Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Materiel) Share this | Hansard source

Indeed! That's me! The Howard government reformed cigarette taxation from a weight based taxation regime to a per-stick excise in 1999. It was the Howard government, with Tony Abbott as Minister for Health and Ageing, that introduced the graphic health warnings on tobacco products in 2006. Those are not the actions one might expect of a government and a party that somehow thinks that the actions of the tobacco industry should be protected in the Australian community.

In 2009, from opposition, we proposed an increase in the tobacco exercise. That was obviously a good idea, because it was not very long afterwards that the government—I think it was the Rudd government—picked up that very idea and ran with it!

Those measures, over a period of 30 or 40 years, paid dividends to the Australian community. In fact, the coalition, whilst in government, presided over the biggest decline in smoking rates. Under the coalition government the prevalence of smoking declined from 21.8 per cent in 1998 to 16.6 per cent of Australians over the age of 14 by 2007. So, in under 10 years there was a reduction from 21.8 per cent to 16.6 per cent. That is a pretty impressive reduction. This is amongst the lowest smoking rates in the world. The decline in smoking rates in Australia—a fall of 40 per cent for men and 44 per cent for women between 1989 and 2007—was amongst the biggest in the OECD. The fall in smoking rates amongst women, in fact, was the biggest in the OECD. So to suggest that we are soft on tobacco control is just plain nonsense.

I can also say, on a personal level, that in 1990—doesn't that date me?—as ACT Minister for Health, Education and the Arts, I introduced legislation into the ACT parliament to ban all environmental advertising of tobacco in the ACT except at point of sale, and to prevent tobacco companies from providing sponsorships for cultural or sporting events anywhere in the territory. Having said all of that, I think it also needs to be put on the record that, having reduced the smoking rate in Australia to 16.6 per cent, eliminating that last 16.6 per cent will be very difficult indeed.