Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak on two extremely important issues and two very different groups of Australians. I am speaking about vaping and veterans affairs. I have made it abundantly clear in the past that vaping is a scourge on our society.

It is an issue that I take seriously. In my youth, we had the same issue with cigarette smoking. Many teenagers took up the habit, unaware of the risks to their health. They got addicted due to the nicotine content and they ended up with cancer or other terrifying conditions. Nicotine itself, while being highly addictive, is not the direct cause of the vaping or smoking related illnesses. It is instead the filler materials that cigarettes, cigars and vapes are packed with: arsenic, acetone and butane are just three examples of the destructive chemicals inside these items. Despite claims that vapes only emit water vapour, vapes contain oils that can stick to the inside of our lungs, potentially causing pneumonia and other significant health issues.

Vapes prescribed by a doctor for the purpose of quitting smoking are different from the vapes that are sold underground. We do not know what substances or materials are actually in the types of vapes that are sold on the black market. What we do know is that organised crime and the setting up of shops and retail outlets to sell to under-age children are very much part of the issue that we are confronting with in this country. The sale of any e-liquids or vaping products containing nicotine for personal use by Australian retailers is now illegal. There are no nicotine vaping products been sold underground which have been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. They are now classified as a dangerous poison under the national poison standard.

Back in the Gillard Labor government, we took the issue of smoking very, very seriously, and it was former minister Nicola Roxon who did so much work within the Gillard Labor government to tackle and reduce the scourge of smoking in this country. We enacted legislation to discourage cigarette smoking in Australia by introducing the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011. Shortly afterwards, Cancer Australia reported that there was at least a 25 per cent decrease in smoking rates in Australia between 2012 and 2015. Current figures unfortunately point to an increase in smoking, with vaping being a gateway to cigarette addiction.

Like the Gillard Labor government, we want to protect our young people from the perils of smoking. Thus, it is the intent of this government to do all we can to stamp out the scourge of vaping here in Australia. We are working together with the state and territory governments to increase the minimum quality standards for vapes so that the make-up of ingredients can be better controlled. In addition to this, we're making sure that, like cigarettes, vaping products are all packaged with plain, pharmaceutical packaging. I refer to the figure I mentioned before: the Cancer Council detected at least a 25 per cent decrease in cigarette smoking after the plain packaging act was introduced by the Gillard Labor government.

This issue is serious. We're not stopping there. We are investing $737 million from the tobacco excise revenue to fund new measures to protect Australians against vaping related illnesses and to discourage them from vaping in the first place. A significant portion of the funding will go towards establishing support programs to help Australians quit vaping and strengthen training amongst health professionals.

We are stamping out the scourge of vaping in Australia. When shops selling vaping products are opening outside schools—including primary schools—to get more traffic, it should be blatantly clear that we are dealing with a massive problem in this country. We are also dealing with a black market of illicit vaping products. These reforms by the Albanese Labor government are stamping out black markets and regulating the market so that people who need to access vapes for medical reasons still can and that recreational vaping is phased out. Unfortunately, those opposite, the Liberals, the Nationals and even the Greens, don't seem to share the same concerns. The Liberals and the Nationals are too preoccupied with big donations from the tobacco companies and are therefore not prepared to stand up, and we know that the Greens are more interested in young people's votes than they are in their health.

I've lived through the scourge of nicotine addiction from cigarette smoking, and I've seen what it has caused. I've seen too many Australians die. I see too many people using our health system. With this scourge of vaping, which is a gateway into cigarette smoking—and, may I suggest, to other drugs—we as a government are going to be strong and resilient and ensure we do all that we can to protect young Australians.

I'd like to take a moment to also talk about another important area of government policy and a commitment that we made before the last election. That commitment was to attack the scourge of the long waiting times for veterans to have their claims assessed. The Albanese Labor government are delivering on the commitment we made. I want to congratulate the Minister for Veterans' Affairs, the Hon. Matt Keogh, in the other place, for his leadership and great work. Within the Department of Veterans' Affairs, we no longer have any backlog of compensation claims being processed. We made a promise to clear any backlogs by the end of March, and by the end of February they were cleared—a month earlier than expected. That is really good news.

Since July last year, the Department of Veterans' Affairs has processed over 64,000 claims. That is over 64,000 Australians who were owed compensation for service related injuries or illnesses who have been helped, as have their families, since July last year. Unlike those opposite—when they were in government that backlog continued to grow and to grow—we've tackled it. We've delivered another election promise.

Again, we are delivering to Australian veterans, and we will continue to do that because we appreciate and respect the contributions that they have made to this country. We want to keep up the good work in the veterans affairs space, and so we're investing in staff, the IT systems and ensuring more timely access to veterans affairs services for veterans and their families. The Albanese Labor government supports those who have served and stood up for our country in our times of need. We respect the work that the Defence Force have done in protecting Australia—whether you go back to the First World War, the Second World War, Korea or Vietnam. What we need to ensure is this: when our veterans come home from a conflict, or during their service, if they need help and assistance with their injuries and illnesses, they should know that their waiting times will be a matter of weeks, not months or years.

Too often in this place, those on that side come into this chamber and lecture us about what we're not doing, and how good they have been, in relation to issues like Veterans Affairs and the support for our defence forces. The reality is very, very different. After 10 years of neglect by those opposite, it took a Labor government to employ more staff, to invest in the technology and, more importantly, to invest in the people to ensure that those backlogs were cleared. Sixty-four thousand Australians have been helped since July last year. That's an incredible effort, and that's the sort of determination Australians will get from this Labor government. I commend the minister for his great work.