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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
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TOBACCO SMOKING

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna) (17:17): I move:

That this house—

(a) notes the significant fall in South Australian smoking rates between 2010 and 2012; and

(b) congratulates those who have successfully quit smoking.

I am pleased to be able to move this motion in this session. Members, I hope, will have received a document that was prepared by the South Australian Parliament Research Library on the issue of smoking, called 'Smoking cessation: a review of recent strategies and proposals', which I think was circulated towards the end of June and provides some background material. The parliamentary library kindly put that document together and I commend them for the excellent work that they have done, and they had the assistance of the health department's Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia (DASSA) with some of the information.

I think this is a very good report that the parliamentary library has produced, which brings together in one place a whole lot of information about smoking cessation strategies and, of course, goes through the stats in relation to South Australia. Before I get to those stats, I just want to put on the record that as the health minister I tried to do as much as I could in the couple of years that I was responsible for smoking policy to reduce the number of people smoking in our state. I was motivated not just—

The Hon. L.W.K. Bignell: You should have pulled the cigarettes out of their mouths.

The Hon. J.D. HILL: That is true. I did that not just because it was my job as health minister; I did it because as a former smoker I have that passion which is shared by many former smokers to see everybody else become one as well. I also did it because both my parents smoked. My mother, who is now 96, gave up at the age of 65, I think, and my father, who died at the age of 59, never gave up. He smoked something like 60 or 80 unfiltered cigarettes every day that I knew him. It was a habit he picked up during the war. He was a nonsmoker before his war service and then took up smoking, as was often the case, of course.

The comfort that was provided by tobacco then led to the early deaths of a lot of the diggers. The Germans did not get them but the tobacco did. My father-in-law also was a heavy smoker. He was given free cigarettes as a member of the Royal Navy and continued smoking. He eventually developed emphysema and died a terrible death.

The facts are that half the people who smoke will die from smoking. It is an extraordinary thing about a product that is available in the shops. If it is used according to whatever means you wish—the number of smokes you have and the regularity you smoke—half the people who consume that product will die as a result of it. It is just an extraordinary thing and we know that the number one thing that we can do to improve the overall health of our community is reduce the incidence of smoking, particularly in those parts of the community which are vulnerable for some reason or other.

The reality is, of course, that well-educated middle-class people by and large have kicked the habit—not exclusively, but many have—and there is a greater concentration of smoking amongst people, I guess you could say, from vulnerable backgrounds: people who are poor, people who have mental illness, people who are in correction facilities, Aboriginal people, particularly young Aboriginal women when they are pregnant. They are the target groups that we need to focus on in the future.

If I can turn to the stats, we have some very pleasing results which are reported in this document, but I will just go through them. The recent data was announced on 31 May 2013, which is World No Tobacco Day, and it showed that the incidence of smoking among South Australians aged 15 years or older had dropped more than four percentage points in the last two years. The smoking rate for South Australians 15 years or older is now 16.2 per cent, compared to 17.6 per cent in 2011 and 20.5 per cent in 2010.

In other words, something like 20 to 25 per cent of South Australians who smoked quit in those two years. If you say 4 per cent, it does not sound a lot, but if it is 20 per cent of those who are actually smoking, that is a huge turnaround in a relatively short period. I calculated something like 50,000 South Australians who will have given up in that time, which I think is a really big turnaround and I do congratulate those individuals and the systems that supported them.

The other key findings from the recent report show that the smoking rate for South Australians 15 years or older is 16.2 per cent, as I said, compared to 20.5 per cent in 2010. The proportion of daily smokers aged 15 years or older is now 13.9 per cent, compared to 15.2 per cent in 2011, so some people smoke on an irregular basis, but less than 14 per cent now are daily smokers. The biggest improvement in 2012 was in the 45 to 59 year old group, in which smokers decreased to 17.3 per cent, compared to 21.7 per cent in 2011, and the daily smoking rate for younger South Australians, that is those 15 to 29, now stands at 14.8 per cent, compared to 17.3 per cent in 2011.

