Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

That is true. As Senator Fierravanti-Wells points out, Minister Roxon is the past mistress of blaming everybody else for her faults, and this is just another one of her little efforts to do so. Instead of this plain packaging legislation going into effect on 1 July 2012, it will not do so until December 2012. The government, particularly Minister Roxon, have absolutely no-one to blame except themselves for the fact that this has been delayed. They are still fiddling around with the wording in the legislation, worrying about square edges and round edges. Given the time the government have had to do this, you would think that they could have gotten it right—well, as right as they could ever get it. But they cannot even get the detail of the legislation right. They cannot get the introduction of the legislation right.

Once again, I express my very serious concern about the potential unintended consequences on every manufacturer, service industry, organisation and corporation in Australia that has trademarks and makes a profit out of those trademarks. There is nothing wrong or unacceptable about a company making a profit out of holding trademarks. It is quite typical of this government that there is some sense of attempting to suggest that it is a bit mean and nasty to want to make a profit out of a trademark.

The other issue that has simply been brushed over by the government is the issue raised by the manufacturers regarding illicit tobacco. According to manufacturers, it will be easier to put illicit tobacco into the market because the packaging will be easier to copy. I am honestly not aware of how that will play out, but the amount of illicit tobacco on the Australian market certainly is already a major concern. I note that a survey last year, I think conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, showed that in Queensland the electorate with the highest sales of illicit tobacco was the Treasurer's seat of Lilley. That is where most illegal tobacco in Queensland was being sold. I cannot begin to understand that because the government do not like the warning put out by tobacco manufacturers about the potential increase in illegal tobacco they have done absolutely nothing about this potential issue. If they could say they had investigated it and could genuinely tell us that there is no likelihood of an increase in illicit tobacco sales, fine, but they cannot. They just want to pretend it cannot happen because they did not think of it when they organised their brave, crazy, new-world legislation.

I would ask the Senate to really consider whether this piece of legislation is in the interests of taxpayers and whether it is in the interests of smokers. It is so flawed in so many ways. The aim of it—to reduce smoking—is something that no-one will disagree with. The way of going about it is probably symptomatic of this government, its ineptness, its ignorance of how the real world works and its folly in not caring about the costs to the Australian taxpayer of the implementation of its legislation.