Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Tyrrell for her question, and I can be very clear about this. Our objective is to protect people—in particular, young people but all people—from the harms that arise from both smoking and vaping. It is why our vaping reforms are so significant. As you well know—as, I'm sure, in the community in which you live—many parents were deeply worried about the rates of vaping that were appearing in young people—in children and in young adults. Some of the evidence was suggesting that the promise that vaping would be a pathway for people to cease smoking was, in fact, not being realised and instead vaping, in some instances, was leading to children or young people taking up smoking. It's why we placed such an emphasis on these reforms.

We acknowledge that it will take time to see significant decreases in vaping and smoking, but we're here for the long haul. We want a healthier Australia for future generations, and we're working against two big opponents. We are up against big tobacco and we are up against organised crime. To date the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Australian Border Force have seized more than 10 million illicit vapes with a current street value of almost half a billion dollars since January 2024. The evidence that we rely upon, the most significant body of evidence, comes from the Generation Vape project, and it shows that the rate of vaping is dropping—that it dropped from 20 to 18 per cent among 18- to 24-year-olds between 2023 and now.