Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I note at the outset that I won't be closing the debate on the Tobacco Plain Packaging Amendment Bill 2018. I suppose I should start with my personal confessions on smoking, not that there's much of a story. I'm one of those very lucky people who really haven't smoked all that much during their life. Although Senator Hume took us through a bit of a brand expose of her experiences with cigarettes, mine's limited to one packet. In 1973 I bought a packet of Escort 10s, which cost 27c. That's probably less than the excise on one cigarette these days! I'm still not sure that mum knows today that I bought that packet of smokes. I smoked four of those and I hated it, and I'm eternally grateful that that was my reaction to it. When I'd had a big night at the footy club, occasionally the boys would pass round a packet of cigarettes. If I took one, they would know that I'd an exceptional evening and a cheer would go up. Of course, during those years I consumed a lot of secondary smoke just through the atmosphere I was living in, but I count myself as someone who's very lucky not to have smoked, because we've heard through this debate already the statistics and the impacts of cigarette smoke.

In the couple of minutes before adjournment, I would like to address a couple of matters that were raised by the opposition, particularly by Senator O'Neill in her contribution. She talked about the fact that there had been no new campaigns. I remember when Prime Minister Rudd was in office, we were going to have a 'shock and awe' campaign against smoking. Well, we're still waiting for it. I never saw a shock and awe campaign coming from Labor. Yes, there were some anti-smoking ads, just as there are campaigns that are being run now. One current campaign, 'Don't make smokes your story', is targeting specific parts of the community. It's particularly targeting Torres Strait Islanders and Indigenous people. The 'Quit for you Quit for two' campaign is targeting pregnant women and their partners to stop smoking.

We're down to a small proportion of the community that are still smoking, and that's often when it's the hardest, when you get to that scale, to make those last few increments. We've seen the rate of reduction slowing over recent years. In fact, the latest figures I have seen show only a very small reduction, from 13.3 per cent to 12.8 per cent, so effectively it's static. It's very hard to start breaking down those last elements. The point I would make is that targeted campaigns and a range of measures are going to make the difference when you get down to those last few numbers, and it's important that the government continues to work in this space.

Debate interrupted.