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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 2857 ..

MS TUCKER: I have talked to Labor already. They are interested in the vending machine issue. It is essential that governments work towards reducing demand, particularly demand by children, for tobacco products. One way of doing this, as these amendments to the Tobacco Act strive to do, is to restrict point-of-sale promotion of tobacco products at retail and wholesale outlets. There are other issues on which the Government, while ensuring some progress, could possibly have gone further and been stronger, but I will speak on those concerns at greater length during the detail stage of the debate.

Briefly, I have concerns about the provisions on the size of health warnings at point-of-sale displays, on the size of the point-of-sale tobacco product displays and on product information which is displayed at point of sale. While a number of members have raised the concerns of Scrutiny of Bills Report No. 6 of 1999 on the powers of authorised officers, I had thought those powers were appropriate but I am very willing to listen to concerns that are expressed about the current state of this legislation. I know amendments have already been prepared. I do not know whether Mr Kaine and Mr Rugendyke are aware of those either. Those concerns have been addressed to some degree, but I am happy to listen to the arguments.

Having briefly raised some of my concerns about the Bill and the most recent amendments, I believe the Bill will contribute positively to reducing tobacco use and creating an environment and a society statement about making smoking less acceptable and therefore less attractive to children and making it harder for children to purchase tobacco products. We are all familiar with the arguments for doing this, but they deserve repeating and reinforcing to those in the Assembly who do not understand the arguments behind this Bill and who may be feeling the pressure of the powerful tobacco lobby.

Let us focus on children and tobacco. The information paper provided by the Minister for Health was very useful in summarising the impact tobacco promotion has had on children. The Medical Journal of Australia has found that most adult smokers took up the habit of smoking during adolescence, starting between the ages of 12 and 16, and that 80 per cent of new smokers are children. Other studies have found that the earlier a person starts smoking, the more difficult it is for them to quit. The Heart and Cancer Offensive against Tobacco, using census data and information derived from surveys, found that 336,030 Australian children aged 12 to 17 were smokers in 1996.

The World Bank quotes studies undertaken in the US among final year high school students, suggesting that fewer than two out of five smokers who believe they will quit within five years actually do quit. And let us not forget the big one. The use of tobacco is known to be the greatest cause of avoidable death and disease in the community, killing about 19,000 Australians a year. The cries of the tobacco companies and retailers about the impact restrictions on promotion will have on their industry pale in the face of these kinds of statistics.

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