ERIN DALE, AUSTRALIAN BORDER FORCE ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER, TOBACCO AND E-CIGARETTE: Thank you, everyone. It's been a huge day today. Today it's the first Symposium of all Commonwealth and State and Territory agencies. Over 80 people gathered here today to work out what's our next steps, what's our next phase in addressing this illicit tobacco and e cigarette issue. It's been very fruitful discussion this morning. We have heard from ACIC, which is the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, Australian Border Force, Therapeutic Administration, and number of other speakers. And can I say I'm honoured to have the Minister the honourable Mark Butler here with us. And I’ll hand over to the Minister for a special announcement.
MARK BUTLER, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: Thank you, Erin. Erin is the world's first Illicit Tobacco and E-Cigarette Commissioner focused on the job that really the Parliament and all jurisdictions have given her and a range of other authorities at state and federal level, and that is to stamp out recreational vaping.
This is a scourge that really crept up on our community, as it did communities right around the world. Back in 2016 only about 200,000 Australians vaped. It was seen as a relatively fringe activity, but by last year, that number had crept up to almost 2 million. It literally exploded, particularly among teenagers and young adults, where vaping rates were far, far higher than the rest of the population. We know why, because Big Tobacco very deliberately and cynically marketed this product directed at young people to lure them into nicotine addiction and ultimately into cigarette smoking. You just have to look at the products, the bright colours, the bubble gum flavours and the other flavours. You have to look at where the vape stores started to open over the last several years, nine out of 10 of them within walking distance of schools. To understand if you had any doubt this was not what it was presented to be when they first emerged, these e-cigarettes. That was a therapeutic device, another tool in the toolbox to help hardened smokers who've been smoking for years or decades finally kick the habit. It is very clear this product is a product designed to lure a new generation into nicotine addiction, and the tragedy has been it's been working. We know now through research that high school students who vape are about five times as likely to take up cigarette smoking. Terrifyingly, 12-year-olds who vape, and there are many of them, are 29 times as likely to take up cigarettes as 12-year-olds who don't vape.
The sense of determination between all jurisdictions and frankly, all portfolio areas to stamp this public health scourge out is reinforced by this event. Today, Erin has been able to pull together every relevant Commonwealth agency and every state in the Federation, policing authorities, health authorities, as Erin said, the Criminal Intelligence Commission. Because we understand now this is not just a fight against Big Tobacco, a fight we've been having as a country with other countries around the world for 50 years. This is also a fight against serious organised crime, who have recognised this as a very lucrative source of revenue to bankroll all of their other criminal activities; sex trafficking, drug trafficking and the like, which is why you have such a strong representation from policing authorities at today's event. We are determined to stamp this out.
We passed laws that took effect on the1st of July to outlaw the sale of vapes outside of a therapeutic setting, particularly a pharmacy. We've seen vaping rates for the first time in many years, start to decline. We've seen millions of vapes seized at the border by the Border Force and the Therapeutic Goods Administration in particular. We've seen hundreds of operations conducted by health and policing authorities at state and territory level, starting to seize vapes, starting to issue infringement notices and starting the process of prosecutions. I want to just reaffirm this to the community and particularly those who are still seeking to make a profit out of this awful market. We are deadly serious. Everyone at this event is deadly serious about enforcing the very serious penalties that we passed in our Commonwealth legislation earlier this year. Fines of over $2 million for individuals who breached the law, fines of over $20 million for corporations that breached the law, and very serious jail terms as well.
To that end, I'm very pleased to announce additional Commonwealth funding of $107 million that will be provided to relevant Commonwealth authorities to double down on our efforts on enforcement and interception of this illegal trade. There's also additional money for prosecutions, particularly supporting the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to enforce these laws. And ensure that the criminals involved in this are very clear that we're deadly serious about stamping out this trade. As well additional funds to research and to monitor what is a very fast moving illegal criminal market. I want to again thank Erin for the enormous energy and commitment that she has brought to this, but it's an energy and commitment that is reflected right across the Commonwealth portfolio areas. The TGA, the Border Force, have been working so hard at this now for a considerable period of time. We've got terrific cooperation from all states and territories, again, police authorities and health authorities that, again, is reinforced by all of their attendance today. Happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: You just said that millions of Australians are addicted to illegal vapes and that your goal is to completely eradicate them. But we know that anyone who really wants to can get their hands on recreational drugs pretty easily. Why are you more optimistic about vapes I mean, surely they're just as difficult to eradicate as other illicit substances?
BUTLER: I didn't come down in the last shower, and from the time we announced our intention to stamp out this trade, I've been very clear with the Australian people that this is going to be long, hard work. I don't pretend that, given all of our experience with illicit drugs, that there aren't going to be some vapes that get into the country and some vapes that get into the hands of including young people, and we've seen that over decades of experience with illicit drugs. But we are going to do everything we possibly can to prevent them getting into the hands, particularly of our kids. And just because there might not be the ability to completely eradicate every single vape from every single jurisdiction, doesn't mean that we don't have a responsibility as governments to do our darndest, to do everything we can to take vapes out of the hands of our kids. And we know this is already working, it's very early days, but vaping rates are down we know that through research. We know anecdotally, vapes are harder to get for high school kids. They're less frequent in high school settings now. But I think today's Symposium reinforces we've got a long way to go, but we are and we are determined to do everything we can to defeat this public health matters for kids.
JOURNALIST: It sounds like a lot of this money is going to enforcement. Have you set aside any money for, you know, helping people deal with, young people, deal with the addiction that they have from vapes?
BUTLER: We've adopted the approach that the governments, or all governments, have had, really, for 40 years now around these sorts of harms; demand reduction, supply reduction and harm reduction. I'm very much focused on the supply reduction that we've been able to really be quite successful at with the border controls that put in place on the first of January. The interventions that have been made by the TGA and other authorities to seize vapes within Australia's borders. But we've also put significant money into demand reduction. We're doing that through advertising campaigns that are using quite new channels for the Commonwealth. We recognise that high school students aren't really watching TV, they're certainly not listening to lectures from 50-year-old, 54-year-old, I wish I was 50, 54-year-old health ministers, and that's why we've gone into social media. For the first time the Commonwealth has engaged social media influencers to create content with anti-vaping messages. We know that social media has been rife with pro-vaping messages for far too long. Those pieces of work have been viewed millions and millions of times. They've been liked hundreds of thousands of times and shared on many occasions as well. They are having an impact. For the first time ever, the Commonwealth has advertised on TikTok, because we know for better or for worse, young kids, high school kids, and even younger than that, are watching TikTok. If we want to get an anti-vaping message, then we have to do it that way. As well as that, we've provided very significant additional resources to agencies like Quitline. This year, twice as many people who vape have contacted Quitline for support as did last year. They're downloading in their tens of thousands, the MyQuit Buddy App to help them get off the vapes as well. We've been distributing resources to schools and to parents to help them cope with the fact that often they're seriously addicted teenagers are having to come off vapes. We've provided strong support using proven models that have been deployed in high schools around alcohol and illicit drug use that will be available to all high schools next year. After having been very successfully piloted this year.
JOURNALIST: Telstra has been charged $3 million over an outage earlier this year that left people unable to place triple zero calls. Are telcos up to the job? Considering Optus had a similar outage last year?
BUTLER: I'm not going to deal with that specific issue. That's a matter for the Communications Minister. It's one I know she is taking very seriously but I don't want to cut across her portfolio responsibilities and answer that.
JOURNALIST: The government has had the Senate Inquiry report into reproductive healthcare access for over a year now, your response is well overdue. Do you plan to actually release it and when?
BUTLER: We're taking this area of health really seriously. Ged Kearney is the Assistant Minister for Health is working very hard on this, but in conjunction with me and also with Katy Gallagher, the Minister for Women. There are three broad areas that we're seeking to bring together in a broader response to some of the challenges women have in getting really good, affordable health care. That's the reproductive health report you talk about the availability of cutting edge, pill-based contraception, but also the uptake of IUDs. Also the area of menopause is an area that's been wrong under done in the health sector. We want to do better on that. We've received a really creative report from the Senate Committee, more recently than the reproductive healthcare report.
And finally, we're working very hard to get much better support for the one in seven Australian women who suffer from endometriosis. I was at one of the Endometriosis and Pelvic Pain Clinics only yesterday, in Cairns that are really lifting the level of specialised support for women with that condition. Only a couple of weeks ago, we announced the first new listing on the PBS for endometriosis in 30 years Visanne, which will really be life changing, potentially for hundreds of thousands of women with that condition. Yes, we've had that report for a reasonable period of time I recognise that. We've also had the menopause report for, I think, a couple of months now, and a range of pieces of work that Ged Kearney has been leading with the health sector and with women's groups to try and bring together a broader package, I guess, of things that we can do to ensure that women get the best possible, affordable, accessible healthcare, which gives them the most choice.
JOURNALIST: But you still won’t commit to a release date?
BUTLER: I haven't got a release date in mind. I can assure Australia's women and the Australian healthcare sector, though, that we're working really hard on all of these three areas.
JOURNALIST: You say you have the Menopause Inquiry to respond to. Are you going to respond before the election? Can you commit to that?
BUTLER: I'm not going to get into a commitment about particular dates. I think women will see through some of the measures we've put in place over the last couple of budgets, measures like the listing of Visanne. But we are very serious about this area of the health portfolio, women's health, and we'll be making announcements in due course.
JOURNALIST: Women are still reporting difficulty accessing non hormonal, long acting, reversible contraceptives, making these available key part of the National Women's Health Strategy. Are you aware of this ongoing problem, and what are you doing to alleviate it?
BUTLER: Already in the Budget this year, we provided some additional support to training for primary care practitioners, which will largely be GPs, but also nurse practitioners. In time, I hope, as well, practice nurses in the insertion of IUDs. One of the really serious bottlenecks in the system is there just aren't enough primary care professionals who are trained in this work to give women genuine choice and accessibility. And that's really, I think, the main reason why we have a much lower uptake of long acting, reversible contraceptives like IUDs, than pretty much any other OECD country. We've started an investment in that, as we have started an investment in improving the capability of general primary care professionals to provide support to women going through perimenopause and menopause. But I recognise there are some really creative recommendations in the Inquiry that we're working through right now to build on that.
JOURNALIST: And just one more on today's topic, on the tax excise Are there any plans to drop the price of cigarettes to deter people from going to vapes?
BUTLER: There are no plans to make cigarettes cheaper. Thanks, everyone.
Media event date:
Date published:
Media type:
Transcript
Audience:
General public
Minister: