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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-02-27 Daily Xml
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TOBACCO PRODUCTS REGULATION (A SMOKE-FREE ADELAIDE) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (17:07): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Tobacco Products Regulation Act 1997. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (17:07): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Some may say that there are far more important issues facing South Australia today than amending the Tobacco Products Regulation Act (A Smoke-Free Adelaide) Amendment Bill; however—and as I am sure members saw from my comments in the media when I floated the idea—I am alarmed at the number of people smoking in our city, especially outdoors in our city, following the banning of smoking in hotels. While a number of hotels have provided smoking venues for their patrons a number have not, and of course we often see workers congregating outside their offices, in alleyways, in garden areas, or outside the front doors of buildings and workplaces. What upsets me most is the lack of respect the vast majority of these people have in throwing their cigarette butts on the ground.

I decided to introduce this bill to stimulate debate and, as I will discuss later in my comments, I have had a number of contacts from and consultations with interested parties (a lot of my colleagues in this place are interested, for a range of reasons) and I will discuss those issues. I am introducing this bill today, but members will recall from the comments I made in the media that what I would like to achieve with this is that on Friday 30 May 2008 (the Friday prior to World No Tobacco Day) everyone in Adelaide who smokes will try to last the day without having a cigarette.

I will use our workplace as an example, although I have not looked at the Notice Paper to see whether we are sitting that week. However, I know we are sitting the following week, and some of our colleagues in this place—whether they be members of parliament or staff in the building—do enjoy a cigarette, so this is an opportunity for us to support our fellow workers, parliamentarians, and inhabitants of Parliament House with some diversionary tactics. Perhaps we could take them for a walk or get some sort of nicotine-type replacement and distract them that day to see if they can get through a day without smoking a cigarette.

People undertake a whole range of activities that are spread over many hours. During a flight on an aeroplane, a journey in a train, a bus or an interstate coach, even sitting here in this chamber, there are a number of hours when it is not appropriate—in fact, it is illegal on aeroplanes and a whole range of public transport modes—to smoke. Most people say, 'I could not go a whole day,' but think about an international flight. Mr President, I know that you are not a particularly keen traveller yourself but I also know a lot of members, and people who are smokers, who can quite enjoy a 14 or 15 hour flight overseas.

So, on this one day I am trying to empower the community to engage in something that would be a world first—a city to stop smoking for one day. It really is not about attacking smokers; it is about empowering the community. This is a voluntary day we want to have prior to when I actually call for this bill to be voted upon (which will be the first Wednesday for Private Members' Business in June). It is quite some length of time, but I want people to think laterally about this and think about ways (which I will discuss later in my contribution) that we might be able to amend other pieces of legislation—or even amend this.

As I said, this is a piece of legislation designed to promote some debate and to try to come up with something for Adelaide that is unique. As I will also discuss later, there are a vast number of countries in the world that have smoking regulations and bans, even to a total prohibition on the sale of tobacco products.

The argument has long been used that smoking legislation should be made from the production end—in other words, ban the sale of it—rather than the consumption end, but I do not have a problem with an individual's right to smoke in a designated smoking area or in their own private home if that is their choice. People have a whole range of different habits; some people like to watch Port Adelaide Power in their own home, for instance. I choose not to, but we should never take away an individual's rights to do whatever they like in their own home.

Smokers have a right to a legally available product but they do not have that right where it affects others; everyone has a right to clean air and tidy public places. I guess this was brought to a head for me when I walked down the mall to buy a hat (which I am sure the Hon. Paul Holloway has seen me wear at a number of police graduations). On my stroll down to the end of the mall and back, across my vision (which would, I guess, be about 3 metres that you scan while you walk) I counted some 2,000 cigarette butts at 11 o'clock in the morning. I was looking at a 3 metre wide stretch, and I assume there is probably five times that in the mall from here to there, so there are some 10,000 cigarette butts lying on the ground by 11.30 in the morning. It is swept and cleaned every night!

The Hon. A. Bressington: Where have the ashtrays gone? There used to be ashtrays.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: The Hon. Ann Bressington asks about the ashtrays. There are lots of ashtrays, but the other thing I find very annoying is the number of butts lying on the ground near an ashtray. However, I have also come to ashtrays where people have not bothered to take the step and put their cigarette butt in the ashtray, but just flicked it on the ground. So, there are some other issues with ashtrays.

I recognise that most smokers do respect rights as much as practicable. However, the issue of passive smoking is still prevalent and, regardless of how well smokers abide by the current tobacco legislation, we all have a right to breathe clean air. In fact, when this was raised in the media, The Advertiser, as it often does, had a blog site, and a number of people suggested that I was probably out of my mind for suggesting this. However, a significant number of people said they did not like going to places where they could not breathe clear air and they did not like the cigarette smoke and smell in the mall.

