The $500 Million Anti Tobacco Industry That Doesn’t Want to Quit

Senator ROBERTS : Minister, at the outset, let me say that One Nation does support the hard work that’s been done to bring this together from many different bills, regulating smoking into one piece of legislation, and I compliment those who have produced a bill that includes the previous coalition government that started the work, yet that only extends to consolidating existing governance. Today my questions go to the actual measures being promoted in this bill. In my opinion we need to pick up the health agenda. I need to understand why the government is adopting a counterproductive strategy that undermines health and trust. My questions go to four topics—quitting smoking, the results of quitting-smoking campaigns, price increases on tobacco and vaping. First question, Minister: the previous Labor government introduced measures that were designed to reduce smoking. These were putting scary photos on cigarette packs, reducing pack sizes, banning advertising and sponsorship and using plain packaging. Minister, what data do you have to support the idea these measures actually reduce smoking rates and that amplifying those measures will cause more people to quit smoking faster? 

Senator McCARTHY : Thank you, Senator ROBERTS, for your question. The measures in the bill do aim to encourage people to give up smoking and to discourage people from taking up smoking in the first place— I think that’s really important to remind the Senate about. These measures are just one part of the comprehensive, evidence based approach to tobacco control in Australia, which includes the 2023-24 budget commitments to support education campaigns, improve cessation support and extend the successful Tackling Indigenous Smoking program. 

Senator ROBERTS : I asked for the data. You didn’t give me any. You said though, as quite often happens in this House, your policy is ‘evidence based’. So let me ask a second question which relates to the effect of selective perception in respect of the use of scary photos to dissuade smoking. For clarity, selective perception is defined as: the process by which we focus our attention on certain stimuli while ignoring stimuli that … contradicts our values and expectations. According to selective perception theory, we consciously and unconsciously filter out information. Minister, when scary photos were proposed there was a strong academic argument against their use on the basis that people would filter them out. Here we are, ten years on, promoting an extended use of scary photos—that’s basically what your bill does. Minister, what work has the department done to prove scary photos are not being filtered out? Can you prove scary photos are not useless? I would like some data. 

Senator McCARTHY : Did you say: ‘scary photos are not useless’? Was that the last bit of your question? 

Senator ROBERTS : I said the scary photos have not been productive so far in accelerating any quitting smoking campaign. 

Senator McCARTHY : Thank you, Senator. I could use personal anecdotal responses—but I won’t—especially coming from our First Nations communities, about the impact that it has had on family members and others who have stopped smoking as a result of what they’ve seen. The impact of the bill will be evaluated in line with the Commonwealth Evaluation Policy. Evaluation measures are set out in the impact analysis prepared for this bill and will seek to measure declines in overall consumption. Consideration of tobacco prevalence data—and I know you’re always interested in data—is data from the National Health Survey, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey and the Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug Survey. I’m just reinforcing some of the data that I know that you’re interested in. Other available sources may also be considered such as the data from Customs and the Australian Bureau of Statistics’s state and territory government smoking cessation surveys conducted by or for public health experts. 

Senator ROBERTS : Thank you, Minister. You said, ‘seek to measure,’ implying in future. I asked for the past data on which this is based—current data. A literature review conducted by my staff has found many papers show a link between scary images and smokers being more scared. So far, so good. They find that nonsmokers react to the images as expected while smokers filter the message, reducing the fear factor in whole or in part. This proves that selective perception is at least in play if not undermining the whole concept of scary pictures. In other words, smokers don’t see the scariness in the scary pictures. None of these studies show a direct causation between scary photos and smoking reduction. Minister, is this measure something that sounds good in theory but actually doesn’t work in practice? Or hasn’t anyone bothered to do the work to prove that it works? 

Senator Pratt: I seek the call and say in answer to Senator ROBERTS that— 

The TEMPORARY CHAIR (Senator Grogan): Thank you, Senator Pratt. Please resume your seat. Minister? 

