Page 3927 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 23 October 1990
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tobacco sponsorships, that we should have put much more severe restrictions on advertising and that other more serious steps ought to have been taken. There are also critics who believe that we have gone too far, the tobacco companies being chief among them. Others believe that the Government is being draconian and in some cases infringing on civil liberties and imposing codes of behaviour on people.
But I have to say that the critics who have received the most attention in respect of this Bill have been members of the Australian Labor Party opposite. Their criticism of the Bill has been quite trenchant on a number of occasions in the last few months. The irony, of course, is that to the best of my perception those criticisms have not been based on any disagreement with the general thrust of the legislation. Rather they have been based on some desire to take the gloss off the legislation from the Government's point of view. On occasions it has been suggested that the Government has been got to by tobacco companies and as a result was not going to bring the Bill forward, or was going soft and was allowing disease caused by tobacco to multiply in the ACT while it dithered on the question of legislation.
Although tonight we all come to this place cheered by our agreement that this Bill should pass quickly, I do think that an Opposition which believes in this legislation - and it claims to do so - would not have taken the trouble to damage the legislation in the way that they did before it came here tonight. This will be controversial legislation. It will require some political will on our part as legislators to ensure that it is successful. There will be people, for example, who will criticise our banning of tobacco sales to children of 16 and 17 years of age, and I acknowledge some concerns in that area. I am grateful to Mr Moore and Mr Berry for the concerns they raised with me in the discussions we had on the subject. Those will be difficult things. To have criticised the Bill in the way that they did - and I am talking about those opposite, in this case - to criticise the Bill for no reason other than the fact that they wish to take the gloss off the Bill's impetus, I think will have the effect of making it a little bit harder for this Government to bring this Bill into effect and to make it an effective and forceful piece of legislation for tackling tobacco disease and death in this Territory. However, that is the only divisive thing I want to say tonight. I do think it is a night to dwell on the positive aspects of the legislation, and I intend to do so.
The legislation has been drafted in such a way that it can be enacted in parts. It is my intention to take advantage of that structure to allow us to progressively implement the Bill in such a way that we can effect the changes in the appropriate fashion. In particular, I intend to provide that the section of the legislation making it an offence to sell tobacco products to people under the age of 18 years, that is section 4 of the new Act, not be enacted
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