Page 3916 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 October 1991
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MRS NOLAN (12.19): Mr Speaker, I will be brief. I think the real issue is the legislation. The provision is there for those exemptions. I do not want to debate the tobacco sponsorship issue; I think that is for another time. I certainly will not be supporting Mr Moore's motion.
I would have thought that, as the national capital, we would have been trying very hard to get an additional cricket match for this city rather than be talking about exempting the Prime Minister's XI match. The situation currently is that capital cities in every other State and Territory around Australia have at least one of the Benson and Hedges one-day matches or test cricket. I think it is time that Canberra had one of those one-day matches. At this point, I am not quite sure where those sponsorship dollars are going to come from if it is not from Benson and Hedges.
I will not be supporting Mr Moore's motion. In cases such as Benson and Hedges, and also Winfield - that really is another issue - I do not agree that sponsorship necessarily causes people to smoke. I have had a long involvement with the Rothmans Foundation. I was an athlete for a number of years, and I have to say that I was provided with an enormous amount of dollars for training that I would not have been able to enjoy had it not been for the Rothmans Foundation.
MR MOORE (12.21), in reply: Mrs Nolan finished her speech by saying that she had had a long involvement with the Rothmans Foundation. She has also had a long involvement with the product that Rothmans and others produce. But congratulations to her. I understand that she has given up smoking. That is a major step forward and not an easy thing to do.
I think we should have had a conscience vote. When I look around me, I know that, if it were not for the way parties drive people, the vote on the issue would have been divided, but it would have carried. We would have sent a message to Australians about tobacco, the like of which has not been seen since Victoria had the courage to say, "We are not going to accept the motorcycle grand prix". They lost it, and that had some difficulties for them; but at least the message was loud and clear. We could have sent the same message, except that in many ways it would have been more effective because the particular game we are talking about is the Prime Minister's XI game.
What a wonderful opportunity we have to show the courage of our convictions. Almost everybody here has spoken against tobacco sponsorship. Almost everybody has agreed that it is important for us to take on those tobacco companies and try to change things. We have the opportunity to do so. And what is the cost? We balance the deaths we have been talking about against two cricket matches. The important one, the critical one, is on 17 December, and that is the Prime Minister's XI match.
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