Senator McCARTHY : Senator ROBERTS, these are probably some of the best questions I’ve had all day on this bill, so thank you for your interest in that. Scary photos: I think this is really important, because it comes to the heart of what this piece of legislation is all about—plain packaging, and the concerns that have been raised throughout the Senate inquiry. Perhaps I could refer to the previous answer, where I talked about the Australian Bureau of Stats as one of the areas that we go to for data. With scary photos, young people were less likely to be current daily smokers, at a rate of 7.1 per cent. Then in 2011-12 it was 16.5 per cent. Plain packaging came in in 2012, so we are conscious that there is strong correlation there. 

Senator ROBERTS : Let’s get to the meat of the question, now that I understand that there is little data to back it up. The committee report makes this statement: ‘According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 11 per cent of Australians smoked tobacco daily in 2019, which is a decrease from 12.2 per cent in 2016.’ This the same claim the minister made in his second reading speech. However, the 2019 National Drug Strategy Household Survey found that the figure for ‘smokes every day’ was 12.8 per cent, not 11 per cent— no drop. That data further shows that the figure for people who consider themselves to be a current smoker is 14.7 per cent. This is an increase in smokers, not a decrease. The minister may be using the 2020-021 survey, which does show that figure. However, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, from which you sourced a minute ago, has a qualification on the 2020-21 data which reads: ‘The National Health Survey 2020-21 was collected online during the COVID-19 pandemic’—their word, not mine—’and is a break in time series. Data can’t be compared to previous years.’ I’m concerned that this bill uses invalid data to justify an expansion of measures introduced by Labor in 2012. The messaging around this bill has a misinformation feel to it. Minister, is the actual rate of smoking in Australia 11 per cent or 12.8 per cent? 

Senator McCARTHY : As I said in my summing-up speech today, when the Hon. Nicola Roxon introduced plain packaging, around 16 per cent of Australians smoked, and today that rate is down to just under 11 per cent. 

Senator ROBERTS : Minister, my data is contained in a paper that was last updated in June 2023 by the Cancer Council of Victoria and is their dataset titled, ‘Tobacco in Australia: facts and issues’. The dataset is funded by the Australian government Department of Health and Aged Care; this is your data. I’ll keep talking about your data out of this data source, and hopefully someone over there has it to hand. One would have thought it useful in the committee stage of a bill about tobacco in Australia. Moving on to graph 1.3.1, this graph shows a perfect exponential decay in the rate of smoking every day, suggesting that the quit rate is slowing. What this data calls for is new ideas, not more of the same ideas that are currently not the reason for the reduction in smoking. Minister, what else have you got? What other ideas does your department have to reduce smoking rates? And why are they not in this opus of a bill? Clearly scary photos are not working. The quit rate is decelerating, decreasing. 

Senator McCARTHY : I believe I’ve answered the questions. 

Senator ROBERTS : Minister, can I now refer you to graph 1.3.7, which shows the prevalence of current smoking in Australia, the United States, England, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada. This graph shows that a steady—not accelerating—reduction in smoking rates has occurred not only in Australia but in other Commonwealth countries and at about the same rate. Minister, is this more proof that scary pictures are a stunt, and something else is behind the reduction in smoking? 

Senator McCARTHY : I refer to my previous response. 

Senator ROBERTS : Let’s change topic, then. In review, the government has no idea what works and what doesn’t and has no new ideas—just more of the same, which, of course, keeps public servants and non-government organisations in taxpayer-funded jobs for another year. Minister, you have no new ideas. It’s more of the same failed policy approaches. How much does this cost taxpayers? How much is spent on the antismoking industry in Australia every year? 

Senator McCARTHY : I totally reject the senator’s accusations that we have no new ideas, when we are trying to improve the lives of Australians in this country, especially youth—children. We see this in our schools, Senator. So please do not come in here and say we have no new ideas. We know from the cancer rate inthis country that smoking is the leading cause of disease. We know that lung cancer is the lead cancer for that. These laws, let me remind the Senate, are about plain packaging. They’re about ensuring the safety of our young children— our young Australians—so that they do not get caught up in a world of smoking tobacco, which is quite easy to get caught up in. We have to be sure through this legislation that plain packaging makes a very real difference to the lives of our fellow Australians. 

Senator ROBERTS : Thank you, Minister. I happen to like you and respect you, but your use of emotion and young children does not cut it. This is my point. The government has committed $511 million over the forward estimates and $101 million ongoing towards a range of measures calculated to help reduce smoking and vaping. These consist of $264 million over four years and up to $101 million per year, ongoing, to establish and maintain a national lung cancer screening program, through which at-risk Australians will be able to get a lung scan every two years. There will be $141 million over four years to expand the Tackling Indigenous Smoking program to include tackling vaping. There will be $63 million over four years for national public health campaigns to discourage people from smoking and vaping, including additional funding provisioned in the contingency reserve for a targeted youth campaign. There will be $30 million over four years to increase and enhance smoking and vaping cessation support. And there will be $13 million over four years for legislative and regulatory reform, as well as testing tobacco products for prohibited ingredients and increasing inspections of manufacturers, importers, wholesalers and retailers of tobacco and vaping products. Wow! That’s an industry—$500 million over the forward estimates, or half a billion dollars. It’s an industry, and it’s being protected by worthless measures like the ones this bill is proposing. Thousands of bureaucrats, nongovernment organisations, not-for-profits and miscellaneous opportunists are kept in a job by the size of government’s spending. This will do nothing to reduce smoking. We’ve already seen the data from your own department, which says it’s just decelerating at a steady rate. It’s not accelerating. It’s just decreasing at a steady rate—the same as in countries overseas. Will this bill guarantee all these other measures? Will it be funded for another four years, despite doing nothing to reduce smoking? Was this bill designed in the knowledge that it would keep the antismoking industry in work for another four years? 

Senator McCARTHY : I totally reject, from the outset, your accusation that this will not do anything to assist our fellow Australians. The fact that we are putting $253.8 million into a new national lung cancer screening program should say something in this debate, shouldn’t it, Senator? And the fact that we’re putting $238.5 million into supporting the Aboriginal and community controlled health sector is not, I would say, a worthless approach and initiative in trying to decrease the rates of cancer and smoking among First Nations people in this country. I totally reject your allegation. 

Senator ROBERTS : An emotional argument does not take the place of data. I have never had a cigarette in my lips—never. My children have never had cigarettes either. Let’s move to what really drives decreases. The excise on tobacco products has been steadily increasing every year, coinciding with the reduction in smoking rates. Senator Canavan talked about it. Turkiye, which I mentioned before, has the highest smoking rate in the developed world. A pack of Marlboro cigarettes costs US$1.62. That’s for a whole pack of 20, not for a cigarette. In Australia the same pack is $25.88 on a best-price comparison basis. The next dearest country for smoking is the United Kingdom, where that same pack costs $15.83. We are more than 50 per cent dearer for cigarettes than any other developed country, and the price has been going up steadily in proportion to the reduction in smoking rates. Minister, isn’t it true that the real reason smoking rates are falling is that they get dearer every year, and the real reason that the number of people giving smoking away is decreasing slowly is that those smokers who are left can afford it more? 

Senator McCARTHY : I’d just remind the Senate and the senator that this is a public health policy and we are talking about plain packaging. 

Senator ROBERTS : I’m talking about the industry that the bill will feed and continue to feed. Minister, I note that the explanatory memorandum and the second reading speech both try to make the point that Australia is falling behind other nations. Actually, amongst developed nations Turkiye has the highest smoking rate: 41 per cent amongst males. Australia, with 12 per cent, is 29th. Only eight nations have a lower smoking rate than we do. Only two—Iceland, at eight per cent; and Norway, at six per cent—are significantly better. Clearly, the contention that Australia is falling behind the world is outright misinformation. We are close to leading the world. For clarity, we are close to leading the world because we have priced cigarettes into the stratosphere, not because of scary pictures on boxes or the other Roxon measures. Minister, is this legislation just more of the same to keep the Labor aligned antismoking industry going while at the same time allowing your government to go to the electors and pretend to have done something about smoking? Is this why you exempted yourselves from your own misinformation bill? 

Senator McCARTHY : In 2011, under Nicola Roxon, we did lead the world with the reforms that went through both his house and the other house. For the past nine years we’ve needed more work done, and that’s why we’re bringing in this next critical step in the fight against tobacco and nicotine addiction. I urge the senator and the Senate to remember that this is why we’re here. This legislation is about plain packaging, so that we can once again be world leaders in the way that we conduct ourselves in terms of this public health policy.