Page 3761 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 October 1990
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The Government's position has been that it will allow the industry to draw up a set of regulations by itself to cover the issue of smoking in restaurants.
Mr Humphries: No. We have said that they can try to be self-regulating.
MR BERRY: Yes, and if they cannot manage it themselves, the Government will regulate. Labor's proposal, of course, was for 50 per cent of the seating area. My understanding of the Liberal proposal is that it would be 30 per cent. I will be watching it very closely and I hope that we can end up with a position where there are fewer people smoking in restaurants. Some prominent restaurateurs have indicated that they will not have anything to do with it, so I suspect that the self-regulation approach might be difficult to achieve. The Government will, of course, be faced with the prospect of imposing some regulation.
Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that is all I have to say on the matter. The Labor Party will be supporting the Bill at its in-principle stage, and we will have more to say in the detail stage in relation to the section which refers to the age limits below which people cannot be sold tobacco products.
MR STEFANIAK (4.27): I am delighted to support Mr Humphries' Bill in relation to tobacco legislation. Like Mr Berry, I understand that the number of Australians killed each year is, in fact, more around the figure of 23,000 rather than 17,000 which, I think, was mentioned earlier. Indeed, Mr Humphries has indicated that that is his understanding too.
I am aware, and have read medical papers and indeed have had some personal experience through members of my family and close relatives, that smoking does cause lung cancer, heart disease, bronchitis, emphysema, stroke, arterial disease, oral cancer, and cancer of the bladder, the kidney and the stomach. In fact, in relation to arterial disease, two people who were very close to me - one of them my father - suffered through being heavy smokers in relation to the blood flow in their legs. In one case, a relative stopped smoking at about age 55 because a doctor suggested that he give it up. As a result of that, the problems of flow of blood in his legs decreased and he lived on for about another 20 years with no problems in relation to the flow of blood to his legs. My father smoked until three months before he died. I have some very vivid memories of a very active man, who died at 75 and was still playing golf at 65, suddenly having problems walking. In his last few years, I can recall him having difficulty in going more than about 150 metres without having leg problems. Clearly, talking to his doctors, that was as a result of heavy smoking from the age of about 18 through to about 75, when he died.
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