TRANSCRIPT:
Tobacco use is estimated to kill at least 20,000 Australians a year.
Health Minister Mark Butler says it's time for more aggressive laws to stop people from smoking.
"Today I'm introducing the first suite of major reforms to tobacco control in more than 12 years, since Nicola Roxon introduced her landmark world-leading plain packaging landmark reforms in 2011. Twelve years ago, Australia lead the world with those reforms in tobacco control. But while we led the world 12 years ago, we now lag because of a decade of inaction."
The changes proposed by the government include modernising health warnings on cigarette packages, expanding advertising prohibitions to e-cigarettes and vapes, and standardising product design features.
Professor Emily Banks is an expert in chronic disease and tobacco control and chairs the National Health and Medical Research Council Research Impact Committee.
Her team has been involved in some of the reviews around health messaging on cigarette packaging, which Professor Banks says is a vital part of the fight against tobacco use.
"One of the things about having a message on the actual cigarette itself is something that's seen by smokers and those around them repeatedly during the day. So they need to be punchy, they need to be short, so they can fit on the actual cigarette. But they're very important in terms of reinforcing the warnings that are already out there on mass media ,the warnings that are on the packet. And it's another step towards having a really clear reminder about the harms of smoking."
Vaping will come in for its own separate attention soon.
The government is backing a public consultation process about to be launched by the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which will establish what needs to be done to regulate the practice.
Mr Butler says Labor doesn't want to do anything to encourage a new generation of smokers.
"So we're very focused first of all on making sure cigarettes in and of themselves are as unappealing as they possibly can be and contain very clear messages, as Emily said, of the clear harms that are involved in smoking cigarettes. But we also need to stamp out vaping. And as you know we've got a range of measures that we're developing with state and territory governments to do that. But we'v got to do both, we can't just do one. It's very clear the tobacco industry has a clear strategy to connect these two things as part of their strategy to recruit this new generation to vaping and then to smoking."
If the legislation is approved, the industry will have a 12 month transition period to incorporate the reforms.
The Cancer Council's CEO Professor Tanya Buchanan ((boo-can-in)) says they hope it goes through.
"More than 250 thousand Australians are predicted to die over the next 20 years from smoking-related cancers alone. And this is a really truly unacceptable statistic because smoking-related cancers are entirely preventable. So parliament really can and must intervene and support this legislation in order to change the course of that trajectory."
While the Parliament considers the health of its citizens, there are also calls to consider the health of the environment.
A new Climate of the Nation report ((released Wed 13 Sep)) by the Australia Institute has found a significant majority of Australians, at least 75 percent, support policies that would force fossil fuel companies to pay for the damage they are causing.
Independent Senator David Pocock has tabled the report in Parliament, saying it's clear the government is out of touch when it comes to climate change.
It's a message that Greens Leader Adam Bandt has been sending for some time.
He says the government are saying one thing but doing another.
"There's a reason that half of Labor voters think that the government is not doing enough on climate. Labor in the middle of a climate crisis is approving coal and gas projects. Coal and gas are the major causes of the climate crisis. That's what they're going to be working towards the climate summit and that's the reason that neither the prime minister nor the climate minister are going, because they could not justify Labor's continued commitment to open coal or gas projects."
The Greens and crossbench are not the only ones to be sounding the alarm.
A group of former defence and security officials, including former defence chief Admiral Chris Barrie, are demanding Labor release a declassified secret intelligence report into the national security risks posed by the climate crisis.
The report was completed by the Office of National Intelligence in 2022.
And last week, a United Nations investigator unleashed on Australia for failing to protect its people and environment from climate change, mining, pesticides and other toxic threats.
Marcos Orellana said Australians did not feel heard or protected from harms inflicted upon them, often for commercial gain.
He described Australia's environmental protection framework as largely reactive, and "beneath international best practices" - something that could change if the country enshrined in law the right to a healthy environment.
