MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE
Dr FREELANDER (Macarthur) (16:07): I really want to speak on this MPI. I've had a longstanding interest in public health policy, and included in that is involvement in antismoking campaigns—really, since the BUGA UP campaigns of the late 1970s, which not too many in this House would remember. But it was all about tobacco advertising and advertising of harmful products like tobacco.
It really is very sad to hear the coalition using focus group language, like when the member for Canning was reading out his speech, and cliches when talking about this policy, because there's been a longstanding bipartisan policy based on public health around smoking in Australia that all major parties have accepted for many, many years. It's very sad to hear what's happening in the coalition, but there's nothing much I can do about that.
I've had a long involvement, as I've said. When I was a young medical student in the 1970s, we were seeing the results of the peak of tobacco smoking which occurred in the sixties. Every major hospital's respiratory ward was full of patients with lung cancer.
They were often in the prime of life but with terminal lung cancer or oxygen-dependent emphysema caused by smoking. Many of them would die. In fact, two-thirds of smokers die from the effects of smoking.
This is a huge public health burden. Luckily, smoking rates have come down, and they're now at their lowest level ever. I don't know from where the coalition are getting their figures, but the figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show that daily smoking rates are now well less than six per cent in Australia—amongst the lowest in the world.
Our public health policy is working, and smoking rates are coming down. Why would we want to go back to the times when cheap cigarettes were available and more people were smoking? The price signal is very important.
Why would we want to get our vaping rates up by making vapes cheaper and more readily available? Why would we want to do that and get more of our kids nicotine addicted? That may be a gateway to smoking, but we now know—there's plenty of accumulating evidence, in fact—that vaping causes serious health harm, including lung cancer and including obstructive lung disease.
Why would we want to go back to that? Who wins when cigarettes become cheaper, which they will under the coalition, or when vapes become readily available? It certainly isn't our healthcare workers or our health system.
Every public health authority in Australia and even overseas sees that a reduction in our excise on tobacco will lead to more people smoking. Why would we want to do that? Who wins?
It's not the families who watched their loved ones struggle with smoking related illness, lung cancer, emphysema and cardiovascular disease. It almost certainly isn't the children we should be trying to prevent from becoming the next generation who are nicotine addicted or smokers. Speaking about generations of smokers, the smoking rate in Australia has dramatically fallen and continues to fall.
Our public health policies are working. The price signal is an important part of that, yes, but there are other factors involved as well, including education and better public awareness of the harms of smoking. Those opposite want to undo all of that.
I don't understand why. I think it's very sad. It's very important that we fight against this.
Our government believes in enforcement. All governments around Australia need to engage with better enforcement. Yes, organised crime is a problem, but enforcement will help with that.
There are lots of ways we could improve our enforcement policies. We need to look at the business models of organised crime. We need to empower our police to have the resources to be able to do that.
But we must keep our smoking costs high so that the price signal stays. That is really important. Public health policy has been proven to work.
The policies of those opposite have no evidence base at all. They are really a fight to the lowest level and must be opposed. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Claydon ): This discussion has now concluded.