Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to make a contribution to the debate on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024, which amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 to ban the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of disposable single-use and non-therapeutic vapes. The bill preserves patients' access to therapeutic vapes for smoking cessation and the management of nicotine dependence under clinical conditions. The bill will impact the sale and supply of non-nicotine vaping products, as vapes containing nicotine are already subject to restrictions under the Poisons Standard classification.

The coalition will not stand in the way of this bill passing the Senate. This brings both non-nicotine and nicotine vapes under the same framework, treating both categories of vaping product in the same way. It creates a single framework under the TGA for the regulation of all vaping products regardless of their nicotine content. We agree with the principle of all vapes being treated the same way under the TGA, and we would use the same framework as part of our strictly regulated retail model.

We've been clear from the get-go that it is our priority to protect Australian children from the harms of vaping, and, in line with that priority, we will not stand in the way of this change. No-one wants to see Australian children having access to vaping products or becoming addicted to vaping, and the coalition's primary concern is preventing children from getting access to these products. We've focused on stamping out the organised-crime driven black market that is supplying these illegal vapes to children. Let's be clear: it has always been illegal to sell vaping products to children, but, under Labor, Australian kids are being targeted by a thriving and dangerous black market. The Albanese Labor government has failed to control the illicit vaping market and has failed to protect children against the proliferation of vaping products. Labor's prohibition-style approach plays straight into the hands of organised crime syndicates, who are profiting massively from the sale of illegal vapes.

We do not want to see organised crime continue to thrive across the country under this weak government, placing community safety further at risk. It is these criminals who would benefit from the government's plan to double down on the failing medical model. This is why greater scrutiny of this legislation was absolutely essential and why the coalition pushed for a Senate inquiry into the issue. It would have been completely irresponsible not to demand further investigation of this very serious issue. We note the findings of the inquiry, including submissions that raise significant concerns about the failure of the current model. Notably, the inquiry highlighted how the illicit vaping black market is out of control and thriving in Australia. Right now it is illegal to buy a nicotine vape without a prescription, yet kids are still getting ready access to flavoured vapes in coloured packaging that contain nicotine. The latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that one in 10 Australians under 18 are currently vapers. This represents a fourfold increase since 2019. This is unacceptable.

It is clear that the current model is failing. Right now less than 10 per cent of Australian vapers are purchasing their product through the prescription model. Even the TGA has acknowledged that the prescription-only model has not achieved its goals. Entrenching the existing failing medical model will not prevent children from having access to vaping products, and it will further drive the sale of these products to the black market. So the Albanese government has been doubling down on an approach that is simply not working. In fact, they've even conceded that their model is failing by making a last-minute dirty deal with the Greens. This deal seeks to have vapes sold by completely unwilling pharmacists.

We know that pharmacists want to use their valuable time to provide primary care advice to the community and, as they themselves have said, not to become tobacconists or garbologists. Pharmacists have made it clear that they do not support this model and take exception to being forced to take on the role of dispensers and disposers. The core role of our community pharmacists is to dispense registered medicines and provide important primary care support and advice to the Australian community. The Labor-Greens policy completely undermines that core role. It also sends a concerning message to Australians, who would see vaping products being sold next to essential medicines like children's Panadol behind the pharmacy counter. This greatly undermines the government's own policy of quality use of medicines.

This last-minute, harebrained, snap decision to buy the Greens' support has clearly not been thought through. There are a litany of issues that have not been addressed prior to making this announcement—issues like: the fact that the Queensland medicines and poisons law requires schedule 3 medicines to be recorded, including the person's name, yet Labor and the Greens say this information won't be collected; the likelihood that pharmacists simply will not stock these vapes anyway; and the potential impact of liability and insurance on pharmacies, let alone the need for pharmacies to find the storage area within their stores to store the vapes and manage disposal.

This is just another demonstration of the complete contempt that the Labor Party has for the 6,000 small businesses that are Australia's community pharmacy sector—the very same people who kept their doors open during COVID. In rural, regional and remote areas, they are often the only health professional in town. Yet the government didn't even give the courtesy of speaking to the Pharmacy Guild or the Pharmacy Society about this dirty deal they've done with the Greens. They first heard about it when they heard it in the media—another example of no consultation, of just forcing policy onto Australian businesses without any consideration of the impact on those businesses or the staff who work in those stores. And the government's senseless and chaotic approach will not protect the health outcomes of young Australians, who are already buying illicit vaping products. The mess Labor has made on this vaping policy will only drive more Australians into the hands of the black market.

But it is also clear that if you're serious about stopping children vaping you've also got to be serious about enforcement. The resourcing of enforcement measures at the borders and at the point of sale have been grossly insufficient under the Albanese Labor government. Currently vaping is a multibillion dollar business in Australia, and the black market is already estimated to be worth in excess of $1 billion. More than 100 million illicit disposable devices are estimated to be sold on the black market each year. In Victoria alone, the black market for vapes has been valued at up to $500 million.

Yet this thriving black market is still going largely unchecked. The government has yet to establish or fund the promised illicit tobacco and vaping commissioner they agreed to fund to get this thriving black market under control. Last year, when confronted during the debate on Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Bill 2023 about their failure to address enforcement, the government agreed to support the coalition's amendment to establish a new illicit tobacco and e-cigarette commissioner within the Australian Border Force. However, since the government announced they would act on the amendment in January, we have not seen any evidence at all that this critically important commissioner has actually been established. Once again, the Albanese government have proven they're all announcement but no action and they just aren't up for the job of cracking down on organised crime. Enforcement is the critical component of cracking down on this issue, but right now the vaping black market is thriving under Labor's watch.

We, the coalition, are serious about stamping down on the black market and we're serious about protecting children. That's why the coalition has announced that we will invest another $250 million towards law enforcement efforts. That's 10 times more than the Albanese Labor government. The funding will be used to set up an illegal tobacco and vaping taskforce led by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force to tackle illegal vapes from the border to the shopfront. The critical investment into enforcement will form part of alternative approach to vaping, which will crack down on the black market and protect Australia's children.

A coalition will introduce a strictly regulated retail model for vaping products under the TGA to put a stop to the dodgy retailers selling vapes to Australian children with impunity through the rampant black market. This model will include a licensing scheme, prevention campaigns and a strong enforcement effort as part of a sensible approach to keeping money out of the hands of criminals while stopping the sale of vapes to our children. Our regulated approach will also address the dangerous and unknown chemicals contained in illegal vapes by placing strict requirements on safety and quality.

Bringing Australia in line with European countries, a regulated model is in the best interest of both public health outcomes and law enforcement. Only a coalition has the strength to be honest with the Australian public about this very real issue. The government's senseless and chaotic approach will not protect the health outcomes for young Australians who are already buying illicit vaping products. Regulating the vaping market through strict and sensible retail based policies will protect our kids from the harms of vaping and protect our community from organised crime.

Once again, the coalition's priority remains protecting children from the harms of vaping. We're committed to cracking down on organised crime in the black market that has been bolstered by the Albanese government's insistence on doubling down on a failed model. That is why I'll be moving a second reading amendment that calls on the government to move alternative regulatory models such as our strictly regulated retail model if its bill and the medical model it continues to pursue is proven to fail. There is no sense in continuing with an approach that just simply is not working. The coalition is only interested in a model that does work. This is in the best interest of our public health outcomes and community safety.

Whilst we won't stand in the way of this legislation passing the chamber, the coalition condemns the government for doing a dirty deal with the Greens, a deal that shows a weak government in chaos, a government desperate to get their legislation through such that they're prepared to drop a policy on our frontline primary care workers, professionals and pharmacists without notice or consultation. I move the second reading amendment standing in my name:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate calls on the Government to:

(a) provide definitive and objective measures on what it considers constitutes the success or failure of this bill; and

(b) if these measures are not met, move to alternative regulatory models such as allowing vaping products to be sold in general retail".

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

I speak tonight on behalf of the Greens on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. I begin by acknowledging that the rising rates of nicotine dependence in our community are a significant public health problem. We have been deeply concerned about the explosion of vaping rates among our children. The status quo in Australia is far from ideal, and reform to ensure that the tobacco industry's grip on our community is broken and long overdue.

The tobacco industry has been prioritising its profits taken at the expense of the wellbeing of our community for far too long. It is shameful that the policy settings of this country have allowed a new generation to become addicted to nicotine. These harmful products have been allowed to feature cartoon characters, to be accessible to kids within 100 metres of a school and have enabled them to be sold where products have been and often are targeted to children. In addition, we have seen products sold in Australia despite them being unsafe, falsely labelled and with dangerous, unknown ingredients often contained within them.

The Greens welcomed the referral of this bill to inquiry. It was essential that the community have the opportunity to feed back on this legislation. Through that inquiry, I was committed to hearing a range of perspectives. I've heard from people who have been long-term cigarette smokers who feel that vaping has improved their health and wellbeing. I've heard from healthcare professionals who are concerned about the unknown impacts of vaping products. I've heard from people who have business interests in vaping product who feel they've done the right thing to this point. I've heard from parents and teachers about their deep concerns about the impacts of vapes on our young people. I've heard from schoolkids who have shared with me how access to vapes have contributed to peer pressure and to bullying. What has been clear is that the status quo is failing. It is failing far too many. It is time for change.

The Greens have come to this debate with a clear-eyed acknowledgement that the war on drugs—prohibition—has failed. At the heart of this failure is a deep desire of politicians to criminalise people who are experiencing drug dependency. We cannot let that continue for people who are dependent on nicotine vaping products. Our goal through this process has been to ensure that we get vapes out of the hands of kids, while ensuring that adults can access therapeutic vaping product and guaranteeing that there is no chance that an individual is criminalised for possessing a personal vape.

The Australian Greens felt that the original legislation proposed by the government did not meet these goals. This is why we have used our role in the Senate to chart a pathway away from a restrictive, costly policy to one that strikes a greater balance. The Greens have secured carefully crafted amendments that will enable the creation of an equally carefully regulated scheme that focuses on public health outcomes, reducing harm and minimalising use, particularly among children. I acknowledge the government for working constructively with us to secure these changes, which will be presented as government amendments. It is with these amendments that the Greens will support the legislation's passage through the Senate.

I'd now like to step through what exactly the Greens have secured. Let's be clear; these are significant changes to the government's prescription-only model that risked criminalising people for possessing vapes for personal use. The first significant change and improvement is an amendment to the legislation from a GP-prescription model to a pharmacist-only medication for adults over 18 years of age. This will see nicotine vaping products become a schedule 3 medication, where an adult can go to a pharmacy, have a conversation with a pharmacist and get a therapeutic vaping product. This product will be in plain packaging, and the ingredients will be clearly marked. At the end of the day, this will mean that many people will not need to go to their GP—perhaps taking time off work to do so—to then pay out-of-pocket to get a repeat prescription. This will save people hundreds of dollars a year. GPs will still be able to prescribe vaping products—something we have ensured for people who want to have the support of their GP for smoking cessation—and, importantly, GPs will be able to be part of the support system for people under the age of 18 who have become, often unintentionally, addicted to nicotine. GPs will still be able to prescribe vaping products, something we have ensured for people who want to have the support of their GP for smoking cessation. Importantly, GPs will be able to be part of the support system for people under the age of 18 who have become, often unintentionally, addicted to nicotine.

Our second change and significant improvement is that the Greens have ensured that people will not be criminalised for their possession of personal vapes. It is not well known that the original proposal from the government had a pathway for individuals to face hefty fines and criminal charges for personal possession of vaping products. The Greens have secured and ensured that there will be an exemption for personal use, and we have additionally secured an amnesty period for individuals until 30 June 2025. I hope that this will provide some certainty to community, and I note that there will still be strong penalties for people seeking to make a profit and sell vapes in commercial quantities. Again, we have struck a balance by increasing access to vaping products for adults while ensuring that we reduce the impact of the tobacco industry.

Thirdly, in striking this balance, we must acknowledge that this legislation will be a first. In fact, it will be a world-leading piece of legislation. Because of this, the Greens felt it was vital to legislate a review of this policy. Because of our work, the Greens have ensured that these policy settings can be evaluated and community can give feedback, and community feedback will be sought. To ensure a robust review, we urge the government to focus on improved data collection, and we also urge the government to actually invest in education for our community. Ultimately, the goal of this review will be to ensure we have the harm reduction settings right.

Fourthly, many in our community have raised concerns about the number of disposable vaping products that are littering our streets and our waterways. We do not have a clear picture of just how many vaping products are thrown out across Australia each year, but we do know that people are hoping to do the right thing—that is, to responsibly dispose of a product containing a lithium battery. There are few places in Australia where you can do so. This is why the Greens have pushed to make it easier to safely dispose of vaping products by getting the government to expand their Return Unwanted Medicines program to allow for disposable vapes. What this means in real terms is that people can take their unwanted vapes to a pharmacy and dispose of them safely.

This commitment to take back vaping products will go a long way to getting lithium batteries out of our waterways and out of our landfills and reduce the risk of lithium-battery-related fires. We know that many are concerned about the increasing incidence of lithium ion battery fires. Indeed, the 7.30 report has revealed that lithium ion batteries have caused more than 1,000 fires in the last year alone. Of course, this is not just about vaping products, but nonetheless it is clear that this government had failed to address the problem of lithium batteries. The Greens amendments will reduce the risk, but we urge the government to do more to invest in solutions for the recycling of lithium batteries and other vaping components.

The fifth improvement the Greens have secured to this legislation is that advertising of vaping products to healthcare practitioners will be further restricted. This amendment recognises that the marketing tactics used by the tobacco and vaping industry can often be incredibly unethical and that healthcare professionals providing vapes to adults should not be subjected to that. The Greens have heard from the community and from public health organisations like the Cancer Council of Australia that they have concerns about big tobacco having an avenue to influence pharmacists and to do so in an unethical way. This amendment will restrict that in order to keep vapes within a therapeutic framework rather than a profit framework. Lastly, but by no means less importantly, the Greens have secured additional funding commitments from the government to support young people quitting vaping.

To close my contribution: we must ensure that no-one is incentivised to return to cigarette smoking and that people can get the support that they need when they need it. That's why the Greens have been willing to work with the government to amend the legislation to ensure that no person will be criminalised for personal possession of vapes and that people can access therapeutic vapes as needed. We have also ensured a review of the legislation so that we can ensure that it is meeting its harm reduction goals.

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

I rise to speak on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. We all know that the Albanese Labor government is taking strong action to reduce smoking and stamp out vaping, particularly among young Australians, because we know that young people are being targeted by the corporations to get them hooked on vaping, just as the previous generations were hooked on tobacco. We are making the tough calls to ensure that, through strong legislation, enforcement, education and support, vaping will be eradicated in this country.

This bill builds on Australia's pioneering tobacco control reforms, including our world-first tobacco plain packaging reforms and the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023, which was passed in parliament in December. Aligned with these previous reforms, the Albanese government is now introducing world-leading vape reforms to prevent serious, current and future public health problems. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in Australia, and First Nations communities carry a much higher burden of both smoking and cancer, such that cancer is now the leading cause of disease related death for First Nations people. We know young people who vape are three times more likely to take up smoking, so is it any wonder that under-25s are the only cohort in the community currently recording an increase in smoking rates? Vaping is creating a whole new generation of nicotine dependency in our community. It poses a major threat to Australia's success in tobacco control and the Albanese government is not going to stand by and let this happen. After nine years of delay and inaction by the former government, the gains of Labor's world-leading plain packaging reforms were squandered. Australia must reclaim its position as a world leader on tobacco control. These reform measures will help protect the health of Australians while reducing the pressure on our health system, and, critically, they will help to achieve a reduction in smoking rates to five per cent or less by 2030.

Vaping is a public health scourge. The immense risk and the immense rise in vaping amongst young people are so disturbing. The latest national data is showing that, in the year to June 2023, one in six high school students had recently vaped—a fourfold increase since the previous survey in 2017. This is a public crisis amongst Australia's youth. This is why the Labor government under Anthony Albanese is taking and has taken decisive action on this issue to save the lives of young Australians now addicted to vaping. The bill addresses these concerns through strong legislation and enforcement. It represents the centrepiece of vaping reform and supplements import controls that were instituted at the border earlier this year.

The bill will ban the importation, manufacturing and supply of commercial possession of disposable, single-use vapes while preserving safe—I repeat: safe—access to vapes through pharmacy settings for smoking cessation and the management of nicotine dependency. To achieve this outcome, the bill extends the operation of the Therapeutic Goods Act to all vapes irrespective of their nicotine content or therapeutic claims. This is appropriate and necessary in the circumstances to address strategies used by companies and criminal syndicates to avoid detection and seizure by mislabelling vapes to conceal their nicotine content. Such tactics for too long have frustrated compliance and enforcement efforts by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, Border Force authorities and the states and territories by requiring laboratory testing of the vapes before any action is taken. We are putting an end to that. These measures will help address the significant threat to public health caused by cigarettes and vaping and maintain Australia's hard-fought success in tobacco control.

Under the bill, there are significant penalties for the importation, manufacture and supply of commercial disposable, single-use, non-therapeutic vapes. These deterrence measures will aim to stamp out vaping. Consistent with the federal cooperation scheme, the Commonwealth will take responsibility for enforcing importation, manufacture, sponsor, supply and advertisement. The states and territories will take responsibility for enforcing wholesale supply, retail supply and commercial possession. The Australian Border Force will lead enforcement at the border. The Therapeutic Goods Administration and state and territory health officers will exercise powers and functions in unison with police authorities as required, particularly crucial when dealing with organised crime.

The focus of the bill is to criminalise unlawful advertising and supply and to bring the lawful supply of vapes under the expert supervision of pharmacies. Strengthening the regulation for all vapes through enhancing border controls, banning all disposable, single-use and non-therapeutic vapes and ending the supply of vapes outside of pharmacy settings will make it easier to identify and disrupt the illicit supply and the advertisement of vapes and to take appropriate enforcement action. This is needed to protect young Australians. It is really that simple.

Under the Therapeutic Goods Act there will be offences and civil penalties for commercial possession of unlawful vapes. These offences and penalties being created are aimed at unlawful retailers and operators as well as other persons with significant quantities of vapes who deny any involvement in commercial supply. Our government is not interested in penalising vape users. Those looking to quit smoking will be able to access vapes at pharmacies even without a prescription if they are over the age of 18. This bill is about strong deterrence from illegal conduct that has the potential to harm an entire generation of future Australians. We don't want kids using vapes within our schools or outside of them. They are a killer and they set people up for a lifetime of poor health and wellbeing.

Vapes are being sold to the Australian community as a therapeutic good that will help those seeking to quit cigarette smoking, and so it is entirely appropriate to regulate them as therapeutic goods with controls that simultaneously ensure legitimate access for adults and provide sound public protection specifically for countless young Australian children. We must act now to stop the importation and the manufacturing of these vapes in our country and we must stop these illegal vapes from coming across our borders. Our future generations depend on us taking these measures to protect them and their health going forward. The Albanese government has been listening to Australian parents, Australian school communities and Australian health leaders. We want every Australian to grow up in a country that supports them to be the best and the healthiest they can be.

Unfortunately, not everyone in this place shares that same attitude. Indeed, the National Party have declared unanimously that they are going to oppose treating vapes like the deadly poison that they are. On Monday, the Australian Medical Association spoke out against the dangerous and irresponsible position taken by the Leader of the Nationals, saying that their stance 'shows a complete disregard for the health of Australians'. We have health experts, the AMA, saying:

It is incomprehensible that when confronted with these facts your party—

the National Party—

appears to want to gamble with people's—

lives. In particular, they're prepared to gamble with our children's health.

The Hon. David Littleproud MP, the Leader of the Nationals, called this bill a tax grab. He called looking out for children's health and regulating and controlling this deadly poison a cash grab. The coalition can be as cynical as they like, but all they're doing is playing into the hands of the tobacco companies. I wonder why the Nationals would be doing that! It is because they're the political party that still takes donations from the tobacco companies. Maybe that's a bit of a vested interest.

As I've said many times in this place, vaping is a scourge, and it's a scourge not just here in Australia but around the world. In Europe and in the US, vaping is a huge problem, as it is here. But Australia is leading the way once again, just as we did with reform to cigarette advertising and plain tobacco packaging. We took the lead when we were last in government and have built on that since we've come into government now. We did it for our nation and for the health and wellbeing of all Australians, and I hope that other jurisdictions around the world, which are being manipulated by organised crime and preyed upon by those who are also trying to exploit the Australian community, will see the lead that we've taken, as a Labor government, in the interests of the health and wellbeing of Australians and will follow suit.

If you care about the next generation and about the health and wellbeing of Australians, I'm urging you to vote for this legislation. Vote for this legislation because it is good for public health, it is good for young Australians and, most importantly, it's good for the entire community. I've listened to local principals, teachers and parents in my home state of Tasmania speaking openly and often, contacting me and asking that we display leadership on this. They are so concerned about the damage that is being done to young Australians. In fact, it's not just high school students that are vaping; it's happening in our primary schools. So I urge those opposite to put the health of young Australians and Australians more generally at the forefront of the decision that they make, and I urge them to support this legislation.

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was sitting here waiting to talk, I was wondering whether I would take the high road or the low road in this debate on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. Prompted by the assertions of the last speaker, I'll probably take the low road.

What we've heard is a rambling about the National Party motives on this that would have been better distributed by a fertiliser truck on an open field than in any debate in the parliament. What we hear is that the Nationals are taking donations and therefore they must support the tobacco industry. By that theory, the Labor Party must be taking money from organised crime because 92 per cent of the vapes distributed in Australia are distributed by organised crime and criminal gangs, including bikie gangs and triads. That is the extension of that thought. It is so farcical that it is a joke, but that is the extension. If the eight per cent of industry, of big tobacco, that supply people who are getting their prescriptions are responsible for us taking this view, then I say the criminal gangs, the triads and the bikie gangs are responsible for Labor's policy, because that is where they stand. By not fighting the illegal supply of vapes, that is what's going on here.

I'll come back to the high road for a little bit. The good part about this bill is single-use vapes—get rid of them. They are wrong. They are what our kids use. They are easily brought in and they are hard to get rid of. They don't belong here, except for use by people with fine-motor-skills issues who can't reload the cartridges and the batteries. We may need a niche of prescription single-use vapes for those people. This doesn't go there, but I think there could be exceptions made for people who don't have the fine motor skills to reload the cartridges and batteries.

If we come to the mischief that everyone in the chamber—Labor, us, the Greens and the crossbenchers—want to stop, it is youths getting their hands on vapes. Let's not kid ourselves: every vape that an underage kid has taken to school, used or got somehow is illegal. It has been sold illegally, imported illegally and distributed illegally. They don't get their hands on the prescription, though there may be cases where they steal Mum's or Dad's prescription; I'll give you that. But we all want to stop that, and, philosophically, there is just a difference in how to do that.

Everyone is coming to this argument with their heart in the right place. I get that. That's what we want to do. But the evidence is clear: regulated vaping, where people have things to lose, stops illegal vaping more than prohibition. Almost every country in the world has vapes. It is like America in the thirties banning alcohol, when all their neighbours had it. You cannot stop it. Prisons ban smoking and drugs, and they still get in. That is the reality of what we're dealing with. The kids will still get their hands on vapes. Let's not kid ourselves: under this bill, under our policy or under any policy, kids will still get their hands on vapes. What I want is traceability of products, so I know where they come from, where they're made. I want suppliers who have traceable ingredients, with a limited batch of ingredients, so I can go out and take action against companies that do the wrong thing. We can ban companies. We can give prohibitions. We can put penalties on them for supplying vapes that hurt people.

There is evidence—it was even on 60 Minutes on Thursday night—about the ingredients that go into vapes. Drugs of the morphine variety that are thousands of times more powerful are being included. We have seen the Queensland Health analysis of vapes in their schools, where they contain formaldehyde and all manner of things. That is what we are trying to stop, and all of this chamber is on that page. That is good and that is the upside, but I believe firmly in allowing industry to supply goods to fight the illegal access and prevent criminals from bringing these things in. Starting on this pathway is a step in the right direction.

We hear those opposite and those in the corner talk about the tactics used by industry and big tobacco to get people hooked. These are crime gangs. We see them firebombing vapes stores. We see them threatening people in convenience stores. This isn't big tobacco; this is serious organised crime, as was said by the Australian Federal Police, in one of our hearings, and as was said by the police union. It is not big tobacco and it is not industry. They are criminals. And why do they do this? It's because the profits are real—massive—and the penalties have been short. I support the increase in penalties. I think any increase in enforcement is good. I don't think it's strong enough. I support Senator Ruston's point about a $250 million funding increase for policing, between AFP and Border Force. That is going somewhere near this. Let's get these penalties right. Let's put these people away, because it is wrong.

So we go to the mischief and stopping the kids. I believe a regulated model is better for that. But then I go to the estimated 1.4 million users of vapes across Australia right now. Again, they're mostly using illegal vapes—they don't know what goes into them—but some are using Australian made non-nicotine vapes. We'll talk about that industry a little bit later. Name anyone that doesn't have a vice, a hobby or something to do. People should be able to use vapes if they want to, in my opinion. It is not nicotine that causes cancer; it is smoking that causes cancer. If nicotine can be bought in gums, patches and pouches, why can nicotine not come in vapes? It is tobacco and smoking that cause the problem here, and over a million Australians, 1.7 million, have a right to use vapes and have access to them. It is their choice. I know pokies are a tax on stupidity, but I'll still have a slap every now and then. I know alcohol causes brain cells to die—and I haven't got many to spare!—but I'll still have a drink now and then. People can choose their way forward.

I say to those people out there: this model will have you going to a business that does not want to sell vapes and where you don't want to buy them, a pharmacy. There has not been enough consultation on that. I get what we're saying about the Greens amendment here and how this will improve things. I think it comes from a place of good intentions, but I think it falls short in what it will do. That's why I liked the fact that Senator Ruston, our shadow health spokesperson, got out there today and said, 'A fully regulated model is where we'll go in the next election,' because I think that fixes those problems, and the vapers out there will be able to go to a licensed store, which has something to lose, to buy the products that they want and not feel persecuted.

I come back to the Australian manufacturers of non-nicotine vapes and even retail vape stores. This has come on quickly for them. I note this bill does not offer one cent in compensation—no relocation of their business and no help for their business to get out. There are people who we heard of who have invested millions of dollars, who make non-nicotine vapes in Australia, who have the equipment, who get inspected, who buy their products and who get them regulated. They are stuck there with nothing now. People with leases on their licensed tobacco vaping stores now will not have a business, but they'll still be stuck in the lease. There's nothing for them, and that is not good enough.

We talk about the enforcement again. I sat on the main street in East Maitland while I was up there for a visit, and I watched from the IGA as, three doors down from a police car with police in it, people in school uniforms walked into a tobacconist vape store and walked out with a product. That is how easy it is to get. I have never smoked or vaped in my life. In Canberra, I found a place and put it on card in 15 minutes. Why? We heard from the police associations that they are so busy dealing with domestic violence, organised crime and other real issues that they can't go in and check where these vapes come from. I know it's a state issue because we are responsible for the wall around us to stop this stuff coming in. We haven't done it successfully. We say, 'We've caught this many hundred thousand vapes,' which is nothing in the overall supply. But enforcement has to be there. There needs to be more in this. There needs to be more money for the state policing organisations to resource the police to do this. There needs to be a taskforce set up to stop people selling these things. This doesn't do that.

In the end, what have we got? We had a bill that prohibited vaping unless it was with a script from a doctor. Many places don't have doctors that will see you to do it. Many doctors are uncomfortable giving a script for vaping. It was a pretty rubbish bill, other than the single-use ban. Then, as I said in the party room today, the Greens come along and say: 'Hold my beer. I can make it a little more stupid by having people who don't want to sell it sell it over the counter.' They've done that.

This is not a good bill. This doesn't stop vapes that we don't know the origin, contents and damage of from ending up in Australia. We will see more fire bombings in Melbourne. We will see more threats to shop owners. We will see more damage to young people. We will see more drive-by shootings because of this bill. The gang wars in Victoria especially are alive and well because there is money to be made in illegal vapes, and this doesn't stop it. I am disappointed in this bill. I am disappointed it doesn't go far enough to hurt the harm. I'm disappointed it doesn't help people who enjoy vaping and have a right to vape—nicotine or non-nicotine—out there in the world. And I'm disappointed it doesn't help Australian businesses—honest, clear, good businesses until this bill gets enacted—transition in any way shape or form. We've done it on everything else but not here, and that is not fair.

