Senator DI NATALE (Victoria) (13:30): I make some remarks on behalf of the Australian Greens. The Tobacco Advertising Prohibition Amendment Bill 2010 is very easy to support. Before coming to this place, as I have said before, I worked in general practice and I saw firsthand the terrible effects that smoking has on the lives of people and their families. In this country one in six Australians still smoke and their individual stories add up to both an enormous cost in the misery inflicted upon themselves and others and an enormous economic cost. The costs from smoking are estimated at over $31 billion each year. We should put that in some sort of perspective. I will say that number again: $31 billion each year is the cost associated with tobacco smoking. That is about 50 per cent more than the entire defence budget and it is about half of what we spend on the total health budget. For the many thousands of Australians who have experienced firsthand the death of a mother, a father, a spouse or, tragically, a child, these numbers have very, very real meaning. If there is anything we as a nation can do to reduce the toll from tobacco consumption, to improve the health of the general community, then we should do it. This bill is part of a much wider range of measures that have been implemented in an attempt to reduce tobacco consumption. The passage of the government's plain-packaging legislation last year was a significant milestone and a world-leading reform. The government is to be congratulated for implementing that reform. It is an initiative that over the long term will save lives. We have also learned that the tobacco industry will stop at nothing to prevent reform. They do not want this reform or other reforms unfolding because they fear not just what those reforms might do in this nation but also what they might do in other nations. That is particularly a problem when their current business model is predicated on encouraging people to smoke in those least developed nations. Already Philip Morris has challenged the plain-packaging law under investor provisions of a bilateral trade treaty between Australia and Hong Kong. As we enter into further negotiations—the multilateral treaty currently being negotiated between the nations of the Pacific in the form of a trans-Pacific partnership—we need to be very careful we do not give another toehold to big tobacco to challenge these incredibly important reforms. Addressing tobacco is just one part of what the Greens believe is an important preventative health agenda. Yes, we agree that Australia does need more health professionals, it needs hospitals that work efficiently and that we deserve access to the latest medicines, and we need them to remain healthy, but there are much bigger gains to be made in keeping people from becoming unwell in the first place. We have said that on many occasions and it is critical that we continue working on that preventative health agenda. There is work to be done, for example, on the issue of obesity: making sure we address food labelling—we are concerned that not enough is being done in that area; ending the advertising of junk food to young kids; and promoting active lifestyles. In the area of alcohol, for example, we need to ensure that we get a much more rational and public health focused system that addresses the pricing regime around alcohol and getting better labelling—all very important. But smoking remains the No. 1 preventable cause of disease in this nation and any agenda focused on preventative health cannot afford to ignore it. The bill updates the laws surrounding the advertising of cigarettes and it ensures that the internet will not be a loophole that tobacco manufacturers and retailers can use to advertise their wares and to lure potential new customers. It makes it very clear that the existing bans on tobacco advertising apply to new media as well as traditional forms. It means that the internet, social media and mobile phones will now be off limits to tobacco advertisers. Regulations stemming from the bill will control how online tobacco merchants can present their wares. It will include how they describe the product; it will specify when and how images can be used, if at all; and it will ensure that health warnings are prominently displayed. However, the bill does not outlaw the sale of cigarettes online and grocery stores and other retailers will still be able to sell online what they can sell in their physical stores. We are concerned about this aspect of the legislation because it is crucial that mechanisms exist to ensure that products, particularly dangerous products like tobacco, are only ordered by and delivered to adults. We have got to keep a very close eye on this component of the legislation. We have to make sure it is effectively administered and we look forward to seeing very tough regulations on this aspect of the bill being rigorously enforced. The bill is also very timely. We know that online commerce is exploding and we know that online tobacco retailing is an area of certain future growth in tobacco retailing. More young people spend time online. They spend very long periods of time when they go online. Tobacco is easier for minors to access on the internet because they remain unseen by the vendors and there is no identification required. So if this bill restricts the ability of current and future online merchants to recruit or sell to young customers as well as existing smokers then the public health benefits from that are all the greater. We know that marketing and advertising is very powerful. It impacts on consumer behaviour—on the behaviour of all of us. We are often reluctant to acknowledge just how powerful it is, but there is a lot of money spent on advertising and marketing because it works. So further tightening of the restrictions around advertising of dangerous products like tobacco is good public policy. Unfortunately, the tobacco industry in this country still has a lot of clout. I am very pleased to say that the Australian Greens do not accept donations from big tobacco, or indeed from any tobacco. I am also pleased that the Labor Party—although a little later than many of us would have liked—stopped accepting donations from big tobacco in 2004. It is something the Liberal and National parties should have done a long time ago, yet they continue to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in tobacco industry donations. They remain hopelessly compromised on this issue. It is a little rich to hear Senator Fierravanti-Wells talk about hypocrisy in this area of public policy when she is part of a political party which continues to benefit from the largesse of an industry that kills people. On 15 June, the leader of the Australian Greens introduced the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment (Tobacco Industry Donations) Bill 2011 in the Senate to seek an end to big tobacco's buying influence in the parliament. It is a bill that should not be necessary. There will be a time at some point in the future, I am sure, when all sides of politics refuse to accept donations from big tobacco. I am sure there will be people who come after us—people on all sides—who will look back on a time when political parties were accepting those donations and wonder about the morality of that decision. There is a lot more to be done. As we speak, the Future Fund—a fund that exists to pay for the unfunded superannuation liabilities of Australians; a fund in which ordinary Australian taxpayers contribute—invests in the tobacco industry. It invests $36.5 million in Philip Morris, $46.4 million in British American Tobacco and $26.1 million in Lorillard, and it has a number of other tobacco investments. As a nation we cannot reconcile this large investment of public money in companies that profit from damaging the health of Australians at the same time as we implement important, sensible and—in the case of plain packaging—courageous reforms that cut in the opposite direction. It makes no sense, and the sooner the Australian government divests itself of holdings in the Future Fund, the better off we will be. That is why the Greens have introduced the Government Investment Funds Amendment (Ethical Investments) Bill, which would force the Future Fund and other government funds to divest themselves of their holdings in tobacco companies. It is something that other nations have done. Ordinary Australians are horrified to learn that their hard-earned money is contributing to this industry. Finally, the Australian government is a signatory to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. That framework calls on all of us to restrict tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship on radio, television, print media and other media, such as the internet. This bill is in line with our fulfilling our obligations under this treaty. At a time when international obligations seem to mean very little and we are prepared to flout our obligations under international law, it is pleasing to see, again, that the government has taken this issue on and is doing something that is entirely consistent with the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Ordinary public opinion is firmly in favour of this bill. Major public health advocates approve of this bill and are grateful to see this reform before the parliament. The bill will go a long way to improve the health of ordinary Australians. But this bill is not the end of the road in the fight against the harms associated with tobacco. There is more to be done. I know the government is intent on doing it and I commend it for its work in this area. It is an important step in the road towards a nation where fewer people are dying from smoking related diseases. It is an important step and for that reason the Greens are very pleased to be able to support it.