Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Hansard source

I have been listening to the debate on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024 so far and I have to speak about what is the reality of the world in North Queensland. I agree with everything that previous senators have said about the risks of vaping, but I don't think there is a genuine understanding that it is only about seven or eight per cent of vapes that are legally supplied. The rest of them are illegally supplied not by big tobacco but by illegal factories in China importing them into Australia with no oversight and massive biosecurity risks. Illegal shops are setting up right around the country that are being run by crime lords and bikie gangs. We are feeding an illegal industry of criminals. We are doing that because we are not properly funding police in North Queensland. They can tell me where there is illegal activity, but they have no funding and it is not prioritised. It is not prioritised in the tasks of things they need to deal with, particularly the crime wave and youth crime problems that we have in North Queensland.

So, every time somebody says that we have to do something about vapes, I completely agree. But the government is doubling down on failed legislation. This is well outside putting it into the unwilling hands of pharmacies to sell. We are now expecting them to police vapes? In Queensland, contrary to the legislation and the deal that has been done between Labor and the Greens, for section 3 drugs the buyer has to provide their licence, their name and their address. That's Queensland law. That is in direct contravention to what I understand the Greens were trying to achieve with that deal. But what is the point of trying to say that pharmacies have to sell a product that is, in the vast majority, being sold illegally? These are products that are not manufactured under any sort of licensed arrangements. They could be full of fentanyl. Who would know what's going into them? But selling vapes through a pharmacy is not going to solve the illegal vape trade. It won't even put a dent in it. Wherever I go, whether it's here in Parliament House or down the street in North Queensland, I can be guaranteed that most of the vapes I'll see have not been provided legally. They have certainly not been manufactured legally. And yet what the government is going to do is double down on failed legislation and a failed prescription model. What are the druggies going to do? What are the crime lords going to do? What are the bikie gangs going to do? They're going to continue their business as usual, because this legislation doesn't allow for more funding to support them. It certainly doesn't provide any more funding for the hospitals to treat this illegal activity. No, we're going to keep pretending that prohibition works and that the prescription model works, and it does not.

I have carefully shepherded my three children through to adulthood not to be smokers. As an ex-smoker myself, it was something that was important to me. I didn't want them to go through the quitting process that I had gone through. But—guess what?—as adults they've all started vaping because that's what everybody's doing. It's okay to do it. You can do it at a restaurant. You can do it everywhere. So I am appealing to the government: stop this ridiculous process of thinking that you can double down on a failed policy, because prescription does not work. If you ask anybody you see later tonight or tomorrow whether or not they got their vape with a script, don't be surprised at the answer. We know the data for most of them—the vast majority. Fewer than 10 per cent of the vapes that we see people using are used with a prescription. The rest go to drug lords, who take money not just from our kids but from our young adults and all of those people who say things to me like, 'Yeah, we had a vape the other day. I couldn't feel my feet afterwards.'

This is what we are knowingly allowing to happen. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and we have no idea what's in the 92 or 93 per cent of illegal vapes on the street that we are walking past. For those people who'd like to think that big tobacco is manufacturing them, that is in your wildest fantasy, because they are coming out of factories that are not legal and are not managed, and we have no idea what's going into those things.

I don't want to labour the point, but what is going on is outrageous. Thanks to Labor and the Greens getting together, we're going to pass legislation which will not address the illegal activities, will not protect our children, and will see illegal vape shops continue to flourish right around the country. We're funding drug lords and bikie gangs and making our kids sick because we are too lazy to do the real work, which is funding police and cracking down on crime. That's all I have to add to this.