I will sit quietly when this bill passes. It should not pass; it should be better. I know it comes from a place that wanted to do the right thing but, like so many things in this government, it falls short. It was rushed—we got, on average, four-minute blocks in our Senate hearing to talk to people. We didn't get really good questions. Once again, we want to be seen to be doing something rather than actually doing it. So we are here. We will vote on it. Our kids will not be safer. Our people who are using vapes as a method to get off smoking will not be safer. The most important thing came right at the end of the hearing, when I asked the department: 'What does success look like? What are the vaping rates and new smoking rates that we'll see because of this bill?' The answer was, 'We haven't done that yet.' So I asked: 'What does failure look like? What is the youth smoking rate that we'll accept going up if pull these vapes?' And the answer was, 'We haven't done that yet.' So, here we go. We don't know what success looks like, we don't know what failure looks like, we don't have compensation for people whose business we'll take away, and this will pass. That is sad. As I ended my statements in the committee, this is a farce, but it is a farce that will pass.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm speaking to the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. I note the government circulated 11 pages of amendments just an hour or so ago. The large number of amendments indicate the process of consultation was flawed, and concerns from senators have caused fundamental changes to this bill. Is it in, out, in or out? I hope the government learns a lesson from this and in future honours the spirit of genuine consultation. I hope it honours the committee process to produce a bill that doesn't need last-minute, wholesale changes.

I note the bill amends the poison schedule, to downgrade vapes from schedule 4 to schedule 3, and adds conditions to their use in that listing. When I tried to do exactly the same thing—to downgrade medical cannabis and add conditions to that listing—I was told, 'That's a very strange thing to do,' and my bill was not supported, in part because of that. Now they're doing the very strange thing that they said was very strange.

In Queensland, vaping products with or without nicotine are illegal unless on prescription. Vapes are subject to the same laws as cigarettes or tobacco products as to where they can be used and the circumstances in which they can be purchased. Queensland law right now prevents children under 16 accessing or using a vape. Personal health and child welfare are rightly the responsibility of the states. Yet, once again, this government seeks to increase its powers in areas where it has no Constitutional authority.

This bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and the Customs Act 1901 to limit the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial and private possession, and advertising of non-therapeutic and disposable vaping goods. Over-the-counter sales at chemists will be permitted, and access to children under 18 will be via the Special Access Scheme. There are substantial differences in how possession for personal use and commercial use are handled, yet the bill does not specify this threshold, which will come later in regulation that we haven't seen. Too much of this bill will come later in regulations. The government is asking us to trust their judgement on a bill that is a litany of bad judgement. The bill defines a vape as 'anything that's held out to be a vape'. It explicitly excludes the need for a lab analysis to prove that the item is in fact a vape. Much of the bill goes into the licensing arrangements for importation, manufacture, distribution and possession.

The bill was developed after supposed consultation, yet the government's reaching out to selected friends in the health industry who share the same commercial interests as informed this bill is not consultation. It's an echo chamber of self-interest, as the substantial last-minute amendments now prove. Everyday Australians were not permitted to make a confidential submission. Their submissions had to be public and accompanied by a declaration of interests—something very few witnesses felt comfortable doing. In particular, this prevented personal stories of how vaping helped defeat a smoking or other addiction and weighted submissions towards self-interested corporate health providers and charities.

The evidentiary burden of proof in the offences under the bill are reversed. This removes the common law protection that fault must be found before an offence has been committed. While the government may find contesting charges in a court of law tiresome, 800 years of common law rights should not be so lightly dismissed and disposed of. There's no justification for reversing the burden of proof. For this reason I have submitted an amendment to this bill in the committee stage to restore the presumption of innocence enjoyed by all Australians since our country's settlement. At section 41P(1), 'vaping substance' is defined as 'any liquid or other substance for use in, or with, a vaping device'. There's no nuance in the penalties. Possessing a vaping substance carries the same penalty as possessing a vape itself.

People who make cakes, fudges, chocolates, lollies and similar products use the same flavourings as can be used in vape manufacture. Those flavourings shouldn't be used in vapes. They may be considered safe for stomachs, but not for lungs. Yet they are used in illegal vaping solutions, and I've received complaints from bakers that, for this reason, Border Force are seizing shipments of flavourings. Under this legislation, a baker or confectionary manufacturer importing a food flavouring that can be used in vaping must first have it approved for use, despite its being in use for generations, and then obtain a licence to import or possess commercial quantities—of cake flavouring! The importer and probably their largest customers will need to keep records of their use of these potentially illicit food flavourings to ensure that organised crime is not supplied out the back door, with penalties of up to $3.8 million and/or imprisonment for seven years. This is serious business.

I appreciate that this is not the intention of the bill. Yet it is the wording of the bill. I point out that the bill and the explanatory memorandum provide no guidance as to which goods should be permitted and which should not. The minister has complete power to make this decision. So far job losses from vaping prohibition are around 2,000, with 500 vaping stores already closed. The trade in vaping has now moved into the hands of organised crime, with a gang war breaking out in our capital cities to control the illicit vaping trade, as well as the illicit tobacco trade now that tobacco has been taxed to the point of idiocy. The bombings, ramraids, murders and violence so far in this underworld war are on the government, for breaking the government's social licence to act fairly, honestly and reasonably towards the public. The best interest of the public has been replaced with the best interest of crony capitalist stakeholders.

The last-minute deal with the Greens to add over-the-counter sales at chemists may serve to head off that outcome. Time will tell. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme 2022 post-market review of medicines for smoking cessation found that 550,000 prescriptions were written for smoking cessation products in 2022. And get a load of this: these included varenicline, from Pfizer, costing $194 a prescription, which in the various formulations was responsible for 2,042 Australian adverse event notifications, including 55 deaths. And there is bupropion, from Aspen pharmaceuticals, which has had 2,100 adverse event notifications, including 22 deaths. The incompetence—does it stop? The post-market review says, 'The mechanism by which bupropion enhances the ability of patients to abstain from smoking is unknown.' So, we don't know why it works. It's killed 22 people—yet, prescribe it anyway! Just don't let people buy their own vapes. We can't have smokers quitting on their own, can we?

The explanatory memorandum for this bill cites data from the Australian secondary school students' use of tobacco and e-cigarettes report, which states that the proliferation of vaping across the community represents a severe public health concern. Vaping has been associated with severe public health effects relating to adolescent brain development, worsened pregnancy outcomes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and cancer. Vaping also carries other health effects such as burns, seizures and poisoning.

Let me deal with the last one first. Yes, illicit vapes do cause internal burns and cause external burns if they explode. They cause poisoning and seizures as a reaction to that poisoning. A poorly made vape will burn and put toxic chemicals into the user's lungs. Unregulated vaping in the USA caused 28 deaths coming from the use of ethylene glycol, a popular substance in commercial baking. It's considered safe to be eaten but not safe to be vaporised into the lungs. This illegal use of a legal substance is what caused the popcorn lung syndrome. Illegal vapes can contain thousands of substances we call 'compounds' when in legal products and 'chemicals' when not in legal products. There are, however, 7,000 chemicals in cigarette smoke—more than are found in a quality vape, not an illicit vape. Telling one side of the story never communicates an honest picture of the truth. It condemns you. It used to be possible to import quality vapes from New Zealand. The Labor government stopped this. Now we have unsafe, illegal vapes. Who knows what's in them? The TGA's tweets against vaping were community noted with a comprehensive bibliography of good science that counters their scare stories. I will reproduce those community notes with citations on my website for anyone who wants to educate themselves on legal, safe vaping.

Is vaping a gateway behaviour to smoking or drug-taking? Actually, no; it's not. On page 8 of the secondary school report, smoking rates amongst schoolchildren have fallen over the last five years. 'Ever smoked' is down from 17.5 per cent to 13.5 per cent. 'Smoked in the past week' is down from 4.9 per cent to 2.1 per cent—more than halved. This was in a period when vapes were readily available. Vaping is clearly working to reduce smoking rates. This is what has the quit smoking industry worried.

The UK government's periodic data review titled Nicotine vaping in England: 2022 evidence update found that 98.3 per cent of children who had not tried smoking did not try vaping. This means any increase in vaping rates is either in replacement of smoking or in conjunction with smoking. This data is in contrast to the secondary schools report which found that past month vaping alone was at 15 per cent. Let's have a look at that. The study covered vaping as a generic class, including e-cigarettes and herbal vapes, which are a large part of the vaping market. Despite the effort put into this study, no attempt was made to analyse the vapes consumers were actually using, and no firm conclusion can be drawn as to the presence of nicotine or any other regulated substance.

The other study the government cited, Australian secondary school students' use of alcohol and other substances, is alarming. It showed that 22 per cent of secondary school students had used alcohol in the past month, 10 per cent had used alcohol in the past week, and four per cent were engaging in risky drinking. Why aren't we worried about that? What hypocrisy to introduce the world's harshest legislation on vaping and ignore the elephant in the room: teenage drinking. Other drug use is down. Figures for 'used in the last month' show black market cannabis use down from 8.1 per cent to 6.6 per cent, hallucinogen use down from 1.1 per cent to 0.8 per cent, MDMA use down from 2.1 per cent to 1.1 per cent, pharmaceutical opioid use down from 1.9 per cent to 1.4 per cent, and cocaine use down from 0.8 per cent to 0.6 per cent. These small reductions are more significant than they appear. With 1.5 million Australians in the secondary school age group, every 0.1 per cent of reduction in hard drug consumption means 1,500 young Australians are not getting addicted to hard drugs. Across all types of hard drugs, the figure is over 50,000 lives saved from the misery of hard drug addiction.

The scare campaign that vaping is a gateway to smoking and to hard drugs is fraudulent and designed to cover up the reverse, because the reverse is true. The committee did look at the use of vaping as a smoking cessation tool and concluded the evidence was inconclusive. So there is no reason to save vaping on that account. Poor judgement indeed.

In their deliberations, the committee gave a thought of time to the quit smoking industry, which is funded at $500 million across forward estimates—half a billion dollars! This does not include the financial benefit of fundraising. That half a billion dollars is just the government's contribution, yet quit smoking rates have been stagnating across the Western world. Firstly, that's because the few people who still smoke have the money to afford smoking, want to smoke and will continue to smoke. Secondly, there are people for whom the current industry of gums, patches and financial blackmail is just not working. Some people have found that, where these other measures did not work, vaping did work. These are the people who will, no doubt, be forced back to smoking as a result of this bill. Imagine all those extra smokers to keep government revenue rolling in—all those extra smokers to keep the 'quit smoking' industry and taxpayer money for years to come. The financial impact statement for this bill doesn't mention the increase in revenue from smokers being forced back to smoking. I imagine it will be substantial.

Another failure in this bill is forfeiture. The easiest way to control vaping in schools is to allow teachers to seize vapes when they see them. That provision is not in this bill. Seizure is limited to commercial quantities seized with a court order or any good 'seized by the control of customers at the border'. The one thing this bill could do to help control adolescent vaping is to allow teachers to seize vapes, and it doesn't do that. I foreshadow my second reading amendment calling on the federal and state governments to sort out jurisdictional issues and give teachers the power to confiscate and destroy vapes brought into schools without a prescription.

As a result of measures to ban vaping, organised crime is moving into the illegal tobacco and vape market with horrific consequences. This is not so they can sell our children a nice bergamot herbal vape; it's so they can sell vapes laced with hard drugs to get our children hooked and to take back the market share vaping has cost them. I have said all along that vapes are as safe as the vape and the liquid inside. A better idea is to provide for a future made in Australia and allow Australian companies to produce legal, quality tested, regulated vapes and then ensure these are, firstly, kept out of the hands of children and, secondly, subject to the same restrictions on use as smoking.

I look forward to the government monitoring the outcome of this hasty, incomplete bill closely and acting quickly if the outcome is not as expected. I think the outcome will bring horrific consequences, so please monitor this for the sake of our children.

Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also rise to speak on Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. I wholeheartedly support this bill, because fundamentally it is about protecting young Australians from the dangers of nicotine and the harms of addiction. Those harms are real, they are present and they are hurting young people in Australia and their families.

At the outset I want to say to every single member of this chamber: If you had an opportunity today to step back to the 1930s and to regulate tobacco differently, would you do that? If you had a chance to take action that would protect generations of Australians from the devastation and harm of smoking, would you do that? This is our moment. We know the evidence around vaping is trending in a way that shows us it is not safe. We know it is hooking a new generation of young Australians to nicotine addiction. We know the involvement of big tobacco in this industry. We know. So, if your answer is yes, that you would do things differently when it came to tobacco, then you must support the bill before us, because this is our moment to stop generations and generations of further harm.

Vapes were sold to Australians as a therapeutic good to help people quit smoking, and for some people that may have been the case. But we are kidding ourselves in here if we think that's the business model, because when your products are targeted directly at young people—when they are marketed on Instagram and when they are made to look like highlighters, flavoured in things like bubblegum—you cannot honestly say that is about smoking cessation; that is purely about hooking a whole new generation of Australians on a substance that is insanely difficult to break an addiction from. The only demographic which is increasing its smoking rates in our country is young people—why? Because of vaping. It is starting with vaping.

I chaired the inquiry into this bill, and there's a lot of rubbish in some of the additional comments in there. I'm not going to waste my time on them here, but I do want to highlight the evidence. It was overwhelmingly supportive of this bill. We heard one in four young Australians are vaping. We heard one in six high school students are vaping. These are young Australians becoming addicted to nicotine, and, more often than not, they don't even know they're consuming nicotine. They think they're using a product which is nicotine free. How do they find out? They start withdrawing from nicotine, and the impact of that on a young person, not just on their physical health but on their mental health, is extraordinary.

The impact on a young person, when they start going through nicotine withdrawals in the classroom—how do you think they learn at school that day? How do you think their teacher copes at school that day, when they have a young person withdrawing? They've been sold a product full of nicotine, and they don't even know it has nicotine in it. Young people are smart. They know the dangers of cigarette smoking, but when they've been given a product, marketed a product, which is said to be safe and which is targeted and focused at them, then they are making a horrific mistake. It's a mistake which has long-term consequences on their physical health, their mental health, their wellbeing, their education and their families.

We heard, in our committee, that 98 per cent of vapes confiscated from schoolchildren in New South Wales contained nicotine, and it is so easy for young people to get these vapes. But a 14-year-old child on the way home from school should not be able to walk into the corner store, where they buy chocolates, treats and other things, and pick up a vape. That is absurd. These products are deliberately, despicably being marketed to our kids. Allegedly nicotine is designed to look like toys, and nine out of 10 of the vape stores which are selling these products are within walking distance of our schools.

