Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

We'd like you to be here, son! As other members have outlined the details of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Amendment Bill 2018, I'm not going to do that other than to say that we on this side of the House are supporting it. However, I do want to commend the contribution made by the member for Macarthur in particular, a good friend and someone whose background is as a paediatrician, a doctor, who has had a lot of experience dealing with health matters across the community. He explained in a very detailed way the impacts on the health of individuals and on our community as a result of smoking. As others have said, in 2011 tobacco use was estimated to be responsible for nine per cent of the total burden of disease. That's a significant figure. Eighty per cent of lung cancer burden and 75 per cent of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease burden was attributable to tobacco use. I don't think there'd be many people in this place who wouldn't know either directly or indirectly a person, or persons, who has suffered immense trauma and an early death as a result of tobacco. There'd be very few among us.

The initiatives taken so long ago now for plain packaging were against the protestations of the industry. I remember vividly the remarkable attempts taken by the industry to oppose the legislation championed by the then Minister for Health, Nicola Roxon. The case was taken internationally to try and say that, somehow or another, this was illegal. It wasn't, and it was the best thing we could've done. But the concern I have is that we have to actually maintain our commitment to strategies to bring down tobacco consumption rates. I'm most particularly concerned about those people who have the most prevalent use of tobacco in the community. In this case, it is principally Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander smokers.

The comparisons are huge. The 2014-15 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey found 39 per cent of the combined Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population aged 15 and over were daily smokers compared with 14 per cent in the general population. The proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were daily smokers aged 15 years and older was 39 per cent compared to 45 per cent in 2008 and 49 per cent in 2002. So there has been a reduction—and that's significant—and it's very important that the efforts continue. In 2002, 51 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander males aged 15 years and over were daily smokers. That daily smoking rate declined to 46 per cent in 2008 and 41 per cent in 2014-15.

They're good things, and there is other data which demonstrates that tobacco consumption is falling in Aboriginal communities, but when you compare it with the broader population the gap is not closing. It is because, as we've seen, the consumption rates amongst the general population—the non-Aboriginal population—have also fallen dramatically, but the gap has not closed.

When I contemplate this, I remember well the 2014-15 budget. In a previous government I was the minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, and we initiated some measures around tobacco, prevention strategies, and funded them directly to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community health organisations and communities. Sadly, in their first budget after coming into government, the Abbott government, with then Prime Minister Abbott—now the envoy for God knows what—and then Treasurer, Mr Hockey, brought down a budget that cut $500 million out of expenditure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, and $130 million of that was cut from the program for tackling Indigenous smoking, which was publicly disparaged by the then Treasurer.

Just so we understand the nature of this and the prevalence of tobacco consumption amongst Indigenous Australians: among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians between the ages of 15 and 27 male consumption is 34.4 per cent compared with 3.9 per cent for non-indigenous Australians and for women the figures are 26.5 per cent and 2.3 per cent. That demonstrates the difficulty that we are having in bringing down tobacco consumption rates amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. You wouldn't think that a responsible government, or a government that purported to be responsible, and a Prime Minister who, we were told, would be a Prime Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, would oversee a budget which cut $500 million out of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs, $130 million of which went directly to cutting the programs for tackling Indigenous smoking.

Do you reckon that, when the member for Warringah gets on whatever he's getting on to travel around Australia as an envoy and talks to whoever he is going to be talking to—and I don't know who he is going to be talking to—he might explain to them that he was responsible for overseeing a budget cut of over $500 million, which impacted every aspect of the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians? Do you reckon that he might tell them that he himself was responsible for overseeing a cut of $130 million out of the tackling tobacco program? You can imagine what he will do—and it certainly won't be that.

But, having said that, despite the absurdities of the government, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services around this country have been working diligently to bring down tobacco consumption rates. As the member for Macarthur pointed out, the direct health impacts are obvious to all of us and we have a responsibility to make sure that the funding is available to continue antismoking programs. I'm going to have to give up my position at this dispatch box, at least temporarily, in a very short time, but when I am back here, hopefully tomorrow or whenever else this debate is brought back on—

Government members interjecting—

You can wait in anticipation.

A government member: We're going nowhere.

You'll be here a while. I will talk about a couple of specific programs that have been introduced by Aboriginal communities or organisations around the country which have had a dramatic and positive impact on reducing tobacco consumption in their communities.

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