Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

STEELE-JOHN () (): I want to place on the record, first of all, the Australian Greens' position in relation to Senator Canavan's amendment. I'll make a couple of observations about the amendment. First of all, what Senator Canavan has brought is a rather substantive amendment to the legislation, and in the narrow time afforded to us we haven't had the opportunity to go through all of it and its potential ramifications. I observe two things about the amendment brought by the Senator.

First of all, it would see nicotine removed from the Poisons List, and this is not something that the Greens support. We do not support removing nicotine from the Poisons List. The references in the amendment to an e-cigarette take-back scheme could conceptually be something the Greens would be supportive of. However, in the broad this amendment is of the kind that should be considered in relation to the government's bill in relation to vaping more broadly, which, as indicated, the government will bring to the Senate next year. There is consultation underway on what e-cigarette legislation would look like, and we want to wait for that process to conclude, rather than rushing to the amendment from Senator Canavan. We also note that the National Party is a recipient of donations from the tobacco industry, so we take that into account whenever the Nationals come in here with an idea in relation to a tobacco bill.

I would also say in relation to this legislation, in general terms, that it does give us an opportunity to consider powerful case studies in relation to legislation and how it is actually created in Australia. As has been quoted by many during the course of this debate, smoking and tobacco use are a public health crisis in Australia and have been for decades. We know from the Cancer Council that about two million Australians smoke regularly still—to this very day—and that it has a material flow-on impact on people's health. People die because of smoking. Thousands of people die every single year. Thousands more contract terrible health conditions which worsen the quality of their life. What is lost when a human being is taken from family and community due to cancer—and I've heard about terrible conditions in relation to smoking—is that you lose not only that person and their life, all that they hoped still to do, but also all that they meant to everyone around them. There is a massive community impact from that absence. So too with the ill health that comes as a result of smoking, even if you do quit and survive. People think that lung transplants, for instance, are reasonably easy things to journey through; they're not. And they're not actually the first thing people go through. The removal of part of a lung, for instance, is a lot more common and has significant flow-through health impacts.

In response to this reality, this chamber, over the last decades, has legislated to bring down the rate of smoking. Guided by scientists, experts and public health officials, and by community organisations and advocates, we have worked together to produce world-leading legislation which the Greens have supported—plain packaging, for instance. We have seen that that evidence based policy has driven outcomes. It has saved lives, and it is to be celebrated for that reality. Along the way, we set up better funded commissions and appointed public health workers to work with affected communities to improve health outcomes. Where needed, we have rightly celebrated the innovation that has come in the medical space to improve health outcomes for smokers. It has prolonged people's lives and supported them to live healthily and smoke free, and that is a wonderful thing.

I would contrast that outcome with the legislative approach, the response of the major parties, to other public health crises in our community. Take, for instance, climate change, which is a public health crisis. The public health flow-through impacts of climate change are profound. My community in WA know this better than most. We have just come through an unprecedented November when we sweltered through an entire week of temperatures above 35 degrees. That combined with roaring winds to create devastating bushfires, particularly in our north-eastern suburbs.

What was the impact of that? People's homes were destroyed. As part of that destruction, communities were terribly impacted. People obviously suffered terrible smoke inhalation and profound distress, but the reality for them now is that they don't have a home. They don't have anywhere to go back to and their memories are gone. The places where they spent decades building their lives are gone. Those precious places were literally razed to the ground.

We know that climate change is the driver of these events. That is not in dispute. There are very many wonderful public health advocates, scientists, advocates and activists who have literally dedicated their lives to presenting to this legislature the way forward to deal with this issue, to bring carbon emissions down, to increase the amount of renewable energy in the system and to make our air and our water cleaner, with all of the positive health impacts that that has. They have laid out plan after plan after plan to do that in a responsible, managed way so that we can protect our community and our environment and mirror the excellent work that has been done by governments and policymakers in relation to issues such as smoking. Yet, what has the response of this legislature and this government been in that case? The response has been to continue to make the problem worse, to continue to approve new gas projects and to continue to approve new coalmines. The Minister for the Environment and Water right now is quite a fan of doing both of those things.