John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

According to the Department of Health, each year smoking kills an estimated 15,000 Australians. It is widely recognised as the single largest preventable cause of illness and premature death in Australia. It results in $31.5 billion of social and economic costs to Australia every year. That includes healthcare costs, subsidies for drugs and, of course, absence from work. These costs are borne by households, by businesses and by government.

I am a strong supporter of tobacco plain packaging. It is a good Labor policy. It is one of a comprehensive suite of progressive tobacco control measures that aim to eliminate these insidious products and improve the health of Australians. Tobacco plain packaging aims to reduce smoking rates by removing the attractiveness and appeal of tobacco products to consumers and particularly to young consumers. Plain packaging also aims to reduce smoking rates by increasing the noticeability and effectiveness of mandated health warnings and reducing the ability of retail packaging of tobacco products to mislead consumers about the harm of smoking.

I am pleased that recent figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Commonwealth Treasury demonstrate the positive impact tobacco plain packaging and other measures are having in terms of reducing the prevalence of smoking in our community. The ABS have advised that sales of tobacco and cigarettes in the March quarter 2014, as measured by estimated expenditure on tobacco products, is the lowest ever recorded at $3.405 billion. Encouragingly, Treasury advice supports this downward trend. That advice reveals tobacco clearance rates, which are an indicator of tobacco volumes in the Australian market, fell 3.4 per cent in 2013 relative to 2012, when tobacco plain packaging was introduced.

I have seen recent reports in the media, backed by industry-supplied figures, that plain packaging has led to an increase in smoking rates. If plain packaging is so ineffective, if it has been such a failure, and if cigarette consumption is increasing, why all the hysteria from big tobacco and their friends about plain packaging? Why spend all this time and money opposing plain packaging? The truth is tobacco plain packaging works, and the broader war on smoking is working. Plain packaging is a world-leading policy, with many other countries now considering following the lead of Australia, and it has the big tobacco interests really concerned.

If tobacco companies attempt to counter plain packaging by reducing the price of tobacco products, I for one believe that the government would be well within its rights to respond with stronger and more frequent increases in the excise on tobacco products. I say that the sooner we get rid of these insidious and deadly products from our lives and the lives of the community the better.