Big tobacco is setting our kids up to become addicted. It's a business model rolled out before, with devastating consequences and devastating harm, and it is not okay. Our committee heard from teachers and principals about the impact of nicotine addiction on their students—how it impacted their learning, how it impacted school harmony—and the burden it was placing on teachers because of the enforcement role required of them and because of having to deal with this in their classrooms. Teachers told us that they were struggling. They didn't want to be policing the schoolyard for these vapes. They didn't want to be experiencing the disharmony in schools.

We heard from health experts about the impact of nicotine addiction on the health of young people, and of how it can manifest in things like aggression, anxiety, sleeplessness and depression. These are terrible consequences being borne by our youngest citizens.

Our party, the Labor Party, has always led on tobacco reform. Plain packaging, under former minister Nicola Roxon, was a game changer. She had a hell of a fight to get there at the time, with the opposition leader calling it a bridge too far, but those reforms worked. They had an impact. Then we had a decade of stagnation under the coalition government. Do you know what happens when governments stagnate on tobacco reform? Big tobacco wins, and we are seeing that now. We are seeing it in smoking rates among young people. We are seeing it in the uptake of vapes. I think it's time that our country returned to its status as a leader on smoking reform and on tobacco reform.

This bill isn't about going after the vapers; so many of them have been sold a lie. It's about stopping the supply of vapes. It's about ensuring that those few Australians who genuinely find value in vaping on their pathway to quitting smoking can do so with support, guidance and care, because giving up nicotine is extremely hard, and you need that help; you need that care. For those genuinely using vapes to help them quit smoking, it is going to be more effective if you have help from a healthcare professional when you're trying to do so.

I ask senators in this chamber again: if you were a regulator holding the role you hold now back in the 1930s, back when cigarettes were first allowed on the market, knowing everything you know about the harm they have caused, the lives they have stolen and the damage they have done to our country, what would you have done then? Would you have let them onto the market? Would you have regulated them differently? If you vote no to this legislation, you are saying you would take exactly the same decision again. If you genuinely believe that we could have done something better back then and you can see the evidence that vaping is trending in the same way as cigarettes were nearly a century ago, you need to support this legislation. We cannot afford to make the same mistakes in Australia that we did with cigarettes. We cannot afford to make those mistakes.

The No. 1 conversation I'm having with parents in South Australia at the moment is about vaping. They are alarmed about the impact of vaping on their kids. They're horrified by it. It's what teachers are telling me too. It's what principals are telling me as well and so are young people who have inadvertently developed a nicotine addiction from using these products. We have seen so much suffering in Australia from tobacco use and nicotine addiction. We have a chance to do something about this growing source of addiction, this growing source of harm. We cannot oversee generations and generations of addiction and mass suffering from a product built by big tobacco again. So I implore all senators to vote for this bill, and I commend it to the Senate.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to 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.

Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've listened to both sides of the debate tonight and I've got to say that both the Labor Party and the LNP have got some good points. Specifically, I don't necessarily want to talk about the health risks posed by vapes but about the environmental risks. Like Senator McDonald, I do want to admit that I'm an ex-smoker. I was one of those smokers who never thought they were a smoker. I went weeks, or months sometimes, without having a cigarette, and then I'd go on holiday and smoke a packet and think, 'What am I doing?' This went on for years.

Well before single-use vapes were on the market, I did buy a reusable vape from a tobacconist and I did use vapes to get off cigarettes. For me, that worked very well, and I want to disclose that tonight. I think it's important for me to do that. But I also can attest to just how addictive single-use vapes are. I haven't used a vape for a while now, but I do know people in my family who still do, including young people. I also know they're readily available. Even though the government's been cracking down and putting in their best endeavours to stop them at the border, they are still readily available to most young Australians right now.

My party has openly talked about the fact that we don't support prohibition. We don't think prohibition works. We think government regulation and harm minimisation is the best way forward. Personally, I would like to have seen vapes regulated in the same way that cigarettes were regulated. However, that's not going to be the case, so I have just a few comments about the pharmacy model.

To get off vapes, I had to go to pharmacies, and I'll admit tonight that I also bought Nicorettes, nicotine gum and nicotine spray, and that worked. Within a month or six weeks, I no longer felt like I needed to vape any longer. Those products worked for me and they were available at a pharmacy. Pharmacists have jumped up and down in the last couple of days about the fact that they may have to sell reusable vapes and cartridges with nicotine dispensing products, but they do sell nicotine products in pharmacies already. They were originally schedule 3, where they were available only by asking for a pharmacist, and now they're schedule 2. You can walk into any pharmacy in Australia—I obviously am over age, so no-one ever asked me for my ID, but I'm guessing anyone can go and buy nicotine lollies or patches at a pharmacy. I'd be happy to be proven correct, but those nicotine products are available for anyone who wants them in a pharmacy. So it's not a big stretch, as someone who has walked this path themselves, for me to imagine that, by going into a pharmacy, I can buy another form of nicotine dispensing in the form of a reusable vape with the cartridges dispensed by a pharmacist to help me get off cigarettes.

I think I also know, from personal experience, that the flavours that are going to be offered under this model will not appeal to a lot of people. I don't think they're going to be appealing to young people, and even people trying to get off cigarettes are probably going to struggle with them, so I hope they work. Vaping did work for me, long before the single-use vapes came on the market. I couldn't go back to smoking after I tried vaping. Smoking became so unpleasant. It actually worked for me.

I know the evidence is mixed, but I'm just telling my personal story here tonight. I do think the pharmacy model is worth trying. Senator Steele-John has done an amazing job negotiating with the government to get some changes in a number of areas, including a review of this legislation in the years to come. I hope for those people who want to get off cigarettes that they can go into a pharmacy, ask the pharmacist for a reusable vape and buy the cartridges. I've seen the cartridges in other forms, such as medicinal cannabis. I know what's available out there. Presumably, you use a vape pen or something similar that you charge in your wall at home. Therefore, you don't have lithium batteries going into the environment like we have with single-use vapes. It is better for the environment, and hopefully, it will actually generate a positive health outcome for smokers who want to get off nicotine and cigarettes.

In terms of the environment, single-use vapes are a real problem. It's not just because they're not being recycled but also because they're dangerous. When they're thrown in the litter stream and compacted under pressure with heat, they can cause fires—and they are causing fires. It's been a serious issue now for a long time. I've talked to some recyclers about how they're dealing with this issue. I know there are some places where they're just literally being crushed in special machines where they can't start fires. I have no idea what they're being used for, in terms of the aggregates that they're forming from crushing these vapes. At the moment, they can be recycled, but they're not being recycled.

At the end of the day, we don't want them for health reasons, and there's a better alternative than having a product on the market that most people are just going to throw away. It's going to make its way to landfill or it's going to start a fire in a garbage truck. I'm sure that Senator Sheldon, through his work with truck drivers, knows just how dangerous it is at the moment for many workers in the waste disposal industry. It's a very serious risk that they're dealing with right now. I'll be quite glad to see the end of single-use vapes from an environmental point of view.

I would just say to everyone that this is a good compromise that has been reached here tonight. Both sides have got some valid points. There is going to be a lot of work to do to crack down on the black market. Now the genie is out of the bottle and single-use vapes are popular, it's going to be a lot of hard work to stop them coming in at the border. Organised crime have managed to sell other illicit drugs now for decades and make a lot of money out of them. They're making a lot of money out of vapes already, and there's a big road ahead of us here to actually eliminate them from society and from our waste stream. I think we should give this a go. I'm proud of the amendments that the Greens have been able to negotiate with the government on this, and we will be supporting this bill.

Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Big tobacco is moulding the minds of our children, one puff at a time. Disposable vapes are brightly coloured, they are bubblegum flavoured and they are deliberately sold within walking distance of our schools. Steve Robson, President of the Australian Medical Association, has called vaping 'one of the greatest public health challenges'. The Australian Parents Council has warned:

Our children are being used as guinea pigs—guinea pigs to test what vaping might do to them in the future.

The Albanese government is backing these organisations in taking strong action to stamp out vaping through stronger legislation, enforcement, education and support. There is strong and consistent evidence that young Australians who vape are around three times more likely to take up tobacco smoking compared to young Australians who have never vaped. The latest national data, from 2022-23, showed one in six high school students recently vaped—a fourfold increase since the previous survey in 2017.

When I was the deputy chair of a Senate inquiry into tobacco harm reduction back in 2020, I heard about the companies that profit from the death and disease of their customers. The perverse business model of tobacco companies means that politicians must always be alert to their efforts to ease restrictions on tobacco and nicotine. This is why Australia is a signatory to the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. The convention requires public figures to:

… be alert to any efforts by the tobacco industry to undermine or subvert tobacco control efforts …

We hoped that there would be bipartisan support for our efforts to crack down on vaping, and I welcome the constructive engagement with the crossbench and the Greens. But recent reporting in the Guardian and the Age have outed the companies that are trying to influence Australia's vaping policy, often through third-party fronts. For example, one of the groups that are supporting vaping is the Australian Lottery and Newsagents Association, whose corporate members include British American Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco and Philip Morris. The minister, Mark Butler, has said that the only groups who want to regulate and sell vaping products are those who profit once kids get hooked on nicotine: big tobacco and tobacco retailers. That list also includes the National Party of Australia, who, themselves, are desperately hooked on donations from big tobacco. Philip Morris has donated tens of thousands of dollars to the National Party since 2019. British American Tobacco has also made significant donations to the National Party in the last year. In exchange, they got a membership to the National Policy Forum, which allowed them to:

… engage proactively on solutions to combat the rapidly growing unregulated nicotine market.

Clearly, tobacco thinks it's a great return on investment to be filling the party coffers of the Nationals.

The Public Health Association of Australia, the peak body for public health, have said the Nationals' 'views on vaping are worse than irrelevant' and their proposal is:

… likely to be influenced by the industry which seeks to continue to profit from ill health and nicotine addiction …

This week, the Australian Medical Association has said:

Mr Littleproud and the Nationals need to put the health of our children first and say 'no' to toxic vapes; 'no' to harming the health of Australian children; and 'no' to the shameful tactics of Big Tobacco.

There's an opportunity for the Nationals tonight, including all those opposite, to turn their backs on big tobacco and their donors and put their arms around their kids and look after their health.

In contrast, the government's approach to vapes aligns with leading public health organisations in Australia, including the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Cancer Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council and all state and territory health departments.

I note that therapeutic vapes will be available in pharmacies for those who need to quit smoking. There is no doubt that quitting smoking is difficult. It can take years and many attempts. Therapeutic vapes can play a role in supporting people to manage nicotine addiction, but the government's approach will prevent unregulated access among young people. We put in place regulations to choke off the supply of vapes from overseas, and since 1 January the Australian Border Force has seized almost two million disposable vapes. The changes in the regulations that have been proposed in this law will make that process even clearer and more possible.

In April this year, the minister brought all the state and territory health ministers together for a coordinated approach to protect young Australians. The legislation that is now before the Senate will ban the under-the-counter sale and supply of vapes. It has only ever been Labor governments that have taken the strong, principled action needed to implement tobacco control, and it's only our government that will deliver the next step in vaping.

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by acknowledging what Senator Sheldon has said. He claimed that big tobacco is killing our children one puff at a time by selling brightly coloured, highly flavoured disposable vapes within walking distance of our schools. While he is right that those sorts of vapes are being sold within walking distance of our schools and, unfortunately, many of our children are accessing those vapes, they are not the vapes manufactured and marketed by big tobacco. They are the vapes manufactured and marketed by organised crime—organised crime and the black market—and that will not be fixed by the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024.

This is a bit of a confessional tonight, with all of the ex-smokers standing up. Mea culpa—I'm another one. I was a long-term smoker, but I was lucky because I gave up before vapes were on the market. I was able to kick my habit long before these lovely, fancy and pretty-smelling products were made available. I got away with it. But, like others, I now have children. I educated my children. I was able to say: 'Don't smoke; it makes you smell. It turns your teeth yellow and makes your hair lacklustre, and let's not talk about the effect on my skin. Really, I'm only 21.' Like others, I thought my children got it. In fact, my children get it. There are still enough smokers in my family. My children are like, 'Yeah, smoking stinks!' Unfortunately, vaping doesn't. Vaping doesn't stink, and, unfortunately when vaping first came out, people were saying that it was a healthier alternative to smoking. I never believed it, because all you are doing is swapping one addiction for another, as we heard from Senator Whish-Wilson. He swapped one addiction for another, and then he had to swap it for other addictions like chewing gum and sprays until he was finally able to kick it. I congratulate him, because nicotine is a very strong addiction; let me be clear about that.

Originally, vapes were the healthier alternative, and, somehow, our kids fell for that. They also fell for the claim that the fancy-smelling vapes didn't actually contain nicotine. Thanks to the hard work of CHOICE magazine, we found out that most of them actually do contain nicotine, even if they're marketed as non-nicotine vapes. Worse still, some of the other ingredients in them are even more addictive and carcinogenic than nicotine. The worst thing is that the current model does not have any form of quality control for those single-use disposable vapes. I just want to say that one thing we all agree on—everyone who has spoken—is that we do not want our children to be addicted to vapes. We can all agree on that.

The current model under which nicotine vapes are prescription only unfortunately isn't working. It was our model; we introduced it. But it's not working. But, unlike Labor, we're not doubling down. We are not going to keep kicking a dead horse. We have admitted that the current model does not work, and we have today announced a highly regulated model. But now, interestingly, as to Labor's new model—which they've just thought of in the last 24 or 48 hours with the Greens—do we really know? It's complicated, and maybe Labor just hope that it's a little too complicated for people to be able to follow. The mess that Labor are creating will drive more people onto the black market and will increase the risk to our children.

The legislation before us, with its half-baked, 11th-hour changes negotiated with the Greens—who support legalising all manner of illicit substances irrespective of health implications—won't overcome the many health, social and legal problems associated with the black market. We know that, despite the current, rather ineffective prohibition model, vaping products are still sold freely, as described by Senator Sheldon. We know children have no difficulty accessing vaping products and are quite openly using them. Walk down to any shopping centre, and you'll see teenagers happily puffing away. Link that with the incredibly fast-growing illegal tobacco market and its underworld connections, and you see how wet lettuce leaf this legislation is.

The government has gotten itself into this situation. They're trying to shut the stable door long after the horse has bolted, but this legislation will not get that horse back into the yards anytime soon. The chaos of the last 24 hours has seen Labor go from being absolutely, 100 per cent committed to a prescription-only model to having an access-at-all-pharmacies model.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It would have helped if you'd voted for it.

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! You'll have your chance, Senator Pratt.

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ours were touted as being the strictest vape rules in the world, whereby a person would only be able to access vapes with a prescription from their doctor. Mind you, good luck seeing a doctor! Now anyone over the age of 18 can access a vape just by walking into their pharmacy. If you're under 18, you can get a vape with a prescription. This reminds me of the seventies, when my mother used to send me toddling off to the corner shop with a note saying I was allowed to buy her cigarettes. That's what it reminds me of. Someone under the age of 18 with a prescription can go and get a vape? I thought we were trying to stop our children getting vapes. And yet Labor are proposing to allow our children to get vapes.

I've got grave concerns about that aspect of this bill. Given the speed of the change in the position of the government, I'm not sure even they know exactly what they've signed up for. But what we do know is that the people they are requiring to be the policemen, the tobacconists and the garbologists for this legislation didn't know what it was about. They didn't know it was coming. The Pharmacy Guild said the first they heard of it was when they read the Greens press release. The health minister did not even have the decency to give them a heads-up—not even a half-hour warning to say: 'Hey-ho, this is coming your way! Be ready to hang up your flashing neon signs saying, "Vapes available at a pharmacy near you!"' The health minister defends this by saying pharmacies already sell vapes. That may be so, but it's under a very, very different model that was negotiated with pharmacists. The health minister says pharmacies can choose whether or not they want to supply vapes. Really? So this is an opt-in for pharmacists? But what if none of them decide to opt in? How will that work for this new model? We know what will happen because we're seeing it now.

We know that, despite the retail sale of nicotine e-cigarettes having only been legal through prescription from pharmacies, people are walking down the street and acquiring them in ever increasing numbers. The black market is thriving. Under the Labor government's proposal, I don't believe we'll be any better off. Organised crime will continue to profit from the illegal black market, and we will be no better off. We know the current prescription-only model has done nothing to limit the use of vaping, especially among young people. In fact we're seeing numbers increase. Evidence to the Senate inquiry from a criminologist suggested that nine out of 10 vapers already reject the prescription-only model and buy their products on the black market. With now 1.5 million Australians vaping and accessing vapes illegally, the bans have created the second-largest illegal drug market in the country. Instead of achieving the health minister's supposed goal of stamping out recreational vaping, the risk is it will do the opposite.

Then you have the problem of these illegal vapes with unknown ingredients being illegally imported into the country. In the Senate inquiry, my colleague Senator Cadell asked the Police Federation of Australia whether they could force the elimination of the illegal vaping black market through prohibition. They said they clearly could not, and this bill doesn't do enough to fix that. This bill will not curtail the estimated $100 billion black market that imports an estimated 100 million illegal vapes each year. This bill will not stop money being funnelled into the hands of organised crime syndicates. I fear this bill does nothing to prevent children accessing illegal vapes, and, because they are illegal, I fear what our children are inhaling through these illegal products.

This bill does not adequately fund enforcement measures. It also does not adequately address enforcement at the border or the point of sale. Rather, it puts the burden on pharmacists to be the point of sale enforcement and still leaves the borders woefully unprotected. Our policy to regulate vapes equivalent to cigarettes and limit point of sale includes significant funding for enforcement. It includes funding to stand up an illegal tobacco and vaping taskforce that would crack down on organised crime at the border and crack down on the import of illegal vapes at the border. So this legislation is at best half baked. We know we have problems with the vape industry. We have a plan to address that through regulation, through quality control, through education and, importantly, through enforcement. And that's what we will do if we have the opportunity from government.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For more than 50 years, well-qualified public health professionals have been trying to tell Australian governments how to respond to serious public health issues, including smoking and vaping, gun laws, seatbelts, batteries in toys—a whole range of really important public health issues. And, time and time again, parliaments often prove themselves too slow to prevent significant harm to the Australian community. But I say that this government has listened and acted. Be it on the heads of those opposite, who let this pandemic of vaping absolutely explode in our community under their watch.

I say that as someone who has been an active vaper and has seen and felt its impact. I have, in confidence, conversations with a great many people about how it has impacted their lives. I come from a family of smokers, and for some, for some time, vaping seemed like it could be a pathway out of smoking. For some, it has been. For others, it elevated their nicotine addiction and therefore upped their need for nicotine in a way that meant they ended up smoking more.

We know that big tobacco has links with vaping in Australia and elsewhere, recruiting a new generation to a nicotine addiction, but frankly I care not about those facts. We are in an entirely new environment, and there are a whole range of new industries and new economies connected to the internet and online purchasing that have seen these products penetrate deeply into our community.

The 14-year-old daughter of a very good friend of mine told me of students in her own class smoking through their jumpers—hiding the vape under their jumper and sucking it through the fabric and doing that right there in the classroom, not just one student at a time but a number. I said, 'What does the teacher do?' The answer seemed to be, 'I guess the teacher has noticed, but they have not been in a position to do anything.' And, to be honest, it's little wonder that they haven't really been able to act. If you were to think frankly about the level of addiction that they've reached with a habit like vaping or smoking, that would in effect be the equivalent of coming into the Senate and seeking to have a senator having a vape under their coat because they've reached that level of addiction.

Honestly, it breaks my heart to think of the fact that the young people of Australia have been conned into this level of addiction with vanilla, banana, mint and strawberry flavoured nicotine products. I used one myself that was frankly shaped like a milkshake, coloured in yellow and banana flavoured. People talk about things that look like highlighter pens. They look like toys. It was absolutely devastating to hear, during the Senate inquiry of the community affairs committee into this legislation, the story of a toddler who lost their life because they ingested e-vaping liquid in the unregulated environment that the previous government led us to.

You let in this idea that vaping was somehow going to be less harmful to the Australian community than smoking. Well, I think it's like comparing apples and oranges, except that you're comparing deadly apples and oranges. A high level of nicotine addiction is going to impact your mental health and your cardiovascular system. It may or may not impact your lungs in the same way, in terms of cancer risks. But, if you look at the admissions to hospitals of young people who have had their lungs collapse from vaping, it is not justifiable to make the kinds of comparisons that say vaping is a safer alternative than tobacco—because there's no way that a young person would get away with smoking tobacco in their classroom.

It is very difficult to believe that smoking, at that age, could lead to such a high level of nicotine addiction as some young vapers have today. It is why I very much support providing support to young people for their nicotine addiction, under medical supervision with an e-script. I truly wish we did not have to do that. I truly wish there were an alternative. But, as those opposite say, there is the scourge of the black market in our country. Well, we know that there is work to do to get rid of the black market in vapes. We know that. But parents are being deprived of being able to have a real conversation with their young people about a serious addiction because they have no way of dealing with that addiction in their household other than to condone, to fight or to argue, or for it to take place surreptitiously. It's really important that a parent is able to say: 'Hey, let's have a discussion about your vaping and mine'—the conversation may well go—'or my smoking. Let's go and see the GP about how we cut down on nicotine use and give it up.'

I even heard a story from a teacher who said: 'I don't have to buy vapes anymore. I confiscate them off my students.' I heard someone else say to me: 'You can discreetly vape on an aeroplane even though it's banned. People do it all the time.' But I say: we see you, big tobacco. We see those who hide behind the veneer of this being a safer product that helps people give up smoking. We see through your strawberry milkshake with a cherry on top—flavoured vapes with fun colours to exactly match the youth market that they're aimed at. The tragedy is happening all around us, and the strategy of these marketeers is working.

I started my speech talking about what public health advocates have said for a long time—that where we have had strong policies on tobacco or nicotine control they have worked. But we have fallen behind in the past decade with regard to e-cigarette control. With the very diversified economic networks of today, we will, of course, have more work to do with regard to the black market. Yes, indeed, I know of several places in Perth where you can walk in and buy a carton of cigarettes illegally, and I must follow-up on that and use the hotline to dob them in.

The thing is that when those opposite say, 'You've got to spend more on law enforcement'—these are not either/ors. Public health advocates who are asking for these reforms know this too. Public health organisations like the Public Health Association of Australia have membership organisations that include harm minimisation organisations, where they have to deal with the reality of drug use in a diversity of circumstances every day. They have to support the health of addicts in their policies every day, yet they know the difference that policies and law reform like that that we have before us in the chamber tonight can make.

In that regard, while I appreciate the fact that, yes, getting in to see a GP is difficult, equally I am concerned that the Greens have watered down this legislation and that while those opposite say tonight that they're going to waive it through, at the same time most of their speeches seem to oppose it. It's a very confusing repertoire from those opposite, bar the fact that, while they say they're now going to waive it through, they didn't negotiate. Frankly, they didn't come to the party to get a strong set of laws through to tackle vaping in our nation in accordance with the strongest health advice. It's little wonder to me that they take donations from big tobacco.

I'll tell a funny little anecdote in the last few moments of my speech; I wasn't going to share it. In one of those moments in my life where vaping and smoking had led to an elevated nicotine addiction, I had begged for a cigarette off someone in the building and I was looking for a light. I saw a cloud of smoke billowing up from chairs just outside the Senate, and there were two young spivs in their skinny black suits. I went to ask them for a light, and they said: 'Sorry, we don't have one. We're vapers. We're vaping.' They said: 'Where are you from? Who do you work for?' I said, 'I'm Senator Pratt, from Western Australia.' They said, 'Oh, we're very, very sorry we don't have a light for you, Senator.' I asked these two young men in their black suits, 'Okay, so where are you from?' They said, 'We're from Philip Morris.' When we talk about the intersection of big tobacco with the vaping industry, I've seen firsthand how real it is inside this building and I have seen firsthand how those opposite are still taking their money. You may vote for this legislation, you may have mostly debated and made parliamentary contributions against it, but may the scourge of the health impact of vaping for generations to come be on your heads because of your inaction. We are working very hard to clean that up—and we have a lot of work to do—with the work already done and, indeed, with these very important reforms before us. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I didn't have many views on vaping many years ago; I had never vaped myself, and it wasn't something I was that interested in. But I had my views changed considerably a few years ago when the Morrison government, under health minister Greg Hunt, sought to ban the importation of vapes with just three weeks notice. I had many constituents contact my office, concerned by this change, and I met many people that were vapers and spoke to many of them. I distinctly remember meeting a young mother of four children who had, for many years, tried to kick the habit of smoking. It was a terrible, debilitating addiction for her. It wasn't until she tried vaping that she was able to successfully kick the habit, and that completely changed her life. Before that time, she had difficulty keeping up with her children, playing with her children; she would be out of breath. Generally you would go outside to smoke, away from the children. It separates you from your children. It wasn't a good existence for her. Vaping changed her life. That's just one particular story; I heard many more. There are thousands of people across the country, and I've met hundreds of them over the years, who, on this issue, have had their lives changed for good by using vapes.

This idea that I continue to hear that somehow vaping is worse or as bad as smoking is palpably untrue. You just have to speak to people who do it. It's untrue in their own lives, it's untrue in their lived experience and it's untrue in scientific literature. I don't want to spend a lot of time tonight going through Cochrane reviews and reviews of journals, many of which I've read over the years, but the scientific conclusion is very clear: the ingestion of carcinogenic tobacco as a nicotine delivery system is much, much worse than relying on a vaporised gas to deliver nicotine to the human body.

I don't recommend anybody take up vaping. It's probably best to stay away from drugs of all forms, but I myself am probably similarly addicted to caffeine. I need a few cups of coffee every day. Maybe it does help me; maybe it does some long-term health damage to me. I don't really know. The science on these things seems to change every day of the week, but it's my choice. As an adult, as a consenting adult, we should generally allow people to make choices that don't otherwise cause debilitating changes to their lives. We allow people to legally buy cigarettes. We allow people to consume vast quantities of alcohol, which has terrible social impacts from time to time, but we live in a free society which generally allows adults to make those free choices without the government trying to tell us all what to do, and so I think that generally should be our preference. We should generally prefer, if possible, to let adults make their own choices.

Thankfully, that ban a few years ago did not come into effect, but there's also a misconception here that somehow vaping is legal or has been legal until this government acted. It has actually been illegal to sell vapes for many years at the retail level, largely under state legislation, in Australia. That would be probably surprising and shocking to many Australians. When you walk down any street, you'll trip across multiple shops that are selling vapes—sometimes quite openly. For the people I speak to, it's certainly no difficulty for them to acquire vapes from a variety of stores across the country, including since the government has announced crackdowns on this in the last few months.

Clearly, we're not winning this so-called war on vapes. It's not something I think can be won. The government is not in anyway serious about the resources it has put towards this effort. Obviously, we have limited police and law enforcement resources, and they should be devoted to the most serious of crimes. We have a runaway problem in my home state of car theft, of basic burglary and of robbery. Many people feel unsafe in their own homes in Queensland at the moment. I do not want scarce police resources being devoted to running down and policing what adults want to do in terms of vaping or smoking or drinking or eating or anything else that adults like to do with each other from time to time. I don't think there is a role for governments in our bedrooms, in our houses. It's really up to each and every one of us to make those decisions as we see fit, even if sometimes they're not the best decisions for our long-term health.

There is a real issue with the availability of illegal, dangerous, addictive vaping products around our children and in our schools. It's a serious issue, but it must be said that issue has grown in an environment where vaping is illegal. The availability of these products to our children has coincided in a period where the law says that it is illegal to sell vapes anywhere in the country. It's illegal to sell vapes at retail outlets, it's illegal to sell vapes in the street, it's illegal to sell vapes at or around a school—obviously. But that still happened. In effect, what the government has brought to this parliament, despite everything being illegal—they're spinning more laws here because they say they've come up with a real solution to this. The government has had a brainwave: all we need to do is make criminal activity illegal! Why didn't we think of this before? All we have to do is make crime illegal, and then it will all go away! That's the approach of this government—that this is somehow revolutionary. They've got something that's already illegal, and now they're coming in and making federal laws on top of the state laws to make it further illegal, and somehow that will stop people being criminals. I mean, it is so absurd, that this government thinks that if this parliament merely signs a piece of paper, if some media releases are put out, this problem will suddenly vanish, will disappear. Why hadn't anyone thought of this before?

It's clearly not going to have that effect; in fact, it hasn't had that effect, even in the period since the government announced these changes. They announced these changes months ago, and there's been no appreciable change to the availability of vaping products in our community, their availability to our children. It's time to recognise a much more sensible approach, an approach that balances the rights and freedoms of adults to make choices about their own health, about what they consume, and also protects our children by devoting scarce enforcement resources to that issue.

We have in front of us a real-world example of where the approach that the coalition has adopted today has worked; it really has worked, and we used to champion this. We've gone quiet about it for now, because it's inconvenient to the government to admit this. But over the past few decades Australia has achieved enormous success at reducing smoking rates for young Australians by having an environment where it is legal for adults to buy and sell smokes. They're freely and very readily available. Yet at the same time we have significantly reduced the number of young people who smoke. We've done both those things at the same time. And we've done that through no real rocket science but through a very strong education campaign to our children, through enforcing laws on illegal trade in terms of the availability of cigarettes, in reputable stores, supplied by reputable businesses that are law abiding. And these laws don't allow the emergence of a large black market in cigarettes—until recently, and I'll come back to that. That has allowed us to lead the world in reducing smoking rates for the overall adult population and, most importantly, reduce the smoking rates for children.

Now we've got an A/B test, if you like. So, that's the A, and we've got a B test where we've tried to crack down on vaping for everybody, adults and children alike. But we're doing neither. We've got kids vaping more and more—runaway increases in children vaping—and we've got adult vaping skyrocketing, too. On top of that we're funding a massive criminal gang network who are abusing the black market that we've allowed to grow through this short-sighted, impossible target we're trying to reach. That's perhaps the most destructive thing we've done with our approach, because there is no doubt that criminal gangs in this country are making a lot of money selling vapes to all Australians, including children. That is helping fund a variety of criminal activities, probably some of the ones I mentioned earlier that are unrelated to drug crimes per se. It's helping to fund the broader sale of harder and much more serious drugs. It's helping to fund the importation of illegal tobacco—so-called chop-chop, which is the colloquial term for it.

Again, you come into this place and you think: do these people live in the real world? We hear these speeches, and they seem so disconnected. I mean, I just have to go down to my kids' sports and talk to the dads and mums. Some of them smoke. I'd say to other senators here, go and ask those parents where they get their smokes from. Where do they buy them from? Maybe they won't tell you honestly if they know you're a senator, but I think generally people don't care. Almost everyone to a man where I live now doesn't pay 50 bucks a pack; they're not doing that. They go and pay $15 or $20 a pack at different stores. It's all under the table; it's not seen. We see that in the government revenue in tobacco excise, which is falling off a cliff. Smoking rates aren't falling off a cliff anymore; they've somewhat plateaued. But that revenue is falling off a cliff, because everybody's just going to buy the illegal tobacco, because we've allowed this black market to grow, and we think that continuing a failed strategy is somehow going to fix it. It's not. We should look to replicate the success we've clearly achieved with a balanced approach which allows adults to be free in a regulated market and to put all our resources into educating our children—into keeping vapes away from kids and cracking down on anybody who supplies them to young children. That should be a criminal offence—we actually all agree with that, I think—and we should make the penalties very severe.

I welcomed the announcement today that a Liberal-National government will see common sense on this issue and adopt the same types of regulation that almost every other developed country in the world has—countries like us: New Zealand, the UK and some states in the US. The US, of course, has a very different system, with lots of different approaches across their country. But, basically, we need to have a system that replicates the success we've had with smoking rates: one which regulates vape products; makes sure we get rid of these ridiculous flavours and attractions to young children; sells them in reputable shops, behind cabinets and without advertising; and keeping them away from our children. That just seems to be complete common sense here. It's hard to see why we would go any other way.

I suppose there's some hope that we'll end up getting to this environment now, with one side of politics adopting this as our policy. The other side of politics is now descending into a complete shambles on this issue—an absolute shambles. A dog's breakfast has now emerged, with the government saying they want to have a prescription model for vapes. Over the last few months, the last year, they were going to require everyone to go to the doctor to get a prescription, take that to the pharmacy and get their vapes that way. But just this week—overnight, really—they announced that no, they're going to walk away from that model and have some other model that we don't really know too much about yet, but vapes will just be available over the counter from pharmacists. We're now going to have the absurd situation in next few months, over most of winter and a little bit of early spring—from 1 July through to October, I believe—where people will need a prescription to buy vapes from a pharmacy. For those three months you'll need a prescription. You'll have to go to the doctor, get your prescription, go to the pharmacy and fill it. That will be the law of the land for those three months. Then, in October, when late spring and summer hit—over Christmas, when you end up on holidays—you won't need a prescription anymore. You'll be able to go to the pharmacist and get one over the counter. You'll have to have some kind of discussion with the pharmacist, apparently—I'm not sure if you'll have to do that every time or what the situation is; it's not clear. Hopefully, you'll have to show your ID, because schedule 3, which it's going into, is actually available to kids over 16, so they had better fix that issue! It's going to be completely different.

I think the citizens of this country deserve to have a government that can at least clearly explain what the law is so that people can abide by it. That's just the basic expectation you'd think the Australian people have. I think that most of the people who vape—that mum I spoke to years ago and most people who have to do this—want to abide by the law. They don't want to be criminals, but this government is making people into criminals because the government has presided over a complete and utter mess in this policy area—of their own making. It's a complete mess! We're going to vote on this today and they're going to change the law in a few months time through changes they haven't brought to this place—we haven't seen the scheduling changes. This is ridiculous! And how do they expect Australians to be able to comply with the law? Are they going to prosecute people in July, August and September if they don't have a prescription? They might say, 'Hang on, we just saw an announcement from the health minister which said you don't need a prescription.' It will be: 'No, that doesn't start until October; you didn't read the fifth paragraph of the media release. You're in trouble!'

I can't believe we're doing this. Why don't we just drop this right now? This bill is not really needed; it doesn't actually deal with nicotine products, which is what the government seems to be very concerned about. It deals with products that deliver nicotine but which aren't actually related to nicotine. As I said, there are already laws against that. Don't believe the spin we're getting; there are already laws against the availability of liquid nicotine. We're not going to fight this right now because it's completely pointless; this particular policy is not going to last. But why doesn't the government drop this and come up with the commonsense approach to this issue that Australians want? They want to comply with the law, they want to manage their own health issues, including some addictions to smoking, and to make their lives better through their own choices.

Obviously, the government has shown with their chopping and changing in approach over that the last few years that they should never be responsible for the direct health of individual Australians. We should give them the power to look after their own health and make the law clear for everybody to abide by.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. I can see the argument for the use of therapeutic vapes where they are being used to help somebody give up smoking. I can see the benefit of that. However I, like millions around the country, are concerned about the level of access children have to vaping products, and it's this primary point that I intend to address tonight.

My biggest concern about vaping is that children can access vaping products at school, at the local corner shop or worse, online—with products purchased from anonymous offenders and delivered right to them. This is not a situation that should be allowed to continue. The message is simple: children should not have access to vaping products and, by extension, children should not be living in a society where they can become addicted to vaping products.

The Albanese government's failure to control the illegal vaping market is its failure to protect our children. Constituents have told me their children speak about the pretty coloured vaping packaging they have seen littered around their schools. They were even more disturbed to learn their children are refusing to use the toilets at school because they are crammed full of students vaping. You can even buy body sprays that smell like your favourite vape so, when teachers ask if you are vaping, you can produce the body spray and use that as an excuse for the smell.

An entire industry has developed around poisoning our children, encouraging them to become addicted to vapes. Earlier this year, the education minister, Jason Clare, told members of the Matilda Centre at the University of Sydney that vaping is a menace. He said, 'Principals say vaping is the biggest behavioural issue in our schools at the moment.' Vaping should not be considered cool or fun or smoking for kids; it is a dangerous habit that will lead to lifelong health problems.

A Kidsafe Western Australia witness told committee members the proliferation of these unregulated devices into the market has raised some concerns, particularly for young children, around nicotine poisoning, because small amounts of high levels of nicotine can have major effects on a child. Advice from the Royal Childrens' Hospital Melbourne confirms that even small volumes of liquid nicotine solutions, such as used in vapes, can cause life-threatening toxicity in children. Impacts from nicotine on children can include nausea and vomiting, changes in their heart rate—either too fast or too slow—wheezing and shortness of breath, seizures, respiratory failure, and they can even slip into a coma.

The most critical issue we must consider in scrutinising this legislation is that children are still able to access bubblegum, berry and mango-flavoured vapes in fun, coloured packaging. The issue of vaping must be viewed through the lens of protecting our children from these harms. In its national drug strategy household survey in 2022-23, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that, despite the retail sale of nicotine cigarettes to children never being legal in Australia, the rate of young people aged 14 to 17 who have ever used vapes or e-cigarettes has increased from 9.6 per cent in 2019 to 28 per cent in 2022-23. That's almost three times the rate in less than four years. Of those young people who said they had ever used a vape, more than half, or 55 per cent, said the last one they used contained nicotine. More concerning is that those aged 14 to 17 years were the most likely from the age groups surveyed by the AIHW to report they didn't know whether the last vape they used contained nicotine, making it likely the number 14-to-17-year-olds nicotine vapers is much higher than the 55 per cent stated.

The impact analysis of the proposed reforms to the regulation of vapes found the number of adult vapers who have a nicotine prescription for a therapeutic vape could be as low as three per cent. So in addition to the volume of young people who know they are using nicotine vapes, it is obvious that almost all adult vapers are using unregulated products bought from black-market operators too. It is clear the prescription-only model has failed to address the unfettered growth of underage vaping in communities around Australia. Even the Therapeutic Goods Administration acknowledges the prescription-only model has not achieved its aims. Indeed, at the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee's public hearing for this bill, criminologist Dr James Martin outlined just how dire the situation had become. He said:

The consequences of this ban have been disastrous, with nine out of 10 vapers having already rejected the prescription model and instead sourcing their products from the black market.

The ban has allowed a situation to develop where now around 1.5 million Australians are vaping illegally, a situation that amounts to the second-largest illegal drug market in the country behind cannabis.

Instead of stamping out recreational vaping, as health minister Mark Butler said the ban would do, this action has allowed a black market to thrive. In Mr Butler's own words, this black market 'is a lucrative source of revenue for criminal gangs who use it to bankroll drug trafficking, sex trafficking and all of their other criminal activities'. This black market is estimated to be worth $1 billion, fuelled by the sale of millions of imported and stockpiled disposable devices. Dr Martin also said that increasing the penalties for ignoring the ban or policing it further won't actually stop criminals from entering this vaping black market. He said:

They simply allow them to charge more for their services and increase the profits available to organised crime.

Further, he said:

… markets adapt, and supply goes underground, where it is even more difficult to police.

Experience tells us that black markets are unregulated, and in this case Dr Martin said that 'unregulated' means that the vapes that are being sold on the black market are 'more potent, more addictive and more dangerous than their legal alternatives'. That means the vapes that are finding their way into the hands of our children fall into the highly addictive and dangerous category.

This bill will not stop children having access to vaping products and will likely allow the underground market to continue. Western Australia has banned the sale of all vapes—both nicotine and non-nicotine vapes—but the vapes can still be brought into the state. In February, the West Australian published an article stating that, despite the ban, vape stores are still operating within metres of schools. Even more concerning was the revelation that, when the journalist asked for a berry flavoured vape containing nicotine, they could buy it in eight stores. This is happening out in the open despite laws prohibiting such sales.

The ban is not working, and one of the major reasons for that is the lack of resourcing. Our state police and Border Force officers are already stretched, but now they have to conduct enforcement action against illegal pop-up vaping stores and online vape ordering and delivery services. On top of the difficulty our police are having in enforcing the vaping ban, resourcing around Australia's borders and at the point of sale is also insufficient.

In a move that signals that they also know the retail sales ban has failed, Labor and the Greens made a dirty deal to get this bill through, allowing vapes to be sold at pharmacies without a prescription in the near future. So, once Minister Butler has deemed that enough time has passed, you can just pop down to your local chemist, have a chat with the pharmacist and pick up a flavoured bait when you get your sleeping tablets or Sudafed. That's a long way away from a complete ban and even further away from a generation of children who cannot access vapes.

Despite this deal, these vaping reforms do not explain how the legislation we're debating today will stop children accessing vaping products, how it will avoid continuing to fuel the black-market further or how the government will ensure enforcement measures will be adequately funded. We don't even know how the government plans to measure this policy, so how will we know whether it's a failure or a success?

To add to this list of concerns, the government has not established or funded the illicit tobacco and e-cigarette commissioner that was promised when it supported the coalition's earlier amendments. The commissioner was supposed to operate from within Australian Border Force to support strategies to address illicit tobacco and vapes and enforce existing regulations. Labor had not even considered that a commissioner was needed before the coalition's amendment, which highlights its lack of action on enforcement. It's time this role was set up, because it is clear a commissioner is needed to adequately address the burgeoning tobacco black market.

My coalition colleagues on the Community Affairs Legislation Committee raised concerns about the way the inquiry into this bill was managed. More than 60 of the 200 submissions received were published less than two days before the public hearings, making it difficult to understand all the different views presented before witnesses gave evidence. This process is yet another example of the Labor government's contempt for the committee process, its rejection of carefully considered policymaking and its poor attitude towards those stakeholders who are genuinely uneasy about the reforms presented in this bill. More than a third of the submissions received concerned the fire bombings and homicides that have escalated since this black-market trade in nicotine products exploded. Small-business owners who have been running their enterprises lawfully have been the targets of violent attacks, many of which were perpetrated in Melbourne suburbs, but none of these submitters were invited to give evidence in person.

Additionally, a number of international experts made submissions to the inquiry pointing out the differences in Australia's approach to restricting access to nicotine vaping products to prescription only when compared to other countries. None of these international experts were invited to provide evidence that the committee hearings either. The submission from Action for Smokefree 2020 Aotearoa New Zealand pointed out:

New Zealand has seen very little evidence of an organised illicit vape market … due to … competition from the legal marketplace.

New Zealand's regulated model provides more safety for consumers and supports people using vaping to quit smoking. We could have learned much from one of our closest neighbours, but they were not invited to expand on their evidence.

Professor Ann McNeill from King's College in London said:

The medical prescription requirement appears cumbersome and unlikely to be a workable option for people who smoke.

Professor Nancy Rigotti from Harvard Medical School said that Australia's regulatory models for vapes failed to make them readily available to smokers whose lives could be saved. This international expert, who sits on the Tobacco Policy Scientific Advisory Committee, urged Australia to switch to a risk-proportionate model, as other Western countries have done. The World Health Organization's former director of research policy and cooperation, Professor Tikki Pangestu, said in countries where vapes are regulated—such as New Zealand, the USA and the UK—they have had 'significant reductions in youth vaping numbers'. He said:

Regretfully, such reductions have not been observed in Australia and perhaps there are lessons to be learnt from these other countries with regards to strategies and policies which are effective in reducing the incidence of youth vaping.

