Bills

Tobacco Products Regulation (Vaporisers) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 1 December 2016.)

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (10:31): I am happy to rise to speak to the bill that has been moved by the member for Hartley. This has come about through a select committee process that, as members would remember, the member for Elder moved for in this house. I thought it was a very good select committee. I happened to serve on it as well, with the members for Fisher, Hartley and Bright. We came up with what I thought was a very sensible report, a report that listed a significant number of recommendations to the government on how we can tackle the issue of this new technology of e-cigarettes or vaporisers being used in our community.

As with all select committees, that process then went to the relevant minister, who then came forward with a whole range of proposals to implement the recommendations; it was the minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse in this particular area. Not really satisfied with that, the member for Hartley has come out with his own separate plan out of this report, which basically seems to be a little way for him to get a couple of articles in The Advertiser, rather than going through a sensible policy process of working with the government and working through the minister's very sensible proposals to come up with this.

Pretty much as soon as we came up with our bipartisan, unanimous committee report, with all the recommendations that all of us on both sides supported, there was a media release from the member for Hartley, called 'E-cigarettes report released today', which said:

As a consequence there is a public health benefit if tobacco smokers are switching to e-cigarettes and any new regulations should not hinder that movement.

The Report’s recommendation that e-cigarettes shouldn't be sold alongside tobacco products has the potential to undercut this public health benefit.

I'd like to see more research on the impact of having e-cigarettes on sale where tobacco is sold before any restrictions are put in place.

It would be an unfortunate outcome if regulations put in place actually reduced the number of people giving up smoking tobacco.

All of us, including the member for Hartley, agreed to every single one of the recommendations, but as soon as the report was released the member for Hartley then came out with a release bagging the report and bagging some of the recommendations of the report. Not satisfied with that, he then developed his own bill, coming out of the recommendations of the report, but which only deals with some of the issues pertaining to the report and the inquiry and our quite extensive process, led by the member for the Elder, of interviewing witnesses, visiting vape shops, talking to the community, and going through many hundreds of submissions that were submitted to us.

He has come out with his own bill, which only deals with a couple of things, rather than going through what the process is where the minister is delivering a response having regard to all the Department of Health officials who are expert in this area, and where all the right crown law advice has gone into it, and just because he wants his moment in the sun.

With that prologue, there is the position of the government that I would like to go through. Basically, this is a simplistic proposal that fails in three specific areas. Firstly, the bill does not strengthen the act by amending the objects to include e-cigarettes. SA Health received advice stating the objects of the act should be amended to avoid any doubt about the act's capacity to regulate e-cigarettes. Secondly, the bill does not align sufficiently with recommendations from the select committee of e-cigarettes, which, as I state again, the member for Hartley was on and agreed with all the recommendations at that time, unanimously.

The final report from the select committee included, under recommendation 5, that e-cigarettes be banned from sale through vending machines and/or by way of pop-up shops. The bill does not include provision to ban sale through these retail points. This is another example of where this bill fails to implement what the recommendations that we all agreed to were. Thirdly, the bill would subject e-cigarettes to sections of the act relating to packaging, which are only appropriate to tobacco products. This includes sections within part 3 of the act, which apply restrictions on how tobacco products are packaged.

There is no benefit in applying these sections to e-cigarette products. The government has developed, and is in the process of consulting on, a draft bill to regulate e-cigarettes in South Australia that is more comprehensive than what has been delivered by the member for Hartley. The government's bill includes amendment to the objects to ensure that the act is broad enough to accommodate e-cigarettes, as well as applying regulation to the most relevant parts of the act. The government's bill would also ban the sale of e-cigarettes through vending machines and temporary stores, as recommended by the unanimous bipartisan report that parliament had.

The government's draft bill seeks to regulate e-cigarettes in line with those select committee recommendations that can be implemented legally and effectively through amendments to the Tobacco Products Regulations Act 1997. The amendments to this act proposed would prohibit sales of e-cigarettes to children; retail sale of e-cigarettes products without a licence; indirect sales of e-cigarettes, such as internet sales; e-cigarette sales from temporary outlets, sale trays and vending machines; the use of e-cigarettes in areas that are smoke-free under the act; advertising, promotion, specials and pricing promotions for e-cigarettes; and the retail point-of-sale display of e-cigarettes.

For all of those reasons our approach is to comprehensively deal with the recommendations that we all came up with, on a bipartisan matter, and the minister is working through that at the moment. This bill does not do that. This bill fails to do that and has basically just been about playing politics with this issue from the beginning, for the member for Hartley, and trying to get a couple of little articles in The Advertiser saying how he is doing something. In actual fact, he is doing nothing but playing politics with this issue, with this very serious issue that we should be managing on a bipartisan matter to make sure that we implement the recommendations that we all agreed with, that the member for Hartley and the member for Bright agreed with through this select committee, to make sure that we are properly regulating these new products that do have the potential to cause harm.

We need to ensure that, if it is a useful aid for people to stop smoking, that can happen, but that we are not encouraging children, or advertising to children, to use these in a way that will be a stepping stone device that will enable people to take up smoking tobacco products. This is a very important subject that this bill does not deal with in an appropriate, comprehensive way, and that is why the government opposes this bill.

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (10:39): I rise today to close debate on what is a very important topic, and I would like to first and foremost thank all of those in the industry—the health industry, the e-cigarette industry, users, retailers and wholesalers—who have contributed to the debate along the way. I start today by referring to a News Corp article dated 17 January 2017, where it states:

An exploding e-cigarette has left a vaper with horrifying burns to his face and knocked out seven of his teeth.

Andrew Hall, from…Idaho, was getting ready for work and enjoying a vape when suddenly his device blew up in his face leaving him with hideous injuries.

In the article, there is a very distressing image of burns that are clearly evident and resulted from the use of such a device.

At the moment, in South Australia, these devices are basically completely unregulated. Children can use them and purchase them; there is no law at the moment preventing children from operating these devices. This is a clear example of how these devices, unregulated as they are, can unfortunately lead to these sorts of consequences.

This matter was referred to a select committee. The committee made several recommendations, and I want to address some of those points. A comment has been made this morning that some of the recommendations are not addressed in the bill that I put forward as an opposition backbencher. I put it to the government that in a lot of cases they cannot be addressed by state legislation, but what we can do is create a regulatory framework for these devices. We understand that they are out there, and we understand that as a state parliament we need to put in laws that protect some of the most vulnerable in our community.

Notably, the select committee delivered its recommendations about a year ago, but still we do not see a bill—I certainly have not seen a bill—that has been put forward by the government. You would think that the government with all of its might and all of its resources, and the minister with all of her resources, and while she is still here in this house, would have made it a priority by now.

Since we know these things are blowing up in people's faces, you would think that she would have made it a priority to bring a bill to this house for us to debate so that we can create a regulatory framework. By the way, no-one is saying that we should blanket ban these devices. We are just saying that we should create a regulatory framework so that these devices can be used safely.

We understand that some people use these devices to get off cigarettes; however, there are still a lot of unknowns about these devices. So when the government says that we are playing politics with this issue, with all respect it is a bit rich coming from them. However, I think we all agree that what this bill has done is to allow more expeditious debate to occur on this topic. I would welcome moves from the government, and I look forward to receiving the bill from the government that hopefully aims to create a bill on this issue so that these devices can operate in a safe and regulated way. I commend the bill to the house.

The house divided on the second reading:

Ayes 17

Noes 23

Majority 6

Second reading thus negatived.