after the then Labor leader, Mark Latham, had banned the party from taking donations from tobacco companies. As recently as June 2011, New South Wales ALP secretary, Sam Dastyari, wrote to the same company, Philip Morris, offering a $5,000 place at a business dialogue and country business forum. It was deceitful of Minister Roxon to tell the public one thing and then do something completely opposite behind the scenes. The minister even failed to front up at the annual committee sessions in the other place to consider the government's budget bills in detail this year. This was obviously so that she could dodge questions about her attempts to solicit funding from the cigarette manufacturer Philip Morris in 2005. Her hypocrisy was to say one thing in public and then do something else.

The Gillard government protected the minister on 15 June when it refused to debate an opposition motion that the minister explain to parliament why she publicly criticised tobacco company donations to political parties but privately sought their financial support. The minister has sought to politicise the issues surrounding plain packaging and tobacco control for her own political gain. The Minister for Health and Ageing has taken the attitude that if you do not agree with her 100 per cent then you must be in the pockets of tobacco companies. She has no proof other than her belief that this is so. What we now know is her own relationship with big tobacco was much closer and cosier than anyone ever realised. The minister has never fully disclosed the extent to which she was in the pockets of big tobacco. In a ministerial statement on 14 June 2011, Ms Roxon said:

… Big Tobacco will try and pull all sorts of tricks along the way to discredit me, discredit the policy or discredit the Government.

Well, Minister Roxon, the only thing big tobacco did was offer you tickets to the football and the tennis. They did not try to hide the minister's attendance. The minister did all that by herself.

Not everyone has been happy with the minister's stand. In April, on the ABC's Lateline program, Ms Roxon said that health warnings and graphic pictures would make up the majority of the olive green packaging. She said:

We've done a lot of research to ensure that we make the cigarette packs as unattractive as possible …

…   …   …

Apparently dark olive is the least attractive colour - olive green - for any smokers and particularly for young people.