Page 3835 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
products from view will help achieve that aim, but if we look at it from the perspective of children and young people we can see that it may be more effective than it would be for an older generation; if it is, then in that sense it is worth while. Indeed, that is the area where the effort needs to be made—in stopping young people taking it up at an early age: the longer they put it off, the less likely they are to take it up and become habituated; they will not ruin their health to the extent that they will if they take it up later on; and we can see them as being more creatures of free will if they are older and adult.
There are all kinds of good motivation behind this bill. The amendment does give people a breathing space—the ones who need to put up the barriers and put that investment into it, especially when they do not particularly believe in that investment, in which case it makes it harder.
Nonetheless, I have been told by the government—I also receive correspondence from ASH, and read their point of view in the newspaper, and the Heart Foundation; the point is often made—that the ACT is no longer leading the world or Australia in making things tougher for cigarette sellers and the notion of selling objects but prohibiting their display is not unique.
Furthermore, the task before us, we are told, is to work against the marketing strategies of tobacco businesses who are doing everything they can to normalise tobacco purchase and consumption. Let us remember that, while we are closing down markets here, markets are opening up in developing countries and using all the devices that we have ruled out here, like selling cigarettes singly, selling cigarettes that are much higher in tar and selling cigarettes without filters—all those things.
People are being pushed down that path. Somehow or other, it is looking cool. I guess that is the amazing thing about the tobacco industry—that they are managing to make smoking look cool. That is paradoxical given that it is in every way not cool. In my view, the highly visible positioning of cigarettes in supermarkets, newsagents and so on is an issue. For those reasons, I support the intent of this bill.
We need to remember that supermarkets and newsagents are places where people go for reasons other than to buy cigarettes and tobacco. People might decide to buy something just because they can see it, but they are also places where parents send their children to pick up household items and they are places where children themselves go to buy lollies, comics and books. They are not likely to randomly walk into a tobacconist.
Like Mr Mulcahy, I find the specification of 12-point times new roman as the font to list all prices in tobacconists a bit bizarre. That goes to the point that people who walk into tobacconists are usually going in to buy tobacco products, unlike the people who walk into newsagents. And here we are dealing with a product which is legally available to anyone over a certain age.
Another consideration to cigarette smokers, I would have thought, would be to allow some more adequate display of tobacco products in tobacconists—not in any shop, and perhaps only in spaces that people above the relevant age are allowed to enter, such as a new form of licensed premises. I find it a little odd to understand how
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .