Radio interview with Minister Butler and Patricia Karvelas, ABC RN Breakfast - 14 November 2024

Read the transcript of Minister Butler's interview with Patricia Karvelas on national anti-vaping program for young people; vaping; social media reforms; access to terminations in hospitals.

The Hon Mark Butler MP
Minister for Health and Aged Care

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PATRICIA KARVELAS, HOST: Over the COVID pandemic, vaping rates among high school aged students exploded but a new anti-vaping program will be launched in high schools next year in an effort to bring down the rate of teen vaping. Joining me to talk about it is the Health Minister, Mark Butler. Minister, welcome back to the program.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Thank you, Patricia.
 
KARVELAS: What age bracket will this anti-vaping program target and why do you think it's needed?
 
BUTLER: It's focused on year sevens and eights, so 12, 13, 14-year-olds, because we know that really is a very impressionable age for a range of different potentially risky behaviours. This is a program that has been run for many years by the Matilda Centre, which is a centre at the University of Sydney. It's well based in research, it's been subject to good clinical trials and evidence. It's been focused over those years essentially on alcohol and illicit drugs, and it's been reshaped over the last 12 months to deal with the vaping risks and trialled with about 5,000 high school students. That trial showed really good results from teachers, importantly, but also from young people themselves who found that they learned a lot from it about the actual health risks associated with vaping, but also learned the tools to be able to work through the peer group pressure behaviours that would allow them to say no, and also reaching out to friends they thought might be addicted to vaping. As a result of that trial, we're now rolling that out to all high schools next year.
 
KARVELAS: This is an in-school program but earlier this year, you did announce a series of social media influencers to encourage kids to stop vaping. Here you are:

BUTLER (RECORDING): We can't reach young people through traditional advertising. They're just not watching and reading it. We've got to go to where they are.

KARVELAS: And that's social media, right? How will you reach kids outside of school with important health messages when you've got a social media ban in place?
 
BUTLER: That's something we're going to have to work through. The principle is the right one. Unfortunately, Patricia, high school students in Australia are not listening to RN Breakfast.
 
KARVELAS: How do you know? How do you know? I get texts from high school students all the time.
 
BUTLER: Well not everyone. The world would be such a simpler place were they doing that. But we have to go to where they are and they're not watching TV in a traditional way that you and I might have at high school. They're certainly not reading newspapers, by and large. We have to go to where they are and at the moment they're on social media. When I did that interview with you, we'd worked out how many literally billions of pro-vaping posts there were on TikTok and to a lesser degree on Instagram. We took the view that's where we had to go and frankly, for over 16-year-olds who we also need to communicate with, we will continue to do that. What happens over the term of this social media ban being introduced for under 16-year-olds obviously, we'll have to work through. We will continue to want to communicate with young people about vaping and other things as well but I think the principle is sound. We've got to go to where young people are if we're going to try to influence their behaviour and choices.
 
KARVELAS: So, isn't there a contradiction inherent in that? You're trying to ban social media for under sixteens, but you're saying you've got to go where they are and that's where they are?  
 
BUTLER: They won't be in 12 months’ time or a little bit more than 12 months’ time.
 
KARVELAS: So, it's a 12-month thing and then you pull it and you're like, they're not there anymore? Because I suspect they will be.
 
BUTLER: We'll find where they are. That's the point. We've got to find where young people are getting their messages and where they're listening to their influencers. At the moment that is on social media and that is causing them a whole bunch of different harms. I was at a high school yesterday, and the principal found it hard to say whether you know what the biggest behavioural issue in this school was, it was either vaping or social media. Big Tech, Big Tobacco have released and driven products that are causing enormous harms to young people, and we've got a plan to deal with both of them. In terms of communicating with young people about vaping and about other risky behaviours, at the moment we're doing that on social media because that's where they are. We're having real success in doing that, using influencers advertising on TikTok. I've got to say it's like swimming against a tsunami. The pro-vaping, the unhealthy messages that young people are getting on social media is overwhelming and they're reporting themselves how damaging it is to their mental health.
 
KARVELAS: You put in place an import control on the 1st of January this year to stop the flood of disposable vapes coming into this country, then on the 1st of July, outlawed the sale of vapes in all places except pharmacies. They are still around, they are at parties and pubs. People smoke them walking down the street. Is this crackdown actually working?
 
BUTLER: We've talked about this a couple of times, I think Patricia, and I've tried to be really frank with your listeners and others that this was never going to work overnight. The ban is working, the import ban. We've seized millions and millions of vapes over the course of the last 9 or 10 months. We know from overseas source countries, particularly China, that they see Australia as a much less attractive market. Exports to Australia are down, according to their industry, by more than 90 per cent, because they know they're getting seized. That flood of imports that we were seeing over recent years, which coincided with that skyrocketing of vaping rates among high school students, as you said in your intro, has started to get choked off. The vape stores that were set up to sell only vapes, they're starting to close. Every single one in my electorate, for example, in western Adelaide, has now shut. And that is a good thing because nine out of ten them set up down the road from schools.
 
But we are still seeing vapes sold in convenience stores in tobacconists. That is against the law. We're involved in hundreds of operations, Commonwealth authorities with state authorities to get out there and make really clear at some point, I hope really soon, we're going to start prosecuting people. We passed laws with big penalties, fines of more than $2 million, jail terms of up to seven years. I'm deadly serious about this. But I also recognise when you're fighting Big Tobacco and increasingly organised crime that is driving this market and making a lot of money out of it, which they then channel into sex trafficking and drug trafficking, that it is going to take a little while and determined effort. But we are determined.
 
KARVELAS: If you're just tuning in, this is Radio National Breakfast, and our guest is Health Minister Mark Butler. Just a couple of other things if we can Minister. Social media platforms will be legally required to protect Australians from online harm. Under what the Minister for communications, Michelle Rowland, has talked about as a digital duty of care proposal. What is that proposal? What happens?
 
BUTLER: Michelle Rowland is rolling that out over the course of today, and she'll have a lot more to say about it. But broadly speaking, we've got to get over this idea that big tech plays by different rules to other media organisations like yours, Patricia, or like the commercial organisations that are subject to substantial regulation by the Communications and Media Authority, whether that's about misinformation and disinformation or whether it's recognising that their products, digital products can have harms. We can't just have Big Tech simply, put these things into the market on a set and forget basis. They've got to have in their mind what potential harms their products might be doing. It's not particularly rocket science. It's applied for a long time in relation to a whole lot of other products that are in the communications market or other markets. I think it's a really important complement to the work we're doing on social media for under 16-year-olds.
 
KARVELAS: Look, you mentioned the Big Tech players playing by different rules and needing to bring them into the same rules, which I think a lot of people would hear and think is a reasonable concept at least. But there was a US election and it looks like if I can kind of use the term that's being used by the kids online Minister, the tech bros are in charge in the United States. How do you regulate if the tech bros are in charge?
 
BUTLER: There's always the risk of oversimplification of big results like the US election results. And obviously we're analysing what happened over there and what it might mean, given the US is such an important, consequential economy for all of us. Obviously, we're analysing that but we're determined to do the right thing by Australians and continue to try to make sure that Australians are able to have access to the benefits of the online world and the digital revolution, while also recognising it doesn't come without harms and big tech needs to take responsibility for those harms.
 
KARVELAS: Do you admit that it's a little harder now?
 
BUTLER: I think it's still too early to say. It's not principally my job as Health Minister, but obviously as a group of government cabinet ministers. We're looking at the US election closely and making sure that we understand any consequences for our ability to make policy.
 
KARVELAS: Okay, let me put it to you. Right, Elon Musk, the government has taken on Elon Musk. I mean, you know, anyone who's been online has seen the war of words between Elon Musk and the e-safety commissioner and, of course, the government that's been playing out very publicly. Now he's one of Donald Trump's right-hand men. What does that mean?
 
BUTLER: That's a matter for the US. He's got a job with the US around what happens within the US government. We've got a responsibility to do the right thing by Australians. And so, we will continue to do things like Michelle Rowland has announced today around the duty of care, a crackdown on social media for under 16. As I mentioned  big tech and online platforms should, essentially have to comply with some of the obligations around not having misinformation and disinformation on their platforms that media operators like the ABC or the commercial channels and newspapers have to comply with. We will continue to make that case because we think it's important for the people we represent who are in Australia, not the US.
 
KARVELAS: Let's move on to just a couple of other issues that you are absolutely in charge of, so to speak. The ABC has obtained an email that shows another public hospital, this time Queanbeyan Hospital, has formally ceased providing surgical abortions. Now states run hospitals, I know you're going to say that, but the federal government provides some funding. Are you happy to keep providing funding to hospitals that stop providing surgical abortions?
 
BUTLER: I think I've said to you before, Patricia, that states run the hospitals and we've had some very detailed discussions as a group of health ministers over the last 12 months about the importance of ensuring not only the right to safe and legal abortion for women in this country, but also equitable access, so that this is not a right that is just practically recognised in reality in the big cities, but also available in regional communities. I think all health ministers agree with both of those points, the legal right, but also the equitable access. If you look at what's happened over the last few days in New South Wales, first at the Orange Hospital and more recently at the Queanbeyan Hospital, you see that in practice the New South Wales Health Minister, Ryan Park, is actively engaged, doing what he can do to make sure equitable access is provided in those communities. He reversed the decision that was taken in Orange. He said, over the last 24 hours that he's working on Queanbeyan and that is as it should be. State health ministers should be working on this.
 
KARVELAS: I just want to ask you one, one last question on another issue, if I can minister, because I've got you here. Dan Scavino, who's a close aide of Donald Trump's, replied to Kevin Rudd's congratulations tweet to Donald Trump with an hourglass. Now, it's a pretty ominous message to the Ambassador. What does it mean?
 
BUTLER: I hadn’t heard of that fellow till I read that story but it's a pretty important principle that Australia chooses who its ambassador is. The US chooses who their ambassadors are. Every other country does that. The point I think I've tried to make, and many others on both sides of politics here in Australia have made, is that Kevin Rudd is a very serious Ambassador. He's a former Prime Minister. He's regarded around the world, including in the US across political divides, as a very serious world authority on our region, the Asia Pacific, and in particular on China and the Chinese president. He's done a whole lot of really important work for our country over the last little while, particularly in relation to AUKUS and he's done that work across the political aisle, both with Republicans and Democrats. We're very convinced that Kevin is the right person for this job. It's obviously going to be a job of work because there's a change of administration that's going to be a big job for every ambassador who is posted to Washington. At the end of the day, we choose who our ambassador is, as every country does. And you'll see the commentary across the political divide from Peter Dutton yesterday from Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, Simon Birmingham. I think there's a lot of confidence that having someone of Kevin's work ethic, intellect and experience in Washington at this time is good for our country.
 
KARVELAS: Thank you so much for joining us, Health Minister.
 
BUTLER: Thanks, Patricia.

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