<< back to archive index Speeches Regarding Bills Date: 28th March 2006 Subject: Speech by The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS, on the disallowance of the Smoke-free Environment Amendment (Enclosed Places) Regulation 2006 From Hansard The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS: "New South Wales Liberal Party received a $44,100 donation from British American Tobacco and $10,000 from Philip Morris. In the same year, The Nationals received $5,000 from Philip Morris. As the Liberals and The Nationals are the only political parties in New South Wales that openly accept donations from big tobacco, we all must question whom they truly serve. They received a total of $49,100 from big tobacco." This will be the thrust of our press today. That under section 41 of the Interpretation Act 1987, this House disallows the Smoke-free Environment Amendment (Enclosed Places) Regulation 2006 published in Government Gazette No. 19, dated 10 February 2006, page 763, and tabled in this House on 28 February 2006. My motion aims to disallow the Smoke-free Environment Amendment (Enclosed Places) Regulation 2006 published in Government Gazette No. 19, dated 10 February 2006, page 763, tabled on 28 February 2006. The regulation will allow smoking well past 1 July 2007 in fake outdoor rooms in pubs and clubs throughout the State of New South Wales. Verandahs, balconies and covered beer gardens will be the new smoking meccas. The regulation definition to allow areas almost 75 per cent enclosed to be defined as not enclosed*which will allow smoking to continue*will fail to protect workers or patrons, including gamblers, from the well-known, seriously harmful effects of second-hand smoke. Not one shred of evidence has been produced by the Government, the Australian Hotels Association or clubs to show that the levels of smoke in these areas will not be harmful. Indeed, I believe that is because no such evidence exists. Tobacco smoke is harmful. On a dose response curve, the more you get, the more harmful it is; there is no safe dose. The Government, the AHA and the clubs have not even attempted to prove that the dose is lower in these areas. A smoke-free area policy should be clear, unambiguous and uncomplicated. No smoking indoors should mean no smoking indoors. The regulation as it is will create inconsistency between the Occupational Health and Safety Act and these regulations. It will also create a complicated, confusing and unenforceable set of exemptions depending on complex calculations of wall and ceiling areas, and ratios. It will deny the public what it wants and expects: pubs and clubs to be totally smoke-free indoors, with people who want to smoke having to go outside, as they do in all other workplaces. It will betray New South Wales workers, who have already made considerable compromises, at risk to their health, to work with the long deadline, July 2007, which is conveniently after the election. The regulation will increase the likelihood of expensive legal actions by hospitality employees and patrons harmed by second-hand smoke in workplaces. It will encourage the hotel and club industry to build varying forms of pergolas and structures that all have the aim of making outdoor areas more indoor. Once pubs and clubs have spent money under this regulation, they will then lobby any government that encouraged this spending so that no area under the new structure can be reclassified as outdoors, and the Labor and Liberal governments will cave in as usual for another decade or so. The regulation will undermine the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2000, which places an absolute legal duty on employers to keep workplaces safe, and will stop WorkCover NSW from doing its job of consistently enforcing the Act. In contravention of the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act, the regulation will perpetuate discrimination in employment and against people with smoke-affected disabilities, including sufferers of heart disease, asthma, cystic fibrosis and diabetes, and pregnant women. Of course, these are the most conspicuously affected groups; everyone's health is affected. Other jurisdictions in Australia have passed tougher bans and the sky has not fallen. Tasmania has total indoor bans already in force, with outdoor smoking areas that are separate and unserviced. Queensland will have total indoor bans from July 2006, with separate and unserviced outdoor smoking areas. Western Australia will have total indoor bans from July 2006, with outdoor smoking areas to be substantially unenclosed. In the Australian Capital Territory, the indoor smoking ban has the same 75 per cent loophole as New South Wales, but the ban comes into force by the end of 2006. The chief health officer there is believed to be the architect of this appalling scheme. Victoria will go smoke free in July 2007 with the same 75 per cent loophole, but gaming areas will be smoke free. When the last gaming bill amendment was debated the Government would not agree that gaming areas could not be outdoors. New Zealand, Ireland, Norway, 10 US States and nine Canadian provinces have total indoor smoking bans in licensed venues already in force, or they will by April this year, and in the United Kingdom pubs and clubs will be indoor smoke free by mid-2007. Of course, outdoors in the United Kingdom means it will be too cold to smoke for much of the year. The New South Wales branch of the Australian Medical Association supports the disallowance of this regulation to protect our workers and pub goers and supports the adoption of genuine bans on smoking in all areas with roofs. The Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union [LHMU] also wants its members' workplaces to be truly smoke free. When Tasmania went smoke free, the Tasmanian Secretary of the LHMU, Mr David O'Byrne, noted: Almost two years after their laws were implemented Ireland is reporting very high compliance levels, no adverse economic effects for the industry and overwhelming community support. From January 1 2006 hospitality workers in Tasmania will now work in a safe, smoke free environment for the first time. This ends the discrimination hospitality workers have suffered for many years, only hospitality workers have been compelled to work in unsafe, dangerous smoke filled environments since lawmakers acknowledge that in all other workplaces smoke filled environments were dangerous and unacceptable. So why is New South Wales lagging behind? It is because of the lack of political will on the part of the major parties. Why is this Parliament willing to trade off the health of our workers and the general public to second-hand tobacco smoke? In the financial year 2004-05 the New South Wales Liberal Party received a $44,100 donation from British American Tobacco and $10,000 from Philip Morris. In the same year, The Nationals received $5,000 from Philip Morris. As the Liberals and The Nationals are the only political parties in New South Wales that openly accept donations from big tobacco, we all must question whom they truly serve. They received