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Home > Ministers > The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP - Minister for Health > Media Hub > Transcript, Doorstop, Woolworths, Town Hall, Sydney Friday, 30 November 2012

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PDF printable version of Transcript, Doorstop, Woolworths, Town Hall, Sydney Friday, 30 November 2012 (PDF 365 KB)

30 November 2012

E&OE Only

Topics: Plain-packing of tobacco/chemo drugs

Tanya Plibersek: Well thanks everyone. I'm so pleased to be here at Woolworths, and I'm very grateful to Woolworths for having us here today.

We're here to remind people that from 1 December - tomorrow - our historic plain packaging starts in stores right across Australia. This means that cigarettes from now on will be sold in packages that are largely covered by graphic health warnings, the bits the aren't health warnings are a drab, brown colour, and the writing on the packet is all in the same style. So the only thing that will help you tell one brand from another is the name written on the packet.

This is a really important measure for the health of our young people and our community. We know that 80 per cent of people start smoking before the age of 18, and 99 per cent of people start smoking before they turn 26. If we can prevent young people taking up smoking, we're doing all of ourselves a favour.

We know that smoking costs the Australian community $31.5 billion a year, and we still tragically lose 15,000 Australians ever year to smoking.

Plain packaging sends a very strong signal to the tobacco industry that we won't tolerate this sort of ongoing promotion of tobacco in Australia. This is the last avenue that big tobacco had to advertise their products. That's why they've been so prepared to take us to court. The High Court challenge was the dying gasp - the last gasp of a dying industry. They wanted to take us to court because they know plain packaging will work.

Anybody got any questions on plain packaging?

Question: In terms of what next, what does the Government plan [indistinct]?

Tanya Plibersek: Well this is a world-leading measure. There is no other country who is as advanced in fighting the tobacco industry as we are here in Australia. We'll continue to make sure that our plain packaging legislation is enforced. We're going to continue to work with smokers themselves by doing things like subsidising nicotine replacement therapies and launching terrific apps like MyQuitBuddy and Quit For Your - Quit For Two by increasing ht excise as we did a few years ago, we also made it less attractive for people to smoke.

We'll continue to take our multifaceted approach that supports smokers to give up smoking and fights big tobacco.

Question: [Inaudible question]

Tanya Plibersek: Well I can tell that I've had a few letters to the office already with smokers saying to me the cigarettes don't taste the same as they use to. Now the tobacco companies say they've made no changes at all to what's inside the cigarettes. What that tells is that the change in packaging is already having an effect on smokers; it's less attractive to smoke, and that's the aim of this whole exercise.

Question: What about doing things like regulating what's actually in cigarettes?

Tanya Plibersek: Well there are regulations about what's in a cigarette; I'm not sure exactly what type of regulation you mean.

Question: Sorry, I was talking to someone from [indistinct] this morning and they were saying in terms of regulating the ingredients, so that when people actually smoke it doesn't feel as good as it does at the moment?

Tanya Plibersek: Yeah, I guess they're already poisonous, and if you're not a smoker they taste pretty disgusting as it is. The challenge for us as a Government is to make it as unappealing as possible when it comes to advertising and promotion. We're not considering forcing tobacco companies to put additives in that would make what I think is a disgusting taste even more disgusting.

Question: Yeah, it would be more about removing certain additives/ingredients.

Tanya Plibersek: Well you know, that's not something that we're contemplating at the moment. We're already leading the world in our anti-tobacco measures and I'm very proud of what we've achieved so far. We've got to make sure that we're enforcing what we've achieved.

Question: So are you positive that the changing taste that some people are reporting is a direct result of the packaging looking different?

Tanya Plibersek: The tobacco companies say that they haven't changed the ingredients. I think what you're seeing is the psychological effect of marketing.

Question: British America and Imperial, they went against, breached your rules. Do you think that's going to impact tomorrow's rollout?

Tanya Plibersek: Look, I'm very pleased to say that the companies that have got changes to the alphanumeric codes and they've got a faint watermark on the cigarettes themselves, they have said that they will comply. They believe that they are compliant. We believe that they're not compliant but they have volunteered to change what they're doing so that's a good outcome.

Question: [Inaudible question]

Tanya Plibersek: Well, it hasn't started yet so tomorrow's the first date so I don't think we can write it off quite yet. Plain packaging will take some time to have an effect just as all of these measures take some time to have an effect but when you look at what we've achieved in Australia, after the Second World War 50 per cent of Australians smoked, now 15 per cent of Australians smoke. We're keen to get that number down to 10 per cent by 2018. So we're going to keep pushing down the rate of smokers.

If we can prevent young people from taking it up, that's a lifetime gift to them and if we can help people who've been addicted for some time, by helping them with nicotine replacement therapies and apps like MyQuitBuddy and Quit For You, Quit For Two, then I think we'll see a big difference in our smoking rate over coming years.

Question: What if retailers are caught out selling branded products?

Tanya Plibersek: We've got a range of things that we can do with retailers who are non-compliant. I'm very pleased to say that the big retailers like Woolies and Coles and others that sell 70 per cent of tobacco in Australia are compliant and they've been very quick to become compliant.

The majority of small shopkeepers are saying that they're compliant.

We've had some difficulties with companies like Philip Morris who have refused to take back non-compliant stock. We've, of course, written to Philip Morris and insisted that they should take back non-compliant stock because we don't want small shopkeepers, mum and dad shopkeepers, to be the ones who suffer here.

We believe that the tobacco companies are responsible for taking back non-compliant stock and they should do that.

We've got a range of options we can take if people are reported to be non-compliant and that can be from education, a letter telling them that they're non-compliant, all the way to fines of over a million dollars for a corporation that has a large and deliberate breach of these laws.

When you're talking about, you know, a few packets here perhaps sold in error, we'll take an educative approach at that end of the spectrum. If you're talking about a large corporation that deliberately imported or made non-compliant cigarettes, then we'd be throwing the book at them.

Question: How are you going to police this tomorrow, particularly on the first day?

Tanya Plibersek: We're not sending the stormtroopers around on the first day. We know that this is a big change for people. Although they've had a year to prepare, like I say, in the first instance in most cases we'll have an educative approach.

I expect that most of the information we get will actually be from members of the public. When we've made changes like this in the past it's often been members of the public ringing up and dobbing in people who are non-compliant but, of course, we also have inspectors that will be employed over time, particularly to go into the factories where the cigarettes are being manufactured but also, of course, to keep an eye on retail.

Question: Minister, on another issue, the cost of statins…

Tanya Plibersek: Can I just check? Is everyone done on tobacco?

Yep? Okay.

Question: What effect will it have on the Budget, through the implementation of plain packaging?

Tanya Plibersek: Plain packaging itself has little effect on the Budget. Obviously we have some costs. We've written to 35,000 shopkeepers, for example, to make sure that they understand the rules. We have costs around advertising the implementation and, you know, other small associated costs.

The real question here is how much do we save by having a healthier community?

Fifteen thousand Australians die from smoking. It costs us, aside from that human toll, it costs our community $31.5 billion every year in sickness, lost productivity, hours and days off work, the carers who are looking after those dying people. This is an enormous cost to our community so the small cost of implementing this measure is vastly offset by the savings we'll make in decades to come when fewer Australians die long and agonising deaths from lung cancer and other tobacco-related causes.

Question: Just the cost of statins.

Tanya Plibersek: Yes?

Question: The biggest seller is the one that is coming down substantially [indistinct].

Tanya Plibersek: Look, it's a terrific win for consumers. As older medicines come off patent and there's competition in the marketplace, more brand of that medicine become available to consumers.

The fact that there's more brands means that the prices come down. It's really good news for consumers. Some of these medicines will now be below the cost of the general co-payment so normally when you go to the pharmacist you pay just over $35. Some of these medicines will drop down below that mark now so that's a direct saving to consumers.

It's also good news in another way.

We spend about $13 billion a year subsidizing medicines as a community, and if we bring down the cost of those lower - those older medicines, I f we bring down the cost of the older medicines, it allows us to list new medicines on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme much more easily.

We've listed about $5 billion worth of new medicine since 2007. That's a large cost to our community, but it's a great investment. Those new medicines being invented and discovered all the time are great for our health.

To be able to afford that $5 billion, the policy of expanded and accelerated price disclosure that brings down the cost of these older medicines is - it's a good investment in having that money available for the newer medicines.

Question: I understand there's 13 other drugs where prices have come down as well?

Tanya Plibersek: Yeah so…

Question: What is that due to [indistinct]?

Tanya Plibersek: This is due to the expanded and accelerated price disclosure policy. This is a policy that says when a medicines comes off patent, and there's competition in the market place. We look at what the pharmacists are actually paying the manufacturers for that medicine, and the Government pays something closer to that price. We don't pay the very high prices that we use to pay when there was only one type of this medicine - when it was a branded medicine.

So by bringing down the - the competition entering the market place, the pharmacists cost less, that means the Government subsidy is less, and it means consumers benefit and taxpayers benefit.

Question: And the chemotherapy problem that's hit private hospitals, has that been resolved yet?

Tanya Plibersek: We're in very productive discussions with the pharmacists, with the private hospitals, private health insurers and others. The situation there is exactly the same as [indistinct]. This medicine has come off patent, so a medicine that's been costing thousands of dollars is now substantially cheaper than it has been in the past.

The pharmacists and private hospitals have obviously been using some of the difference in what they've been paying for the medicine and what the Government has been reimbursing them to cross subsidize other areas of their business.

Of course they're concerned about that loss, but by reducing the price of older chemotherapy drugs, we're able to list a whole range of new drugs. So we've made about $118 million worth of savings by reducing the cost of the older drugs, but we've listed $1.3 billion worth of new chemo drugs or new cancer-related and chemo drugs. Thirty different drugs for 15 different types of cancers - brand new, state of the art drugs at the same time.

Question: Does this mean sufferers need to worry?

Tanya Plibersek: No I think it's very important that people understand. The price to the patient does not change. If something's on the Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme, the patient will never pay more than $5.80 if they're a concession patient, or $35.40 if they're a general patient.

The patient will never pay more. This is about pharmacists' pay. It's about pharmacists' reimbursement.

Question: So there's not going to be anyone on the actual cutting-back of treatment?

Tanya Plibersek: There is not a single cent more for chemo patients to pay for this drug. They will never pay more than $5.80 if they're a concession patient, or $35.40 if they're a general patient. That's the whole point of subsidizing these medicines.

Some chemo medicines are very expensive - they might cost $5000, $6000, $7000 for a treatment, and yet the patient never pays more than $5.80, or $35.40, and that will be the same for this drug coming off patent. They will not pay a single cent more for the drug.

The issue that's in question is how much pharmacists get paid to deliver it.

(ends)