Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Regional Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Leyonhjelm. I appreciate your raising UK Public Health's new evidence with respect to the regulation and efficacy of e-cigarettes. And I do suggest that those proponents of e-cigarettes follow the usual process rather than using this amendment. There are problems at law with the amendment itself that I'm happy to go through with you. But I'm sure you are well versed in the government's perspective on that, given that this is an amendment that you seek to include whenever we're discussing TGA matters. But given the recent evidence from the UK, I would encourage proponents of e-cigarettes to bring that forward to the TGA for consideration in an application in the way the TGA is supposed to work. As you stated in your comments, the evidence base on which the TGA and others have made decisions around e-cigarettes has been lacking. Now, if this is new evidence, the proponents of e-cigarettes should go through the usual process and submit an application to the TGA.

As you note—and I know you don't seek any further Commonwealth overreach into state and territory sovereignty—by using this amendment you are, in effect, actually increasing the Commonwealth's getting into matters that are, rightly, the purview of states and territories. So, the government does not support your amendment.