I think this is the most interesting part of these statistics. We know that people take up smoking when they are young. It is very unusual for somebody of mature years to take up cigarette smoking. It is not likely that somebody in their 30s or 40s will suddenly take up cigarette smoking. Mostly people take up smoking when they are under the age of 20. I am a bit of an exception; I took up at the age of 20. I had never smoked a cigarette until I turned 20 and then I had my first one and did not stop until I was 30-something. But, most people start smoking in their teens, or, in fact, sometimes even earlier than that. What these stats show is that the 15 to 29 year old age group now has a smaller percentage of smokers than the age group above them. That means that recruitment by the tobacco companies is not replacing those in the older groups.

The demographic group that the tobacco industry is targeting is saying no to tobacco. What that says to me is that all of the efforts that we put in to reducing the consumption of tobacco in the community are starting to make headway. It also means that, in that younger group, the social pressure, which is such a strong force amongst young people, is now working in a beneficial way. When I was a kid, the social pressure amongst kids was to try smoking, to have a cigarette. Now it seems to be working in the other way. Smoking is not seen as a cool thing to do; it is not seen as something that you would encourage others to take up.

I think what that demonstrates to us is that, over time, the number of people smoking in our community will continue to decline, particularly if we keep doing all the things the experts say are required. I will just go through those things; there are really only three. Firstly, make tobacco as expensive as you can possibly make it. The federal government boosted the price of tobacco recently and that had a positive impact on the consumption of tobacco.

Putting up the price of tobacco does work, and reason it works is because the majority of people who smoke—I cannot tell you exactly what the stats are, but maybe 90-plus per cent of people who do smoke—do not want to smoke, they want to give up. So, when the price jumps dramatically, it provides an incentive for them to stop smoking. They do not like the costs, but they are also motivated by that change in price to give up smoking.

That is why gradual price increases of just over inflation are not going to make much of a difference. It really does need significant jumps from time to time, so it is probably better from a policy point of view if a big jump occurs, and then just have CPI for a period of years, and then have a big jump. It is that jolt which creates the beneficial effect.

The second thing that needs to be done is to take the glamour out of tobacco in every way possible. So, banning the smoking of tobacco in places where people congregate to have a good time—hotels, for example, and inside workplaces. If you take tobacco out of those environments, then there is less incentive to smoke, you see fewer people smoking and you do not build up a desire to smoke; that really is the logic behind it.

We have done a lot in our state to reduce the incidence of smoking in public places. Legislation this parliament passed a year or two ago gives councils the powers to do more in their communities, and it is pleasing to see some councils taking up that right. We still allow smoking in outdoor eating and drinking areas. This is something that when I was minister I said I would phase out by 2016, and I certainly hope that is still a priority for the government. It is important that we deal with that issue. I think the hotel and restaurant industries had had the rules changed too many times to impose that on them too quickly, but I gave them over five years' notice about that change and I hope that still appears.

The third thing we can do, which we have done, is to maintain the amount of advertising at a high level to get the message to people to give up smoking, and the tobacco advertising we have run in this state over recent years has been very effective at convincing people to give up smoking. One of the messages which I think appears to work particularly well for men is not that smoking is bad for you and your life is going to be reduced by smoking but, rather, if you are not around, who is going to be looking after your family; think about how your family will feel if you are sick and unable to look after them. That message seems to have greater potency with smokers.

Maintaining advertising at a heavy level—it is really important that we do that. I know, in other jurisdictions, when money has been tight it is easier to say, 'Well, we'll just reduce the advertising budget.' Governments like to say that, but this is one advertising budget that should never be reduced. If anything, we should keep the amount of money going into advertising as high as we can possibly make it. But, those three things together combine to reduce the incidence of smoking.

The big turnaround that we have seen in our state occurred at a time in the lead-up to the introduction of plain packaging, which was a federal government initiative. I commend Nicola Roxon who really pursued that very vigorously during her term as a minister; it was great leadership by her. We have not yet seen the impact of that plain packaging but already the research is showing that people say that cigarettes that come out of plain packages do not taste as good as cigarettes that come out of packages which have glamorous imagery on them.

I think that is very interesting. If that is the case then it possibly means that fewer people will keep smoking. All of these measures are really working together very well and having a positive impact on our community. I think we are in really good shape. I would like to start thinking—and this is what this report that the parliamentary library gives some background on—about what a smoke-free community would look like.

We are getting to the stage where we can contemplate the notion of endgame in tobacco. I think within the next 10 or 20 years the proportion of smokers, if these trends continue and if the pressures continue, will be less than 5 per cent in the community. If we have fewer than 5 per cent of our population smoking—and I am not advocating that we should ban it or make it something that one does under the counter or illegally, but if fewer than 5 per cent of our population is smoking we can always claim that we have a smoke-free community.

Those people who are smoking can be assisted to either continue smoking in some way until they are no longer with us or be further encouraged to give up. There are strategies that can be employed. One of the strategies that has been proposed is to increase the age at which you can start smoking. I do not think that would work. I do not think banning things works particularly, we just have to deal with it as an awful vice in our community and help those who are still addicted to give up.

The reality is that people who smoke are addicted and it is a difficult thing to get rid of an addiction. We know that if you keep trying you will get off it. Most people who have smoked, including me, have tried lots and lots of times before they finally break through. However, I did, and I know other members in this place who had similar good fortune. To those members of this place who still smoke, as leaders in the community I think there is a special obligation on us to live healthy, clean lifestyles—I am not looking at anybody in particular; there are a number of members on this side who I know still smoke and I would certainly encourage them to ring the Quitline if they cannot do it by themselves.

Mr PEGLER (Mount Gambier) (17:32): Taking up from what the member for Kaurna had to say, I have been a smoker ever since I was basically born, I suppose. I well remember sitting in the FJ Holden in the middle of winter driving home, and you could hardly see for the second-hand Craven As and Ritmeester Livardes. I certainly support this motion. I think that smoking—well, I know that smoking is very bad for our health and it costs our society a lot. I certainly congratulate those who have managed to quit smoking. It is one of the hardest things in the world to do. I certainly commend this motion.

The Hon. R.B. SUCH (Fisher) (17:33): I commend the member for Kaurna for this motion and also acknowledge what he did, as minister for health. It is great to have a legacy as a minister to say that what you did helped or will help to save lives and reduce pain and suffering, just as Lea Stevens did when she was minister for health, in having home visits after the birth of a child. Those initiatives go on for a long time.

My father was a smoker. He had been in the Navy. Although he reached the age of 91, he died a horrible death. Smokers often drown internally. He would have lived longer had he not smoked. As the member for Kaurna mentioned, people in the services were often given free cigarettes and encouraged to smoke.

There are a couple of issues. One that I think needs to be addressed is that, in our prisons currently, prisoners are often put into cells with smokers, whether they like it or not. I think, down the track, there will probably be legal action by some of those prisoners as having been forced to live in a smoking environment as a result of being put in a cell with a smoker.

I commend this motion. We need to keep pushing to encourage people to give up smoking, along with a lot of other preventive measures, because if we do not get a handle on health issues, the system is going to be overloaded. The cost of our health system is already significant. It will become quite burdensome if we do not address some of these issues, and smoking is one of them.

I say: congratulations to the former minister for health in what he did. These reforms take a while to take effect, but I think when he leaves this place he will be able to look back and say, 'I have helped save people's lives and reduce pain and suffering.'

Debate adjourned on motion of Mr Gardner.


At 17:36 the house adjourned until Tuesday 10 September 2013 at 11:00.


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