Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion by the member for Hindmarsh and I concur with his sentiments. I too am fortunate to have four staff who are smoke-free. One quit recently, and all of them make a great contribution to the health of our young people.

I want to compliment the Department of Health and Ageing because they have developed a number of initiatives to encourage Australians to quit smoking. I commend the department and its staff for the work they are doing in conjunction with state and territory governments as well as with non-government organisations. I suspect if we took a reality check across the globe, there would be many parts of the world where this message would not be received or known, but in Australia we have the opportunity to promote it. We all know the adverse impacts of tobacco smoking on an individual. They are published and well known and yet, even with those adverse outcomes, we still have individuals who continue to smoke. We will continue our focus on good health and the fact that you need to be there for your family.

One of the sad things when walking past hospitals is to see people outside with drips in their arms having a couple of cigarettes before they race back into the hospital. They are in a centre that is treating them for health problems, but they are equally contributing to their health problems. It is well known that smoking raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, cancer of the respiratory, digestive and reproductive organs, and premature births. It still remains one of the leading cause of preventable disease and premature mortality amongst Australians. Smoking is responsible for over seven per cent of the total burden of disease in our country. In 2003, tobacco use caused more than 15,000 deaths—that is, 15,000 deaths that did not need to occur, with 15,000 families affected by the death of someone they loved and were close to. The total quantifiable costs of smoking to the economy, including the costs associated with the loss of life, were estimated to be greater than $31 billion in 2004-05. That is why I complimented the Department of Health and Ageing at the beginning, because their work is absolutely critical to getting that message out there. Again I thank the member for Hindmarsh for giving us the opportunity to speak in this chamber on this important issue.

I found the following statement, obtained from Welcome to World No Tobacco Day 2012, interesting, and I will read it as it appeared on the site:

The brain needs up to 72 hours to rid itself of all nicotine, to resensitize once saturated receptors, and to move beyond peak withdrawal. It also needs time to down-regulate and rid itself of the millions of extra nicotinic receptors nicotine caused it to grow … The subconscious mind needs time to encounter, break and extinguish all the nicotine feeding cues it established. The conscious thinking mind (the prefrontal cortex) needs time to sort through and discard the long list of lies it invented to explain why that next cigarette was so important, to try and make sense of the deep inner "wanting" it didn't understand … Nicotine addiction is a brain "wanting" disease that can be fully arrested but not cured. As permanent as alcoholism, it enslaves the same brain dopamine pathways as illegal drugs, including heroin and meth.

That is a challenge in itself, and that is why nicotine in the quantity it is in in cigarettes induces an individual to want to continue to smoke, and the excuses are a justification to feed a nicotine habit.

I want to focus on the need to reduce smoking rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Even though we have made progress, there are substantial issues still yet to be confronted. The third report against the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework stated:

The health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is improving for a number of measures, although there remain many issues for which there have been no improvements.

The report said:

Fifty-eight per cent of excess deaths are due to chronic diseases (i.e. circulatory disease as well as cancer, diabetes, respiratory disease and kidney disease).

…   …   …

Low birthweight … is twice as common for babies born to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mothers than other Australian babies. The rate also appears to be increasing. There is a strong relationship between smoking during pregnancy and low birthweight.

…   …   …

In 2008, 47% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians aged 15 years and over smoked. This was a small but potentially important improvement from 2002, when the rate was estimated to be 51%.

So, whilst we are making gains within broader Australian society, we have a segment of our society in which the smoking rates are still problematic. On a day like today, it is highly likely that 47 per cent will still continue their smoking habits until the programs that have been designed and put in place have an effect that is starting to show.

Around half of Indigenous Australian women smoke during pregnancy, three times the rate of other pregnant women. An estimated 65 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children aged from zero to 14 live in households with a current daily smoker, compared with 32 per cent of non-Indigenous children. So reducing Indigenous smoking continues to be a priority for Australia and is now being addressed through the Indigenous Tobacco Control Initiative and the National Partnership Agreement on Closing the Gap in Indigenous Health Outcomes.

Why am I focusing on Indigenous Australians? For two reasons. One is the number across this country, and certainly within my electorate, who smoke. I have some 4,000 to 5,000 Indigenous Australians in my electorate, and if I take that percentage then that impacts on constituents within my electorate. Having had the experience of working, with the two members who are in this chamber, on the Standing Committee on Health and Ageing, I can say it is of concern to us, and it is of concern to me.

The importance of the issue is reflected in three key measures of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework that are directed to the extent of smoking rates in Indigenous communities. The three measures were designed to look at why the measure was important, what the findings were and what the policy implications are if we do nothing. One of the first ones was 2.18, which was tobacco use. Why was it important? It was important because environmental tobacco smoke has adverse health effects for others who are in close proximity to the smoker, including asthma in children, lower respiratory tract infections, lung cancer and coronary heart disease. That is from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's report in 2002. Given the adverse impact on health in Indigenous society, adding that other layer of smoking adds another dimension that runs across all key strands that are life-shortening factors for a society of people who have rates that are not conducive to a healthy future. We can go through a range of figures that demonstrate the extent of smoking in every category and every age range, but I hope that a day like today, World No Tobacco Day, highlights and accentuates an awareness—which has to be brought to the fore—of the challenges that people face when they continue to smoke. Certainly we understand the addictions that nicotine causes. The measures that this parliament has taken in respect of plain packaging of cigarettes are a critical step in making an unhealthy habit unattractive.

I would hope that in 10 years time, when we celebrate a day like today again, we see a further reduction not only in Australian society and in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander society but also in all those groups that are in circumstances where smoking becomes an aid to relief or an aid to a problem. An area that we have not really explored that we have to continue to do some work around is within the prisons. Again, the high smoking rates within the prisons around this country are not conducive to the health of those who are incarcerated. Within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, with the high incarceration rates, you are certainly exposing those who are incarcerated to greater use of cigarettes, smoking and tobacco products.

I would hope that your motion, Member for Hindmarsh—Mr Deputy Speaker Georganas—will certainly heighten people's awareness today. I support the importance of World No Tobacco Day because it is probably one of the key steps to bringing about an awareness of the need to reduce the prevalence rates of smoking within any society.

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