Page 3124 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
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MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Minister for Health, Minister for Disability and Community Services and Minister for Women) (11.29), in reply: I thank Mr Smyth and Dr Foskey for their contributions to the debate today. This is a difficult issue that the Assembly is dealing with today. On first reading about the use of purchase assistants in compliance testing, the immediate response of anyone who is concerned about young people is, “At the best, this is very problematic—and how would it work?” and concern about the message of essentially using young people to purchase cigarettes as a means of discouraging other young people from purchasing cigarettes, which is what we are trying to do with this bill.
It is a fraught notion and I agree with the comments from Mr Smyth around that. When I took over the health portfolio and when this issue was first raised by the previous health minister, I was totally opposed to it. But I took the time to sit down and look at what was going on in other jurisdictions, at some of the results of these compliance tests not only in Australian jurisdictions but across the world. Once you take a deep breath and have a look at some of those results, you cannot ignore that this is certainly one tool to discourage smoking or the uptake of smoking in young people. It is not one that we can ignore or say that because it is a fraught issue we cannot look at it in the ACT.
The response to this bill, supported by the comments of Mr Smyth, has been that we have taken a very difficult idea, put it into legislation and attempted to provide the safeguards necessary to ensure that young people are protected but that this can operate across the ACT.
The Standing Committee on Legal Affairs provided some comments on the Tobacco (Compliance Testing) Amendment Bill. It raised the issue of the right of a child to protection and discussed arguments in favour of and against compliance testing. Arguments against compliance testing are based on concerns ACTCOSS raised during the consultation process. ACTCOSS expressed concerns about involving children in committing an offence, securing convictions by using deception and inducing retailers to distrust children.
The bill indemnifies purchase assistants who act substantially in accordance with instructions given by the authorised officer supervising the compliance test. On the issue of entrapment of retailers to commit an offence, compliance tests do not induce people to commit crimes they would otherwise not commit. The young person is assessed to look under 18 and does not produce a false ID or lie about their age. Improved program procedures and a number of safeguards incorporated in the bill will ensure that compliance tests are appropriately conducted and not misused.
On the human rights issue, the bill complies with the Human Rights Act 2004. The committee also stated that clause 42E (2), which relates to informed consent by a person with parental responsibility, needs careful consideration. My response to this is that clause 42E (2) is consistent with the requirements of the Children and Young People Act 1999.
The purpose of the bill is to amend the Tobacco Act to enable the conduct of compliance testing as a tool to measure the compliance of tobacco retailers with the sales to minors provision, which prohibits the sale of smoking products to persons under the age of 18.
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