a total of $49,100 from big tobacco. What about the Australian Hotels Association [AHA]? The Opposition is openly courting this lobby group in the lead-up to the State election and has been absolutely gutless on this issue. The New South Wales Liberal Party received $105,000 and The Nationals received $26,605*a Coalition total of $131,605 from the AHA. The New South Wales Labor Party received $259,704 in the 2004-05 financial year from the AHA. The Hon. Rick Colless: How much did you get? The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS: The Democrats did get some from the AHA in 2003-04, but it did not buy this Democrat like it bought you, mate! The fight with the clubs over the poker machine tax is proving to be a big political obstacle for the Government in the run-up to this year's election, with Clubs NSW threatening an anti-government advertising campaign at National Rugby League games and a full-page newspaper advertising campaign to get the Government to relent on its gambling tax. I believe this regulation is probably part of a compromise to keep the clubs and pubs happy. Interestingly, the issue has not appeared in the Andrew Clennell articles in the Sydney Morning Herald. The majority of the population wants pubs and clubs to go completely smoke free right here, right now. A national survey conducted by Stollznow Research for Pfizer Australia in June 2005 showed that 65 per cent of people surveyed felt that the smoke bans are coming in too slowly, with 43 per cent of New South Wales respondents saying much too slowly. Additionally, 64 per cent say it is unacceptable for up to 75 per cent of enclosed rooms to be called "outdoor" and to allow smoking in enclosed public spaces. Why should bar staff, gaming room attendants and other hospitality workers in pubs and clubs be exempt from the occupational health and safety standards of other workplaces in New South Wales? In 2005 a study in the international medical Journal PLoS Medicine found that there is "no safe threshold" for tobacco exposure and that it must be "virtually eliminated to protect human health". Passive smoke increases asthma severity and hospitalisation risk. A study reported in the journal Thorax links second-hand smoke with increased severity of asthma attacks and a greater risk of hospitalisation. The authors conclude: These results support efforts to prohibit smoking in public places. In June 2005 the Air Resources Board, California, which establishes exposure comparable to household levels known to cause death and disease, reported: Crowded outdoor exposure to second hand tobacco smoke is significant, and harmful. Worldwide evidence continues to mount that total indoor smoking bans help reduce smoking rates, especially among young people, and that they do not harm the hospitality trade. In the early 1980s, when I was briefly a member of the Liberal Party, I pointed out to a Liberal mentor that the cost of tobacco to the Australian economy was about $5 billion. This mentor said that Amatil had given $30,000 to the Liberal Party and I said, "But don't you see the $5 billion cost to the economy is far more than the $30,000 given to the Liberal Party?" To which he replied, "Yes, but that is our $30,000. You won't get far with an attitude like that, sonny". He was dead right: sonny got himself out of the Liberal Party pretty quick smart. We have not advanced very far. The cost to the New South Wales economy is $6.6 billion, about 6,500 lives per year and 150 smoking-caused admissions to hospital every day. Yet, for the paltry sums I have mentioned*around half a million dollars*you can buy both political parties in New South Wales and have nothing done about smoking in public places with the attendant effect of pubs and clubs giving smoking socialisation and normalisation as a public habit at immense health costs. As I said, the cost to the New South Wales economy is around $6.6 billion and 45 per cent of this is avoidable. The costs comprise 58 per cent to individuals, who are the ones who suffer and die from tobacco-caused illnesses; 13 per cent to governments, who pay for the health system in huge numbers, and pay out of consolidated revenue from the taxpayers; and 28 per cent is to business, largely in time lost from work either for sickness or individuals who have not worked for a decade or so and eventually die. A study of the Quit campaigns conducted by the health department showed that the return on capital of money spent on Quit programs by the New South Wales health department had a cost benefit ratio that was favourable at 49:1. It is extraordinary that today this debate was delayed by the Liberals getting upset about pollution levels in the M5 East tunnel, but they want to do nothing about tobacco in all the pubs of the land. I believe the fact that the Liberal and Labor parties can be bought so cheaply to do so much harm and do so little for public health after so long is nothing short of extraordinary. It is outrageous to pretend that we need a longer phase-in period. Smoking was shown to cause lung cancer in an article in the British Medical Journal that was very clear to read*and it was in 1950, more than 55 years ago. We have been expecting bans since the 1980s. The Surgeon General in the United States of America wrote a report in the early 1960s. He had all the scientists who were to contribute to the report screened by the tobacco industry so they could not say the scientists were biased. The report came out in 1964 strongly against tobacco. The study was conceived and a report brought out by the Surgeon General in the United States in 1964, and also by the Royal College of Physicians in England in 1962, because they were concerned that a whole decade had gone by with no action. Here we are now with 55 years having gone by and this Government is bringing in this sort of regulation. When I woke this morning I heard on the news that a sweeping ban on smoking came into force in Scotland yesterday. In New South Wales we are not willing to act on smoking and do something about smoking in pubs, happy to let people get cancer*and knowing that some people have already got cancer and have won compensation cases through the courts*because this Parliament has not got the guts to say no to the AHA and Clubs NSW. Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes: Is Scotland the same as Ireland? The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS: Yes, it is. It is an absolute disgrace and members should hang their heads in shame that they have been in Parliament this long and are allowing this sort of regulation to stand. It is an absolute disgrace that the Government has brought in the regulation and the Opposition does not have the guts to disallow it. It shows that the duopoly has power to make cosy little arrangements as it does the bidding of anybody with a little bit of capital or a little bit of political punch, and totally neglects the interests of the citizens of New South Wales. In the lead-up to the election my strategy is to break this sick duopoly."

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