In markets where a total ban applies to vaping products, it is inevitable that an illicit 'black market' will become a major problem for the government.

None of these experts, who have vast experience in this space between them, were invited to speak during the inquiry, yet what they had to say makes a lot of sense.

To this end, I am pleased the coalition confirmed its stance on this issue when Senator Ruston and Senator Paterson outlined our preference for a regulated model to address illegal vaping earlier today. This sensible approach will reform the mess that illegal nicotine vapes have created in Australia and will disrupt the vape trade to our children. We know that without additional enforcement action we cannot protect children from vapes, so we're putting more support behind a new Australian Federal Police task force which will be established to deal with the illegal vape and tobacco black market.

The key result from any vaping reform must be to halt kids vaping. We must do more to stop the myriad of ways children can access vapes. Easy access is leading to poor behaviour at school, vaping addiction and long-term health problems—some of which we are yet to fully understand. Illicit vaping is out of control in Australia and our children are at risk. Making vapes available via prescription or a chat with a pharmacist will not address the growing black market trade in illegal vapes because it is still easier to go to one of the many vape shops that have been set up in communities in every state and territory and select from the wide array of colourful, flavoured options on offer. A regulated model is the solution to this dire problem and that is what will keep our children safe.

David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to start by acknowledging the work of my colleague Senator Steele-John on behalf of the Greens in navigating a pathway through what is a wicked social problem. The Greens came to the issue of vaping with a set of solid principles behind the politics of it, based upon the experience of regulating other drugs. That experience is not just one the Greens have seen but anyone with their eyes open can see. That's why the Greens' position acknowledges the harm and the addiction possible through vaping and wants to do what we can to treat it as a public health concern and, in treating it as a public health concern, also acknowledge the lessons from the failed efforts to prohibit other drugs.

Taking that public health and public interest perspective together, we have worked with the government to deliver a set of reforms that we hope gets the balance right. Nobody can suggest that you can just magically put the genie back in the bottle without any disruption after well over a decade of inaction. And we hear from the coalition that this package is not perfect. They say that they have some other better solution to it. I think they came up with that solution at about 12:15 pm today, a bit after midday.

I think the coalition—after nearly a decade in government—finally came up with their solution a bit after midday today, and it's the Coles and Woolies approach to it. They want to have vapes available through Coles and Woolies. That's the coalition's solution to this quite vexed and difficult social problem. After a decade in government, they had nothing. They literally left this market totally unregulated. They let millions of Australians get addicted to an unregulated product and now they're solution is to give it to Coles and Woolies. That's actually what they're saying! It's not a serious response to a serious issue.

The package that has been negotiated is a serious response to a serious issue. What does that look like? First of all, that looks like ensuring that nobody will go to jail for personal possession of a vape, and for the Greens that was a non-negotiable element in the discussion. We must learn the lessons of previous efforts—and some current and ongoing efforts—to prohibit drugs and to punish people because they have an addiction or because they have a drug in their possession that one politician doesn't like. That would not work and will not work. The idea that we would criminalise people for the personal possession of vapes was a nonstarter for our party. Thankfully, the package of reforms that has now been negotiated means that that will not happen.

Nobody will go to jail. Nobody will be having an unfortunate interaction with police. Nobody can be stopped and searched simply because they've got vapes in their possession. That should offer a degree of comfort to young males out in Western Sydney, who know they're often targeted by police. Police use stop-and-search powers in relation to cannabis, for example, to stop, search and prevent them from just walking down the street. That will not happen with vapes as a result of the Greens amendments that have been negotiated. People will be protected. Whether the vapes that they have in their possession were legally or illegally purchased, people will not be able to be stopped and searched by police and prosecuted on that basis. That is an essential protection that we have negotiated through these changes.

The Greens have also looked at the initial government proposal for a prescription-only market—for individuals to have to go to a GP to get a script, take the script to the chemist and then get it through that process. Indeed, if you listen to some of the coalition's responses, you can see that a vast amount of evidence suggests that that was going to be deeply problematic. That was going to inevitably drive a large and unregulated black market, and it was going to exclude many particularly vulnerable people from having access to legal and well-regulated vapes. The Greens could see the difficulty in that.

The question is: what's a pathway that gets the balance right—not the Coles and Woolies pathway that the coalition is proposing but the pathway that gets the balance right? That is why the pharmacy model has been incorporated into this, after good faith negotiations—and, again, I give credit to my colleague Senator Steele-John for helping navigate this pathway. That will mean that people won't need to get a prescription. They won't have to pay—sometimes $50 or $100—to visit their GP in order to get a script so they can go to the chemist and get vapes through that pathway. That was going to be such a barrier, particularly to young adults, particularly to people with less income and particularly to people in rural and regional parts of the country, where it is so hard to get to see a doctor, even for a serious ailment. That wasn't going to work.

What's another pathway that isn't the coalition's Coles and Woolies approach but is a pathway that has people able to access vapes in a regulated, legal market, where they can gain some advice about the addictive qualities of it and, potentially, other options but still have access to a legal and regulated market, without all those barriers? That's where the pharmacy model came in. As with pseudoephedrine and a variety of other pharmacy-only medicines, it's a pathway we know will work. It's a pathway that we know is practical, and it's a pathway that is available wherever there's a pharmacy across the country. That is an extraordinary opportunity.

If there's one thing I've learned in politics, from watching the Pharmacy Guild over the last decade or more, it is that the Pharmacy Guild can normally tell where a profit will be, and if they can make a profit from a market they will. That's a basic truism, if you've followed the path of the Pharmacy Guild over the last couple of decades. If they can make a profit from a product, they will.

We heard from healthcare professionals, but we also listened to young people. We also listened to the experience of people who had been criminalised for things like the possession of cannabis, and we did not want to repeat that mistake. That would be an inexcusable act from this parliament. We haven't repeated it; we've found the pathway through that gets that balance right to do everything we can to ensure that kids do not get access to vapes.

Can you say that, as part of this package of reform, no child will ever get access to a vape? Of course, you can't. Might there be a continuing black market available for some of the flavoured vapes? There probably will be, to some extent, and we'll need to constantly review this scheme and work with regulators to refine the package over time. That's one of the reasons why the Greens negotiated a statutory review, not 20 years into the future but three years into the future so we have some experience. We should be actively looking at the international experience, too. We should be following what is happening in New Zealand, the UK and other jurisdictions, and learn from that other experience as well. This reform that we're backing in that will become law because of good faith negotiations between the government and the Greens is a reform that has the best chance that we can see to get that balance right, to do everything we can to stop kids having access to vapes, to do what we can to have a regulated, legal supply where people know what's in the product that they're consuming, to try and put a lid on and reverse the scale of addiction to vapes over the next few years, and to try and get that public health, public interest lens right so that we're listening to the health professionals and also learning from the experience of other efforts to prohibit drugs.

I again want to end by commending the work of my colleague Senator Steele-John. He worked with the Greens party room and he worked with our stakeholders around the country. What I hope is that the coalition gives up on their plan to hand it to Coles and Woolies. I hope they actually try and do long-term decision-making and policy-setting that doesn't end up with them to only get their final position at a quarter past midday on the day that the legislation's being voted on in the Senate. I hope that what we can do with other hard, public policy decisions like this is follow the evidence, follow the experience and try to get that balance right.

Maria Kovacic (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The most concerning matter in relation to this bill is, by far, the prolific nature of children vaping. That should be the primary concern of all of us, of government, ensuring that our vulnerable children are not subjected to the addiction to nicotine at such a young age. I'm not talking about teenage kids who are no less of a concern; I'm talking about primary school aged children who are 10 and 11 years old.

The biggest factor in allowing children to vape and access vaping products is the proliferation of the black market. We already have a prolific illegal market for these substances, and that's because these bans don't work. Senator Shoebridge talked about looking at the evidence. Globally, the evidence clearly shows that the bans do not work. That is clear on every metric: the scale of the black markets, the rates of vaping amongst children and the fact that the vast majority of adult vapers are using a vape acquired from the black market, not a prescription vape from their pharmacy. These are otherwise everyday, law-abiding Australians accessing vapes on the black market. Australia has been isolated in this approach. Quite simply, it is not an approach that we see anywhere else in the comparable world, and that's because it doesn't work.

It's a good thing that the government has changed some of their policy in recognition of the fact that their former policy was not going to work at all. Perhaps they should've taken care and more time in the formation of the bill initially and not rushed it, as seems to be their general practice. But their solution, that will now see community pharmacies turned into vape shops, isn't a great deal better, and I don't think it is something that anybody wants to see. I don't want to see it. The Pharmacy Guild doesn't want to see it. I don't think our local community pharmacies want to be selling and disposing of vapes. And I really don't think everyday Australians want to see that. But under this agreement between the government and the Greens, not only do pharmacies get to sell vapes but they also get to be the avenue—the disposal network—for vapes, too. How is that going to work? On the one hand, we go there for medical care, for treatment and for understanding around best practice, and on the other they will be a disposal place for vapes. For those wanting to quit smoking by moving on to vapes as a smoking-cessation tool, it is better to have those vapes available to them at the places they typically buy cigarettes, surely—not at the pharmacy. The commonsense solution would be to have them at the same place where they buy cigarettes so they can actually make that active choice: I won't buy that, I'll buy this.

The Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill looks to ban the importation, domestic manufacture and supply of non-therapeutic, disposable, single-use vapes while preserving patient access to therapeutic vapes for smoking cessation and management of nicotine dependence where clinically appropriate. The bill will mainly impact the sale and supply of non-nicotine vaping products. Vapes containing nicotine are already subject to restrictions under the Poisons Standard classification. However, the problem is that the vapes that are targeted at children are advertised as being nicotine-free, and they have nicotine in them. This is despite a ban, further highlighting that the ban does not work.

The bill makes two important changes which the coalition supports. Firstly, it doesn't allow the sale of predatory and dangerous single-use disposable vaping products which are targeted to children and contain nicotine. Secondly, it creates one single framework under the TGA for the regulation of vaping products, regardless of the nicotine content. We have been clear from the get-go that our priority is to protect Australian children from the harms of vaping, and in line with that priority we do not stand in the way of those measures. No-one wants to see Australian children vaping. No-one wants to see Australian children become addicted to vaping. Nobody wants to see Australian children addicted to nicotine. But kids are being targeted by a thriving and dangerous black market. Our primary focus in this area is preventing children from getting access to these products. We are focused on stamping out the organised-crime-driven black market that is supplying these illegal vapes to children.

Right now, it is illegal to buy a nicotine vape without a prescription. It has always been illegal to sell a vape to any child under 18, yet kids are still getting ready access to flavoured vapes in coloured packaging. I have some stats here on it. It is illegal. Despite it being illegal, the latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey found one in 10 Australians under 18 are vapers. This is a fourfold increase since 2019. In Victoria alone, the black market for vapes has been valued at up to $500 million, and this is despite it being illegal.

Australians, including children, are getting ready access to illegal vapes in every state and territory because the law is not being adequately or consistently enforced. It is clear that the current medical model is failing, with only around 10 per cent of current vapers purchasing their product legally through prescriptions. The TGA has acknowledged that the medical model has not achieved its goals. Entrenching the existing failing medical model will not prevent children from having access to vaping products and will further drive the sale of these product to the black market. Labor's prohibition-style approach will play straight into the hands of organised crime syndicates, who are massively profiting from the sale of illegal vapes and the sale of vapes to our children.

We have announced that, if elected, we will take an alternative approach to the government's and crack down on this organised crime that has been allowed to thrive, and we will act to protect Australian children. A coalition government will introduce a strictly regulated retail model for vaping products under the TGA to put a stop to dodgy retailers selling vapes to Australian children with impunity through the rampant black market. This model will include a licensing scheme, prevention campaigns and strong enforcement efforts as part of a sensible approach to keep money out of the hands of criminals while stopping the sale of vapes to children. Our regulated approach will also address the dangerous and unknown chemicals contained in illegal vapes by placing strict requirements on safety and quality—again, noting that many of these single-use vapes that are targeted at children contain very high levels of nicotine, causing nicotine addiction in our children.

By bringing Australia in line with European countries, a regulated model is in the best interests of both public health outcomes and law enforcement. If we are really serious about protecting our children from vaping then we have to be serious about enforcement. That is why the coalition will also provide 10 times more funding towards law enforcement than the government has through a new $250 million law enforcement package. I mean, let's be serious. The government's package of $25 million of law enforcement for vaping is so grossly inadequate it's almost comical. Our $250 million of funding will be used to stand up an illegal tobacco and vaping taskforce, led by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, to tackle illegal vapes from the border to the shopfront. It will provide desperately needed Commonwealth leadership to crack down on organised criminal activity and protect our children.

Our coalition has the strength to be honest with the Australian public. The government's senseless and chaotic approach will not protect the health of young Australians who are already buying illicit vaping products. The government's failure to control the illicit vaping market and its failure to protect our children against the proliferation of vaping products mean that greater scrutiny is absolutely essential. It would be completely irresponsible not to demand further investigation into these issues as they evolve. We did this via a Senate inquiry and we should continue to monitor it.

Submissions to the inquiry were provided by a wide range of stakeholders and raised some really significant concerns. Notably, the inquiry highlighted how the illicit vaping black market is out of control and thriving in Australia. We heard evidence through this process that reiterated our concerns that entrenching the failed prescription-only model will not prevent children from having access to vaping products and will further drive the sale of these products to the black market. That is why it is clear that regulating the vaping market through strict and sensible retail based policies will protect our children from the harms of vaping and will protect our community from organised crime.

The Albanese Labor government sought to pass the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Bill last year without addressing this thriving illicit tobacco trade. Why? The news is filled with stories of firebombings of cigarette stores and convenience stores as a result of this black market. In a clear acknowledgement of their lack of action on enforcement, the government supported the coalition's amendment to establish a new illicit tobacco and e-cigarette commissioner within the Australian Border Force. The coalition welcomed the government's decision to support our amendment and our leadership to protect Australians from the growing black market in both illicit tobacco and illicit vapes. The commissioner would support developing and implementing strategies for addressing those illicit substances and enforcing existing regulations. We called on the government to act quickly to set up the commissioner and adequately address the tobacco black market. However, it is clear that the government have failed to do so. They must tell us whether any meaningful work has been done to establish this critically important commission.