There is no safe consumption level of cigarettes. We cannot compare smoking legislation with that of other controlled substances such as alcohol. Of course, people have often raised with me that tobacco is a legal product and therefore we should be able to smoke it and we should be able to do it in the city. I remind members that alcohol is a legal product yet in this city we have a dry zone because a small minority in the community are not able to manage their alcohol consumption in a public place in an appropriate manner. Likewise, I suggest that there is a small percentage of smokers who are not able to manage their addiction to cigarettes and smoke in an inappropriate manner for the rest of the community. Because of the manner in which they consume it, it is impossible to separate the health impacts on the consumer and nearby bystanders. The size and relative insignificance of one littered cigarette butt makes it a waste which is inconspicuous, but when it builds up it is a huge environmental problem.

The Adelaide City Council, when it contacted me when we were doing this consultation, raised a number of issues. It did not have any particular facts on the number of cigarette butts and the cost of cigarette butt collection, but we know they run off down streets into stormwater drains and clog drains. They have a synthetic nature and do not biodegrade easily, and they take many years to biodegrade, if at all. The paper from around them comes off but, of course, the material the filters are made of stays there for some considerable time.

I obtained an article from the Australian Medical Association when I met with it regarding the bill, and the article was published in one of its magazines. It is rather interesting and indicates why this is a particularly important issue. The article states:

South Australia's Strategic Plan includes the preventative health objective of reducing the percentage of young cigarette smokers aged 15-29 by 10 percentage points to 17.9 per cent by 2014.

This is a modest but commendable target, which doctors support. One would hope that having established its objective the government would move heaven and earth to meet it. It was therefore disappointing to see the budget report an expected rise in smoking prevalence for this group [to an estimated] 24.6 per cent for 2006-07 against [an actual in] 2005-06...of 23.4 per cent.

Just how statistically significant this deterioration is is a moot point, but the government's failure to adequately increase funding for Quit SA for advertising and promotional campaigns to target smoking rates surely cannot be assisting the situation. If we have a target, the AMA [of South Australia] believes the government must get serious about meeting it.

While this bill proposes a ban initially on just one day in 2009 and two days in 2010, I realise that should this legislation be supported it would open up the opportunity to investigate a permanent ban in public places, and I feel it would be our responsibility as a parliament to investigate the feasibility of these changes. If this bill is supported and debate on a total ban ensues, other legislative changes will be necessitated, and I will discuss them a little later.

I observed with interest the poll results on the AdelaideNow website when I raised this in the media back in December. A total of 1,417 people voted on the proposed two-day ban. Of those, 691 voted for a permanent ban and 683 against banning it totally, but only 43 people favoured my proposed two-day ban. So it is interesting to note the majority of respondents to that online poll supports a total ban, not just a two-day ban.

The Hon. R.D. Lawson: It was me voting 600 times.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: I know the Hon. Robert Lawson is a wealthy man, but I would not have thought he would have 600 different internet addresses. It is impossible to vote more than once because, when you try to vote the second time, a message will come up saying that you have already voted and the results are such-and-such. I have often checked and, when looking at the polls on some of the outrageous changes to the WorkCover legislation that we will see shortly that will be introduced by this Labor government, I am sure one person will not be voting many times: there will be many people voting one time to show their disgust.

When I met with Adelaide City Council members, the costs of cleaning up cigarette butts and regular sweeping that they quoted were quite outstanding, and they also mentioned that in their experience the banning of smoking in pubs and clubs has worsened the overall litter problem and resulted in areas of concentrated litter. Again, you will often find—and I guess I have been a little pre-occupied by looking at the ground—butts around trees and Stobie poles. It is quite interesting to see the areas where cigarette butts accumulate.

Other disturbing facts in that meeting indicated support for the AMA's assertion that the government is not succeeding in its own program to cut youth smoking. Closed circuit TV has shown footage of youths knocking the bottom off the butt litter bins in order to scavenge the unused and smokable remains of cigarette butts.

The Hon. Ann Bressington talked about having more cigarette butt bins in public places but, clearly, as the price of this product goes up, there will be young people in the mall and other areas who feel the need to smoke cigarettes accessing the leftover remnants of cigarette butts.

A leading cigarette manufacturer openly stated to me in its submission on this bill that cigarettes cause fatal diseases, and it argued that we should be producing education programs, rather than legislation, to curb this epidemic. My response to that is that all South Australians deserve access to education about the impact of smoking and that funding should be given greater priority by our state governments. However, even after this education, many people will choose to smoke, and their decision to do so often affects others who have chosen not to smoke cigarettes. Education cannot fully solve this problem.

Perhaps part of the reason smokers feel such an attack on their rights is that legislative change has been so incremental and prescriptive. I am not arguing about the way in which these changes have prevailed, because research and evidence about the effects of smoking have developed greatly since the 1970s, when the first tobacco legislation was implemented in this state.

I might run just through the list of countries that have introduced controls (and I will not go through all the different controls) ranging from relatively small controls on smoking to actually banning the sale of cigarettes altogether. They are Argentina; Bolivia; Brazil; Chile; Peru; Uruguay; the Canadian states of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Newfoundland, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and New Brunswick; the US states of California, Delaware, New York, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, New Jersey, Colorado, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Utah and Montana; in Central America, the Bahamas, Costa Rica, Cuba, El Salvador; and, in the Pacific, the Cook Islands, Fiji, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.

