Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to make a contribution to the debate on the Tobacco Plain Packaging Amendment Bill 2018. Worldwide, tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death and kills at least five million people every year. In Australia, smoking still kills between 15,000 and 20,000 people each year. The economic and social cost of smoking is estimated at $31.5 billion a year. By any measure, and despite all of the progress we have achieved over many decades, it remains a massive health issue. It's an issue that requires political leadership and eternal vigilance.

Labor has shown consistent leadership on this issue, even when it's been politically difficult. We've stood up to big tobacco, despite their formidable resources and significant campaign abilities. Despite their willingness to use dirty tricks and to take legal action, we took them on. It was Labor that introduced and fought for the world-leading plain packaging legislation that, along with other policies, has helped to drive smoking rates to record lows. I well recall former minister Nicola Roxon and her battle to achieve that outcome, and what a mountain it was to climb. She showed that incredible leadership that is so common amongst the women in the Labor Party who make such a contribution to public policy in this country.

The legislation before us today makes some minor technical changes to Labor's laws, and we will, of course, support it. Put simply, the amendments expand the range of people who can be authorised to undertake plain-packaging compliance activities. You will find no objections from us with regard to that. But we know that, deep down, many on the other side would actually like to tear up Labor's legislation altogether. On this, as on so many things, they're hopelessly divided. Despite the clear evidence that our legislation has worked and has clearly saved lives, many on the other side still think that this is a 'nanny state' policy. It shows that they do not understand public health policy or evidence based policy. But, as we know, this is what the Liberals and the Nationals so often do; they put big business before the wellbeing of the Australian people.

Thanks in part to Labor's groundbreaking policy work, the prevalence of daily smoking in Australia is now at just 12 per cent and continuing to decline. I know for a fact that for Australians like me and senators on the other side of the chamber, as we travel around the world, it's quite shocking sometimes to enter into other contexts and see the amount of public smoke consumption by comparison to what we have become accustomed to, with that remarkable reduction to 12 per cent. Happily, that figure is continuing to decline.

It has to be said, however, that we have hit a point where that decline has slowed. That's because, for the last five years, we've not had a government that actually cares about tobacco control. It has zero credibility on this issue. For five years it has been missing in action. As Professor Mike Daube, of Curtin University, recently wrote:

We should have reinforced and capitalised on the early impact of plain packaging and reinforced the impacts of tax increases … but action over the past 6 years has stalled, at a time when it should have accelerated.

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First, crucially and inexplicably, there have been no national media campaigns since 2012. The federal government gets more than $11 billion a year in revenue from tobacco taxes. Spending $40 million on media campaigns would be less than 0.4% of this.

For its entire time in office, this government has not bothered to launch any antitobacco campaigns, even though it knows, and evidence proves, that they are highly effective. From our point of view, we consider this to be a shameful dereliction of duty. We need more major, hard-hitting media campaigns, which we know is one of the most effective weapons in our arsenal.

Professor Daube goes on to point out that, over the last five years, there has been a complete absence of new evidence-based measures to tackle smoking—nothing at all on the watch of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, despite the fact that we continue to see 15,000 to 20,000 people die each year from smoking-related illness. Professor Daube also talks about the fact that there have been no curbs on tobacco industry efforts to influence public policy. He mentions the twin evils of lobbying and political donations from the big tobacco industry. It has now been 14 years since Labor announced we would no longer take political donations from big tobacco. It took nearly 10 years for the Liberals to match us on that, but, shamefully, the Nationals still haven't done the right thing. They still receive donations from big tobacco. Scott Morrison must explain why he thinks it's okay that his coalition partner fills its coffers with money from companies that profit from putting Australians in coffins. The Liberals should restore Australia's global leadership on this issue, and, if they don't, Labor certainly will.