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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Wednesday, 4 August 2004) . . Page.. 3448 ..

Mr Wood: Sugar vending machines, yes.

Ms Dundas: We don’t have alcohol vending machines.

MR CORNWELL: Sugar vending machines—thank you, Mr Wood. You can understand what I am driving at. We have an obesity problem. Are we going to tackle that problem by adopting this sort of approach? I raise these questions quite seriously. If there is a denial that this is the case with soft drinks or sweets or something like that, then perhaps it is again tobacco that we are targeting, not the vending machines.

The majority of members of this Assembly are assiduous in their support of the rights of minorities. I understand that cigarette smokers now make up 20 per cent of the community. So I am a little puzzled and left wondering whether we have selective protection of minorities in this place—that some minorities are more politically correct than others and therefore it is deemed to be acceptable that they are to be protected by the custodians of this cotton wool capital.

I must come back to my colleague Mr Smyth’s comment that it is legal to sell tobacco. The issue surely is: do you wish to ban tobacco? Come on, ban tobacco.

Mrs Cross: Will you support it? Both of you: will you support it?

MR CORNWELL: I am happy to raise this debate. But be aware, of course, and it is easy for an independent over there to say this—

Mrs Cross: You declare. Say that you will support it and we will bring it on.

MR CORNWELL: No, it is easy for an independent over there to say this. Think about all the employment prospects around Australia in the tobacco growing regions.

Mrs Cross: Oh, right. That’s the problem then.

MR CORNWELL: My friend, Mr Wood, is from Queensland—

Mrs Cross: Does that mean you won’t support—

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Cornwell has the floor.

MR CORNWELL: and he would be aware of that. The point I am making is: we are fiddling at the edges on this whole question.

Mrs Cross: Well at least she has done something.

MR CORNWELL: If it is legal to sell then it is very difficult, it seems to me, to pull them back.

Ms Dundas: It is legal to sell to those over 18.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Cornwell has the floor.

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