LABOR CANDIDATE FOR GRIFFITH, RENEE COFFEY: Good morning. My name is Renee Coffey. I'm Labor's Candidate for Griffith. And it's really great to be here this morning at Cannon Hill Anglican College. For me, it's a bit of a collision of 2 worlds. I actually went to Cannon Hill College, and I have been a board director here. And one thing I know about the college is that they put the wellbeing of students at the centre of everything they do. So it's no surprise to me that they have been involved with this fantastic new program by the Australian Government. We know in the community that vaping is a serious issue, one that parents are incredibly concerned about. And that's why it's incredibly important that the Australian Government has taken its actions to address vaping in our community. And it's my great honour to be able to introduce this morning to you, the Honourable Mark Butler, the Minister for Health, to speak a little bit about this program.
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thanks, Renee. We're so lucky to have Renee as our candidate here in Griffith. She's a local: went to school here, has served on the board of this school, so deeply embedded in education, in this community, and in health, and particularly the mental health of young people and families as well. So it's a great privilege we have as the Labor Party that Renee has agreed to stick her hand up and run for parliament at the next federal election.
Vaping is a public health menace, particularly for young Australians. Over the 4 years, over the COVID pandemic, vaping rates among high school aged students exploded fivefold. So for every thousand kids who were vaping in 2019, 5,000 were vaping in 2023. It frankly got under everyone's radar, not just here in Australia, but across the world. What was presented by Big Tobacco as a therapeutic device for older, hardened smokers to help finally kick the habit, we found out was actually a device to lure a new generation into nicotine. The tragedy is: it's been working here in Australia, in so many countries around the world. One in 6 high school students has vaped. And we found out recently through research from the University of Sydney, what we always suspected, is that vapes are a gateway to cigarette smoking. So high school age students who vape were 5 times more likely to take up cigarettes, and terrifyingly, 12-year-olds who vape were 29 times as likely to take up cigarettes as their counterparts who did not vape. We've been determined, along with health minister colleagues at state level, to stamp out recreational vaping, particularly among young Australians. We put in place an import control on the 1st of January this year, to stop the flood of disposable vapes that were coming into this country to be put into the hands of young people. These vapes have cartoon characters on them they’re bubblegum flavoured, but they're so clearly targeted at our kids, to hook them on to nicotine. So we put that ban in place in January and since then, we've seized millions and millions of vapes at the border, preventing them from reaching the hands of young people. And on the 1st of July, we outlawed the sale of vapes outside of a therapeutic setting, that is in pharmacies. We're seeing vape stores shut across the country. We've seen vaping rates, according to Roy Morgan research, for the first time in years, actually decline – after exploding, skyrocketing for year after year, over the last 5 years. So these things are starting to work, but we know it's a long, hard road.
We know Big Tobacco is a ferocious competitor in these areas, and we know that, frankly, this is a market that increasingly is controlled by organised crime, by using the revenue from this market to bankroll their other criminal activities like sex trafficking and drug trafficking. So we are determined to keep this fight going and take these vapes out of the hands of young people, because we know what a health menace it is to them. But we also know that school communities and parents need support. They need information to be able to be provided in a digestible, friendly way for young people, and schools are such an important place for that to happen. School leaders, teachers, parent communities have been telling us for the last couple of years, vaping is now the number one behavioural issue in schools. We've heard of teachers having to be rostered during their lunch hour, not just to stand outside toilets, but to stand inside toilets, to police vaping in their school communities. That's why this program, that I'm proud to announce we roll out nationally this year, has been such an important addition to our toolbox.
I’m going to hand over to Emily to talk a bit about it. But what it does, essentially, is to give year 7 and 8 high school students – so that's a very formative period of their life, when they're being exposed for the first time to some risky products and risky behaviours – gives them the tools to understand those risks and to take a decision to say no and to take the healthy choice. This program has been piloted with 5,000 high school students, trialled under robust clinical trial standards over the past little while by the Matilda Centre from the University of Sydney, with the support of OurFutures, which is significantly funded by the Paul Ramsey Foundation. And its results from teachers and from students themselves have been terrific. So I'm delighted that this program, we're now able to roll out across high schools right through Australia, through the course of 2025 and beyond, so the young people have the information and the tools at their fingertips to make a healthy choice in the face of this real public health menace. I'll hand over to Emily to say a few words about a terrific program.
CHIEF INVESTIGATOR OF THE OURFUTURES VAPING PROGRAM, THE MATILDA CENTRE, THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR EMILY STOCKINGS: Thank you, Minister Butler, and thank you for having us here today. I'm Associate Professor Emily Stockings from the University of Sydney, the Matilda Centre, and I'm a chief investigator on the OurFutures vaping program. Look, we are so excited to have the support of the Albanese Government and the support of Minister Butler to roll out what is Australia's first evidence-based dedicated vaping and smoking prevention program. This is the culmination of decades and decades of dedicated academic research. I'm a researcher at the University of Sydney, at the Matilda Centre, and I'm joined here with colleagues who have been working behind the scenes, conducting clinical trials. They are out in schools across New South Wales, across Queensland, across WA. Five thousand students. We've done surveys at baseline. We've implemented the program. We're following them up for up to 3 years afterwards. This is not just something we pulled out of our pockets. This has been happening for a long period of time.
The OurFutures vaping program is designed to empower young people. It's giving them a toolbox of skills that they can navigate the real world with. So it's a 4-module, cartoon-based narrative program that is designed to empower, educate young people about vapes. But go beyond that, you know, put young people in a situation where they might be offered vapes, and get them to practise in a safe space, resilient skills, assertive communication skills, being able to say no. But also understanding how to help their friends. This is really based on social learning theories. It's based on psychological models of health. And we have conducted, I think it's around eight clinical trials among 20,000+ school students and demonstrated similar models work. For example, the alcohol program, which we have available on the OurFutures website, has shown that up to 7 years after these young people receive these programs, they are less likely to abuse alcohol, they are less likely to have harms arising from alcohol use. So these programs work. So it is so exciting to roll out the vaping one. We are so happy that we're able to provide this to all schools in Australia, to all teachers, support staff, parents who have been crying out for this, and most importantly, our young people, our students.
One of the key elements of this program is it is codesigned. We sit down with young people, we have focus groups with young people, and we ask them: “Ehat would you like to see? How would you navigate this in the real world setting?” All the characters are codesigned, right down to the colour of their hair, the clothing. So it is so engaging. It's online based. It's also pen and paper for those schools that don't have the resources. So it's accessible to everyone, and it is so engaging. And we've heard from students to say, you know, “You don't even realise you’re learning, it's that much fun”. So we are happy that this is now available to be rolled out to all schools, independent, Catholic, government, public schools everywhere can access this program from 2025. And it is just so nice to know that it is evidence based, it's robust, and we know that it works.
CANNON HILL ANGLICAN COLLEGE, PRINCIPAL, GARY O’BRIEN: Thanks, Emily. I concur with everything that's just been said there. As educators and as a college, we've been really concerned about the increase in vaping. And we’ve all heard the statistics that have already been mentioned. And we've really been looking for a program that will help us educate our students. We've engaged with the OurFutures program from the start of this term, and our students are working through the four modules. They've really loved the characters and the scenarios, and Emily talking about the research that went into creating those characters, I think has been really effective, because that's been, I guess, that link that the students are really engaging with what's going on, who’ve found it to be a great source of conversation starters amongst our students, where they take really strong positions and argue with one another, which I think is great. And the additional resources that are included, as well, allows you to keep working through things with your particular group of students. So we've been really impressed with our experience so far, and we've certainly looking forward to completing the program this year and then introducing it to our year sevens again next year. That's probably all I really need to say. But yes, I would recommend anybody out there to have a look at this program and seeing how you can implement it with your younger students, because it is a serious issue that we need to address, and this is a great way of starting that action. Thank you.
JOURNALIST: So the Minister said earlier, and has been saying today, this is something the teachers have been crying out for, its the number one behavioural issue facing schools at the moment. Was that your personal experience as a principal, is that what you're hearing from your children?
O’BRIEN: It's certainly one of them. There's a range of issues. And I think the other one I might throw in there is social media, as well. And I'm not sure how I would rank them at this particular point in time. But it certainly is a major one and we've seen the impact that it has on students wellbeing and mental health, but I don't think the students have really understood that. A lot of the correspondence has been, “Oh, but it's safer than smoking”. And they start this, then they’re 29 times more likely to be smoking by the time they’re 15. So it's a major problem.
JOURNALIST: Before this program started rolling out in your school, how were teachers being forced to combat the issue of faith in your school?
O’BRIEN: So we've had our own program. So we have a really dedicated team of pastoral leaders who do research every year, and so we've been developing our own approaches. We've had programs, I think we started with the 10s originally. And I think the fact that we're targeting younger is certainly something that we picked up pretty quickly. We survey our students every year about the pastoral program, and the message that we got was, “This is too late”, as we get with a number of things that we do. So we've been rolling things further and further back, which again, matches the statistics that we're hearing about when kids are first being exposed to all sorts of different things.
JOURNALIST: Could you tell me from your experiences as young students, do you think your peers are feeling pressured to vape?
STUDENT AT CANNON HILL ANGLICAN COLLEGE, HOLLY: Not so much in this school. I think there's lots of encouragement to stay safe here and, like, make good choices. So we haven't really seen anything, but we do know it's definitely an issue, especially in other schools.
JOURNALIST: And do you hear your friends talking about it as not maybe an issue that they face, but in you know, your age group?
STUDENT AT CANNON HILL ANGLICAN COLLEGE, MICAH: Before the program, I don't think it was that often. But now that we've, like, kind of done the program, I think we're definitely talking maybe more about it. And, like, I think we’re talking more about it and like, what can actually happen, especially after we’ve done the sessions.
BUTLER: Can I follow up a comment that the principal made around social media as well, because we know just the degree to which schools and parents are grappling with these twin challenges: the challenge of vaping from Big Tobacco, and the social media cesspit really being driven by Big Tech. Today, the Minister for Communications, Michelle Rowland, the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, have written to all school principals and all high schools across the country, to outline our plans in relation to social media, particularly the introduction of a social media ban for under 16 year olds that will take effect 12 months after legislation passes the parliament and the supports that will be there, the information that will be there for school communities and parents as well. We know from the experience over the course of this year, with phones being banned in schools during school time, that it gets results. School principals right across the country, education ministers across the country, are reporting that learning behaviours are on the improve, and really pleasingly, kids are playing with each other, engaging with each other during breaks, much, much more than they were when they had the phones at their fingertips as well. So these changes can have results. They will have results. And we are determined as a government, whether it's social media or whether it's vaping, to give the tools to school leaders, to parents, but also the young people, to ensure that they live their best life in these beautiful years.
JOURNALIST: You mentioned on radio this morning that you've been using social media and influences to target anti-vaping campaigns. How will that work for younger people, when the ban is implemented.
BUTLER: One of the things that is in the correspondence from the ministers to school principals today is: outlining the exemptions that will be in place. So the ban on social media has a range of exemptions that the ministers stepped through. Some of them are pure messaging services, for example. But importantly, the social media platforms that are used for educational purposes, for health purposes, from my perspective, importantly, for mental health purposes will not be covered by the ban. So a lot of the well-known social media platforms that have been out there for a long time, through headspace, through ReachOut and through other organisations like that, that do provide really important mental health support for young people will continue to be available even after this ban takes effect. And also a range of the social media platforms that are used for educational purposes as well.
JOURNALIST: And just some questions from Canberra, on a separate topic, the ABC has been investigating abortion access in regional New South Wales hospitals. How worried are you that some public hospitals appear to be restricting services?
BUTLER: I saw the story over the last week or so, in relation to the hospital at Orange, and I know the New South Wales Minister Ryan Park acted very quickly to to put community concerns at ease and ensure that there would still be termination services available at that hospital. We've obviously talked with state and territory ministers about the results of a senate inquiry into reproductive health that did examine the issue of access, particularly in regional communities, to termination services. We gave all health ministers a comprehensive briefing on the outcome of that senate inquiry. And I know health ministers, within the confines of their ability to deploy workforce in all of some of their more remote regional communities, are very alive to the need to make sure that people have access to health services equitably, whether they're in the big cities or whether they're in regional communities.
JOURNALIST: And so Labor has previously had a policy of tying public hospital funding to abortion access. Is it time for Labor to revisit this policy?
BUTLER: That's not our policy, and I don't have any intention to revisit it. State and territories are responsible for the operation of their hospital systems. They are answerable to their communities for that. We are a part funder of hospitals, but we're not an operator of hospitals. We don't really have that expertise. And I know that's something that state and territory ministers, particularly after the discussion we've had around the findings of that reproductive health inquiry was undertaken by the Australian Senate, are very conscious of.
JOURNALIST: And just one more back on social media. Re: exemptions for young people having access to it. Would that include sites like headspace and things like that for young people to have.
BUTLER: Yes. And I'm really pleased that my colleague Michelle Rowland has engaged so deeply and openly with some of those terrific services that really led the way, really, in the digital health space, providing terrific supports for young people in their mental health. headspace is one example. There are others. ReachOut was a real innovator many years ago, and they continue to play a really important role on social media platforms. So that is something we're very focused on.
JOURNALIST: So how will young people see these accounts if they don't have their own access?
BUTLER: These are implementation details that we will be working through as we carry the legislation through the Parliament. It’s been introduced to the Parliament. And as Minister Rowland has made clear, there's a 12-month implementation phase where we'll step through those technical details. Right now, though, at the front end of that process, we want to make very clear to those service providers, but more importantly, the young people, to parents, to school communities, but those services which have been such an important part of the mental health ecosystem, in particular from my perspective, but their educational equivalents as well, will still be available to young people. How we ensure that, technically, is not really in my purview, as the Health Minister, but is part of reason for that 12-month implementation timeframe.
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