THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
2GB DRIVE WITH CHRIS O’KEEFE
WEDNESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2024
SUBJECTS: HEALTH WARNINGS ON CIGARETTE BUTTS, RISE OF BLACK MARKET TRADE, LOWERING OF THE LEGAL AGE OF MARRIAGE IN IRAQ.
CHRIS O'KEEFE, HOST: Well, we spoke about this earlier, but have you heard that health warnings will soon be printed directly on individual cigarette butts. That's right. On the smokes themselves, there'll be warnings like, cigarettes cause cancer or cigarettes harm children. So, it's not just the packets anymore. It's on the smokes that you light up, too. Now, that's all fine, but what it actually does is once again, I think, just burden the legal operators that are effectively collecting tax for the government. There's no point in putting health warnings on cigarettes if nobody is smoking the legal stuff that the warnings are on.
Now, the tax arrangements and changes to stopping people from accessing packets of, say, 50 cigarettes. You can no longer get menthols. You can no longer get crush balls legally. Plus, just how expensive cigarettes are legally these days has pushed addicted smokers to a criminal black market. So, one packet of 25 cigarettes is $32.50 in tax. It's about $1.30 in tax on every cigarette. So, no wonder people are flocking to illegal packs when they cost $10 a pop, right?
Now, I'm not here to feel sorry for big tobacco, without absolutely zero sympathy at all for big tobacco companies. I just think that maybe the government needs to have a rethink, as noble as this push may have been. Now, the Environment Minister, Tanya Plibersek is on the line for us.
Minister, thank you for coming on.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND WATER: Hi, Chris. Great to talk to you.
O'KEEFE: And you. Do you think we've hit a tipping point here where we've made legal cigarettes so expensive that you've just created a black market?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: No. I do think it is really important to crack down on the black market, and that's why we've put about $200 million into that crackdown on illegal imports. But, you know, Chris, if you were ever a smoker, I was in my teens and twenties. Yeah, I gave up for the for the final time. Tried a million times. I gave up for the final time when I was pregnant with my first child. I think that's the experience of a lot of people.
I don't know a single person who wants their kids to grow up to be a smoker, even if they've been a smoker themselves, they don't want their kids taking it up. And big tobacco are so clever at changing the way they operate to get the next generation hooked because they know that their current customers are dying. You know, there's not many products. In fact, there's no other product that is, if taken as intended, kills more than half of its regular users.
O'KEEFE: But it is legal, right?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, it's legal.
O'KEEFE: I understand that, but don't we deal with where we are in reality and if it's costing –
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes, and where we are in reality is that the big tobacco companies have got these pretty pastel colours, they've got slim little cigarettes, they've got quirky –
O'KEEFE: Yeah, but they're selling on the black market anyway.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: They've got all this stuff. Yeah, and that's why we’ve got to crack down on the black market. Every time we crack down on tobacco, I was the Minister when we introduced plain packaging, and at that time, big tobacco said, oh, if you do this, it'll, you know, more illegal. And then you say, okay, we're going to make the health warnings. Oh, if you do that, there will be more illegal tobacco. Every time we have introduced any tobacco control measure, the big tobacco companies get their paid lobbyists to go out there and say, oh, this will be a nightmare for illegal tobacco. Yes, that's a problem. That's why we've got a crackdown at the border, and we've got a crackdown on the people who are transporting it around Australia who are organised criminals. Like, if organised criminals--
O'KEEFE: But it's just like trying to stop –
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: We don't say, let's, you know, let's let them do it legally.
O'KEEFE: It depends on what jurisdiction in the world you're in. Depends what jurisdiction you're in. Maybe your friends in Canada and Justin Trudeau and the like might disagree, however. But what you would admit, though, prohibition as a policy option hasn't been all that successful in the past.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, look, I think you've got to deal with drug and alcohol problems as health issues when they become a problem. Obviously, if people are drinking too much alcohol, you've got to deal with that as a health problem. Smoking should be dealt with as a health problem. This is not about punishing smokers, not for a moment. It's about making sure tobacco doesn't get the next generation hooked.
O'KEEFE: But, yeah, you might say that, but then you might stop them to get the next generation hooked. But instead, you're making the pockets of organised criminals fat.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, that's why we've got to crack down on the criminals.
O'KEEFE: Yeah, but what I'm saying is that you're looking at a policy of prohibition, and it just doesn't work. We know that.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I don't know, Chris, what you're suggesting. The alternative should be that we should just, you know--
O'KEEFE: I don't know what the alternative is. Maybe there's a case for it.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: What we know is that people are very price sensitive, so if the cost of tobacco goes up, smoking rates go down. And that's particularly true for kids. It's particularly true.
O'KEEFE: But unfortunately, as it stands right now, cigarettes are at their cheapest for a very long time because you've got a flourishing black market. 10 bucks a packet. Minister, you and I are both smokers, right? At one point in our lives. Yeah, at one point of our lives. And I was one of the greatest quitters. I tried many times to do it. And the truth of the matter is, if I had access to a $10 packet versus a $50 packet that's legal, I would have taken the $10 packet every day of the week. And I'm sure you would have.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah. And I don't think giving up on policing is the response to that. And making legal tobacco cheaper is the response to that. I think the response to that is to keep changing what we do to help people give up, to make sure that we're not blaming the smoker or punishing the smoker, that we're helping people give up, making sure that kids don't take it up and making sure that organised crime don't have the ability to fund their other organised criminal activities by selling cheap tobacco.
O'KEEFE: Status quo is not working. Anyway, let's move on. Let's talk about COP. The Climate Conference. No Joe Biden, no European Union. Chris Bowen, Matt Kean, and the Taliban in attendance.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think there'll be more than that there.
O'KEEFE: They got anything in common?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Not a thing.
O'KEEFE: Is it still - without Joe Biden, without the European Union, does it still hold the same sort of sway that it once did?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Oh, yeah. Look, it's a really important meeting. Presidents and Prime Ministers don't go to every one of these big international meetings. It’s an annual meeting, and the leaders go every few years. So, it's going to still be very important for Australia to be represented there so that we can make sure we're representing Australia's best interest.
O'KEEFE: Okay. I don't know if you saw this one, but this made me feel sick today. Iraq is on the brink of a significant legislative shift that could lower the legal age of marriage for Iraqi girls from 18 to 9 and stripping them of the rights to divorce, inheritance, and the custody of their own babies. What's your reaction to that?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's horrifying. I mean, the people who are protesting against this in Iraq are incredibly brave. They are saying that this legalises child rape. It also, these same laws, take women's rights away when it comes to divorce, or child custody or inheritance. It is deeply troubling to think that this might happen. And it is incredibly brave when you think about people in a country where protest is not dealt with kindly, that you’ve got people standing up there and saying this mustn't happen.
O'KEEFE: Has the Labor Government expressed its disgust at this through official channels?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm not sure what communication there's been, but the Foreign Minister has made very clear that the Australian Government finds this deeply troubling.
O'KEEFE: Because I know Iraq's got an ambassador here in Canberra, right?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes. But I can't talk about any communication that's happened.
O'KEEFE: Hopefully some.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah. I mean, look, it is deeply troubling to think that such a law might occur and, yeah, it's horrifying to think.
O'KEEFE: All right, Minister, I appreciate it. I know that it clearly sounds like something's happening in the background, so thank you for that and I'll let you go. Appreciate you coming on.
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Always great to talk to you, Chris. Thank you.
O'KEEFE: That's the Environment Minister. Tanya Plibersek, 131873, doesn't look like we'll get a U-turn, does it when it comes to the cigarette excise? But I did note that the Opposition and Peter Dutton they're certainly looking at it.
They're looking at significantly reducing the tax paid on cigarettes because they see the issue for what it is. If you've got a flourishing black market, you can't just take it on through the cops, you've got to take it on through market forces. And I'm sorry, but people are going to smoke.
END