Then there is Mauritius, Morocco, the Seychelles, South Africa, the Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. All the states of Australia have some smoking legislation. Then there is Syria, Thailand, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Cambodia, China, India, Iran, Japan, Turkey, the Ukraine, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Bhutan, Sylvania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, Rumania, the Russian Federation, San Marino, Slovakia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldavia, Montenegro, Norway, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Albania, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium and Bulgaria. As you can see, there is a great—

The Hon. B.V. Finnigan interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: The Hon. Bernard Finnigan mentions Wikipedia. In fact, it was the international trends on smoke-free provisionmade available by Action on Smoking and Health; so it has nothing to do with Wikipedia. Even the most addicted smokers abstain from smoking on public transport because it is an unequivocal attack on the rights of others, and smokers respect that. I argue that, in 20 years, a trip to the city will be similar: that a smoker will abstain from smoking until they return home.

We need to try to do this on one voluntary day in May, and then vote on it following that, because I think it will demonstrate to the community that we can achieve a voluntary day in May. I have no doubt that, as time passes and research outcomes into the effects of second-hand smoke become more undeniable, those expectations will become such for all public spaces. To that end, it seems pointless to become more and more prescriptive with our tobacco laws.

South Australia can continue to prescribe smoke-free events and areas, such as playgrounds, bus stops and beaches. This will be a more incremental approach to what I would say it is inevitable—having smoke-free public places. At the moment, no council in Australia has a blanket ban on smoking, but New South Wales officers have the power to demand details and expiate offenders.

In terms of policing this legislation, the Adelaide City Council is all but hopeless in policing compliance with tobacco legislation. I am well aware that, should this legislation eventuate in a total smoking ban in all public places within our city council, other legislative measures will need to be reached first. At present, the council has regular patrols of delegated compliance and stormwater officers, who often speak to groups of smokers from a health and pollution perspective, and the clogging up of stormwater drains. If they witness someone littering with a cigarette butt, they have the power to expiate a $315 fine; however, they have no power to request their name and address. Of course, if someone refuses, or does not have the money to pay on the spot, as very few people would, there is no actual power or mechanism for the city council to follow up that individual.

Whilst most of us would agree that a $315 fine is appropriate for a trailer load of rubbish littered somewhere else, or a reckless act of littering, it is probably far too great for an individual cigarette butt. I wonder whether at some point one of the outcomes of this bill will be further discussions and consultation with the Adelaide City Council, and a change to the littering act and the Local Government Act that may well allow the city council to impose an expiation fee of, say, $50 for a cigarette butt—maybe $20 for some chewing gum—and then also allow them to pick up the person's name and address and follow it up. Whilst it is not the focus of this bill, the city council would argue that chewing gum on the pavement is one of its biggest costs. Almost on a daily basis—a bit like the Sydney Harbour Bridge—the cleaning of chewing gum off our lovely Rundle Mall pavement occurs. It is an ongoing exercise.

Because Rundle Mall is not covered under the Local Government Act, the council cannot make those rulings in that area. In terms of consultation on this particular bill, we need to look at a whole range of other ways that we can assist the community once we have succeeded in having this first smoke-free day.

The Non-Smokers Movement of Australia, in its support for my bill, has suggested the addition of designated outdoor smoking areas, but not in main thoroughfares such as the mall. In jurisdictions elsewhere in the country and the world, a main precinct such as a mall (or Hindley Street or Rundle Street) has a designated smoking area off and away from it.

I prefer people not to smoke at all, but that may be another option that members in this place might like to investigate, to look for opportunities for people to go where they do not offend others, do not pollute the air and where their cigarette butts are adequately contained.

I have raised a number of these issues within this bill. I have had significant consultation with a whole range of people, including cigarette manufacturers and the anti-smoking lobby. The bill talks about an expiation fee and the profits going to the Cancer Council. At this point the Cancer Council has a couple of other smoke-free days. I am still discussing with it a way of involving its good work with this voluntary day we are proposing in May this year. We would then look at having, in May 2009, one calendar day—the last Friday in May before World No Tobacco Day—and if successful we could look at the Christmas Pageant day, when 400,000 people come to the city, the vast majority of which are children.

I urge members to look at the contribution I have made, engage in debate with the Adelaide City Council, the Cancer Council, Quit SA, and the Australian Medical Association. The evidence is overwhelming that it is in the best interests of the community to do this. I am proud of Adelaide as a city and state that has led this nation in a whole range of reforms. To be the first city in Australia to be smoke free, even initially for just one voluntary day in May this year, would be the catalyst to further leadership on this issue and would be a great step forward. If only one or two people succeeded in giving up as a result of this one voluntary day in May this year that would make it a success. I know a number of smokers who enjoy cigarettes, but I do not know one who says that it is doing them the world of good and is extending their life. I commend the bill to the chamber and look forward to other members' contributions.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J. Gazzola.

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