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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2851 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Nobody, I suspect, wants to see a growth in tobacco crime resembling the crime that arose when the United States prohibited alcohol, but perhaps the Minister should test public opinion by moving to make it illegal and see what happens.

The Minister, of course, acknowledges the obvious - that tobacco is a licit substance. With this Bill he is trying to get as close to banning it as he can get without actually legislating to make its possession or use a crime. This is a dictatorial Bill that the Minister perceives as making it harder for people, especially young people, to become smokers. If that was all it did, it might be acceptable. It is a worthy aim. But it is by no means certain that it will even achieve that objective, and it is certain that it will cause grave damage to a lot of small businesses engaged in the perfectly licit activity of selling tobacco products.

In the past the Liberal Party, as you would know, Mr Speaker, has proclaimed itself to be the party of small business. It has praised small businesses, the engine that drives the nation's and the ACT's economies. Of course, Mr Moore is not a Liberal. Indeed, what banner waves above Mr Moore to manifest his political allegiance or philosophy is rather a mystery, but he is a Minister in a Liberal government. It surprises me that that government has agreed that he in his ministerial capacity, not even as a private member, should introduce a government Bill which will clearly inconvenience and disadvantage many small businesses in the Territory, if not in fact drive some of them to the wall.

That, and not the prevention of young people from becoming smokers, will be the chief outcome if this Assembly is foolish enough to pass this Bill, in my view. This Bill will do little to deter young people from wanting to take up smoking or from finding a means of doing so. This Bill will do nothing to prevent young people determined to smoke from obtaining tobacco products by a number of means - if necessary, from outside the Territory, or illicitly from people of much the same age group. This Bill establishes a fertile environment for the growth of a tobacco bootlegging culture targeting the very people whom the Bill purports to shield from the perils of tobacco. This Bill has potential to turn small business people into criminals for displaying a licit product, in a way that falls a whisker short of onerous, anti-competitive and restrictive conditions.

It is time the Minister, who is noted for his enthusiasm for espousing desperate ethical causes that have the capacity to intrude on the decisions that people make about their personal choices, woke up to one simple fact. It is inescapable that people who, for whatever reason, want to use tobacco are going to get hold of it by whatever means may be available. The evidence lies in the drug situation. On the one hand, he is trying to stop tobacco use, which is licit. On the other hand, he is advocating almost an expansion of drug use, which is illicit. I find it a bit inconsistent.

Another simple fact that the Minister seems not to want to know is that penalising small business people for promoting the availability of tobacco products on shelves bigger than the one square metre that the Minister deems reasonable is not going to limit tobacco availability one jot. All it is likely to do is create confusion and clog the judicial system with cases turning on what constitutes one square metre. Is it, for example, the area of a display case in which tobacco products are visible, or is it the total of the surface area of packages visible within the display case? Whether it is one of those

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