I would like to finalise my comments with some quotes from the vaping inquiry that I and Senator Cadell sat on. The committee heard evidence relating to consumer and community safety. We heard that according to the Office of Impact Analysis's Proposed reforms to the regulation of vapes: Impact analysis, the number of adults who have a nicotine prescription for vapes is as low as three per cent, indicating that as many as 97 per cent of adult vapers are purchasing unregulated products. During my exchange with from the fields Pharmaceutical, Mr David said:

You just need to look at the numbers. Today there are anywhere from one to 1.7 million adults who are vaping … Unfortunately, their access point has been through unregulated illegal products, which are far more dangerous than regulated products.

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners stated Australia is the only country in the world to restrict access to nicotine vaping products on a prescription-only basis. Despite the Australian government being a global outlier, there has been a dramatic increase in youth vaping under this policy.

Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always been illegal to sell vapes and e-cigarettes to minors. Vapes are, of course, addictive, and their contents are often a mystery box to their users. The level of nicotine in one vape can equal the nicotine in fifty cigarettes. I'm not going to go over too much why vapes are bad for your health, bad for your pockets, bad for the environment and simply bad—think cancer, think lung scarring, think poisoning and think addiction. My focus is on why the Labor government's response to this product is bad too. It's a typical response from this Labor government and the Australian Greens: a big announcement but with little likely impact.

With a kaleidoscope of colours and flavours such as peach, grape and lemonade, vapes are packaged and marketed to audiences to entice young people. It is shameful but sadly successful. In fact, curiosity was the reason for vaping given by 73 per cent of respondents aged 15 to 24 in the National Drug Strategy Household Survey. The outcome of the increase in vaping and e-cigarettes and the delay by this government in delivering this bill has been significant takeup, more nicotine addiction and, of course, in the last 12 months, a significant increase in organised crime.

It's the story everywhere. In my home state of South Australia, statistics revealed just last week showed that 15 per cent of school-aged students, aged 12 to 17 years old, used an e-cigarette at least once during the past month. That is 2.4 per cent higher than it was in 2017.

Nationally, there has been a sixfold increase in the use of vapes by youth aged 15 to 24 since 2019. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare states that 13 per cent of Australians aged 15 to 24 currently using e-cigarettes were not smoking regular cigarettes in 2022 or 2023. Parents I talk to tell stories, relayed through their children, of kids as young as 11 and 12 hiding out in the school toilets to satisfy what may already be, but will surely eventually be, a vaping addiction. Walk down any stairwell in any Australian CBD and take a closer look at the street gutters; you will see vape cartridges just about everywhere. The illicit trade in South Australia, and no doubt across our nation, is enormous. An eight-week blitz last year took more than 4,000 illegal vapes off South Australian streets, and 12 Adelaide businesses were fined. That was in eight weeks. In January more than 13 tonnes of disposable vapes were seized in Adelaide. That illegal haul was the equivalent of 30 grand pianos.

I'm interested in all Australians being protected equally where it can be done and reducing harm generally, but, as shadow minister for child protection, I think this discussion is of particular importance because of those who are more likely to be disproportionately affected when it fails to deliver the outcomes that the Labor Party and the Australian Greens intended it to deliver. Use of e-cigarettes has increased among priority populations in Australia in recent years, including among low-socioeconomic-status groups, people who haven't finished high school, the unemployed, regional Australians and those who identify as LGBTQIA+. People with a mental health condition are about twice as likely to currently use e-cigarettes—12.3 per cent, compared with 5.8 per cent of people without a mental illness being diagnosed.

The coalition has also been clear from the get-go that our priority is to protect Australian children from the harms of vaping and e-cigarettes. While there are arguments for the therapeutic benefits of vapes, the selling of nicotine vapes through chemists is not an answer to stopping illegal vapes reaching our shores and our children. Last I looked, chemists are not tobacconists. They have been blindsided by this Australian Greens and Labor government coalition. It is under this Albanese Labor government that a thriving and dangerous black market has grown, and with that growth there has been a flourishing criminal element associated with that black market. State and territory governments can definitely do better to apply the law, because clearly it's not being adequately applied right now. Of course, the Commonwealth—that would be the Albanese government—must do more and can do more. It's allocation for law enforcement is nowhere near enough under this model.

It is illegal to buy a nicotine vape without a prescription. That has always been the case—and I have to say it again—yet only around 10 per cent of vapers buy their product legally through prescriptions. That's the reality of this challenge, and it's not addressed in this bill. Labor's prohibition-style approach plays straight into the hands of those organised crime syndicates and triads who are already profiting from this lucrative illegal trade. This bill amends the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989—or the TGA Act, as most people would know it—to ban the importation, domestic manufacture, supply, commercial possession and advertisement of single-use, disposable and non-therapeutic vapes. It preserves patient access to therapeutic vapes for smoking cessation and the management of nicotine dependence where clinically appropriate. However, as Labor senators have admitted, teachers do not want to police vapes in schools, just as chemists have reacted by saying they don't want to sell vapes. You would have known that if you had asked them. Chemists do not want to sell e-cigarettes and vapes beside essential medicines like Panadol and Nurofen. It's just not the right product mix. As my Senate colleague Senator Kovacic said: 'Why wouldn't you put it with other cigarette products and treat it the same?' It's all nicotine. That's the dangerous part. That's the common part in all of this. I don't get why you don't get it.

The coalition won't stand in the way of passing this bill and supports aspects of it, but fundamentally it's a flawed model. Firstly it bans predatory and dangerous single-use disposable vaping products popular with children, because those single-use products specifically target them. That's a good thing. Secondly the bill creates one single framework under the TGA for the regulation of all vaping products, regardless of their nicotine content, and the coalition would do the same in our strictly regulated retail model, if elected.

But there are some really dumb elements of this bill. This government has already failed to establish or fund its promised illicit tobacco and vaping commissioner. But Australians are getting used to broken promises and disappointment under this government. Currently the vaping black market is estimated to be around $1 billion, which is fuelled by the importation of more than 100 million illicit disposable devices each year. We've all seen the firebombings—the extortion tactics targeting tobacco and vaping retailers. It is yet another failure on national security under this Albanese Labor government that that hasn't been addressed. This Albanese government has failed to adequately explain how they will ensure enforcement measures are properly funded, not just at the border but also at the point of sale, and how they will measure the success or the failure of this policy.

Of course, the coalition government approach would be different to this one. It would introduce a strictly regulated retail model for vaping products under the TGA to put a stop to dodgy retailers selling vapes with impunity through the rampant black market to Australian children. A coalition government would provide 10 times more funding towards law enforcement than Labor through a new $250 million law enforcement package. This funding would be used to stand up an illegal tobacco and vaping taskforce, led by the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Border Force, to tackle illegal vapes from the border to the shopfront, because that's what's actually needed. This model would include a licensing scheme, prevention campaigns and strong enforcement efforts as part of a sensible approach to keep money out of the hands of criminals while stopping the sale of vapes to children. Our regulated approach would also address the dangerous and unknown chemicals that are contained in illegal vapes by placing strict requirements on safety and quality.

Naive Australians thinking of taking up vapes might think that, just because it's in a chemist or just because it's in a shop, it must be okay for you, on the basis that it's been allowed into this country. That's why looking more at what's in the vapes is equally important. European and Western countries already know that a regulated model is in the best interests of both public health outcomes and law enforcement, because they're already doing it. We all agree that this needs to be addressed, but this approach by this Labor-Greens coalition just won't work. It does not set up for or do the real work of cracking down on crime that will stop the illegal vapes from crossing our borders and coming into the hands of our children.

Vapes, as I mentioned earlier, should be regulated in the same way as cigarettes. The model is there, and the model has worked to reduce the smoking of cigarettes over decades and decades. I don't suggest that anybody hold their breath for this Labor-Greens alliance approach, because it won't do the job that it could or it should do. Australian parents and children have been sold short by this model. It could be so much better than what has been presented by the Australian Greens and the Albanese Labor government in this bill.

Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to quote from an article in the Guardian from earlier today. This is an article by Josh Butler and Melissa Davey. They write:

The lobby group representing pharmacy owners said its members were "gobsmacked" by a deal between the Greens and Labor which will see vapes sold over-the-counter by pharmacists without a prescription, claiming they only heard the changes via media release after the deal was done.

They were gobsmacked. I love that word 'gobsmacked'. It means flabbergasted, astounded. Gob, from the old Irish Gaelic, means mouth. Gobsmacked—that's what they were. The pharmacists were gobsmacked. We've had this wonderful deal which has been done between Labor and the Greens. Labor and the Greens have got together, and they've decided that their compromised position is: 'We're going to get the pharmacists to sell vaping products without prescription.' That's wonderful, except they didn't talk to the pharmacists. They didn't talk to the people who they expect to sell the product. It's almost like you're in the crowd watching the emperor with no clothes, and you've just pointed it out, saying, 'The emperor has no clothes.' The pharmacies weren't consulted. You're expecting them to sell a product. You're placing all sorts of obligations on them. They don't want to do it. The emperor has no clothes at all.

This is what the pharmacists said in their media release from 24 June titled 'Not tobacconists or garbologists':

A Bill is currently before Parliament to change the current medicines schedule for nicotine-containing vapes from Schedule 4 (Prescription Only) to Schedule 3 (Pharmacist Only).

The result of the proposed change is that nicotine-containing vapes could be available for purchase through a community pharmacy without the requirement for a valid prescription.

The Guild strongly opposes this proposal.

It's there in big bold type: 'The guild strongly opposes this proposal.' So Labor and the Greens have reached a compromised position, which is that only pharmacists can sell vaping products without prescription, but the pharmacists don't want to do it. This is quite absurd. It's absolutely absurd. It's hard to believe we're legislating in this way. It really is genuinely hard to believe.

Labor and the Greens make a deal and have a wonderful thought bubble: the pharmacists will sell vaping products. But they don't want to do it. What could possibly go wrong? Here's an idea: they won't do it. They won't actually sell the vaping products. I can give you a reason why. I've read every word of the amendment. This is what you expect a pharmacist to do when they're selling this vaping product. You're basically expecting them to do everything a doctor would do when they prescribe these products. Why are they going to spend the time and effort to do everything a doctor would be required to do to prescribe such a product for medicinal purposes when they're not being paid for that and they can only charge $25 or $35 for the vaping product? This is what they've got to do. Just listen to this list. Put yourself in the position of a pharmacist who needs to do this with respect to selling a product worth, say, $25 or $35, and you'll see the absurdity of this proposal.

This is item (11) subsection (6):

The pharmacist must:

'Must'—so they need to keep a record of this—

(a) inform the patient, or a parent or a guardian of the patient, that the therapeutic good is not a listed good or registered good; and

(b) obtain informed consent from the patient, or a parent or a guardian of the patient, in relation to, and before, the supply of the therapeutic good; and

(c) supply the therapeutic good in accordance with good pharmacy practice; and

(d) provide professional advice to the patient on alternative cessation supports and therapies, appropriate dose and frequency depending on age, weight and severity of condition, length of treatment, suitable titration, and interactions with other medicines; and—

It's not finished—

(e) provide contact details about smoking cessation support services to the patient; and

(f) if the pharmacist becomes aware that the patient has suffered an adverse event in relation to the therapeutic good—notify the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the sponsor of the therapeutic good about the adverse event in accordance with the reporting guidelines set out in the SAS Guidance; and—

It goes over the page. What could possibly go wrong?

(g) if the pharmacist becomes aware of a defect in the therapeutic good—notify the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the sponsor of the therapeutic good in accordance with the reporting guidelines set out in the SAS Guidance.

So they've got to do seven different things in relation to selling a $25 or $35 product. They've essentially got to perform the role of a GP issuing a script, except they're not going to be able to charge for it. What could possibly go wrong? Here's an idea: they won't do it. They won't do it because it's too onerous. They won't do it because they don't want to do it. This is what the people you're expecting to do this say: 'Everyone wants to keep illegal vapes out of the hands of kids and teenagers, but the Senate wants pharmacists to stock vapes next to children's Panadol, cold and flu medicine, and emergency contraception.'

I haven't even started dealing with the issue of the Senate's expectation that community pharmacies will become vape retailers and vape garbage collectors. I couldn't find that in the amendment. I don't know if it was intended to actually be in the amendment, but I can't find anything referring to disposal in the amendment. I just make that comment by the way. I know that this is being done on the run. The Senate's expectation that community pharmacies will become vape retailers and vape garbage collectors is insulting. That's what the people whom you're expecting to sell this product and do all those things listed in 11(6)(a) to (g) are telling us.

Labor and the Greens have come up with this proposal that the pharmacists, and only pharmacists, will sell vaping products. You put all these burdens onto pharmacists, if they choose to do it, and are you then expecting that they're going to do it? Why would they? You can't make a profit selling a $25 to $35 product, providing all of that therapeutic advice and doing all that record keeping listed in (6)(a) to (g). It's impossible to do that properly, including—I just want to read this again, and just reflect on this:

… provide professional advice to the patient on alternative cessation supports and therapies, appropriate dose and frequency depending on age, weight and severity of condition, length of treatment, suitable titration, and interactions with other medicines …

Seriously?

I spent a morning with a pharmacist earlier this year, after we moved to 60-day prescriptions, and that gave me an insight into the burdens we're placing on our community pharmacists. I saw the interactions between that pharmacist and their patients, the issues they had to deal with on an unremunerated basis and the pressure they were under. Owners of community pharmacies are working six or seven days a week because they cannot afford to employ other pharmacists in their stores. I can tell you that, with that shopping list of things they're required to do under this model, it will not work.

You should have the review. I suggest you have the review in a month, after the new scheme comes in, rather than in three years, because I think that we'll know it's a dud after a month. It will have failed miserably. You will have people from all over Australia coming into the pharmacy saying, 'I want to buy vapes,' and the pharmacist will say, 'We don't do that.' The more I think about it, you will see a proliferation of signs across community pharmacies all over Australia saying, 'We do not sell vapes.' What are you going to do then? What's plan B? Because you didn't even talk to those people you were expecting to play a key role in relation to this compromise. It's absolutely astounding. I wish you good luck, but I deeply fear this is going to be an unmitigated disaster and that you will be back in this place in a number of months with plan B, whatever that will be.

Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I table a replacement explanatory memorandum relating to the Therapeutic Goods and Other Legislation Amendment (Vaping Reforms) Bill 2024. The replacement explanatory memorandum responds to matters raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee.

In summing up, I simply thank senators for their contributions to the debate on this bill, and I commend the bill to the Senate.

Senate adjourned at 21:36