From Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlin McGee. This is seven am. If we were to tell you that there was an issue that's exposing divides within our political parties that pits their traditional supporters against each other and fractures the electorate, your first thought might not be vapes.
But that's exactly what.
The government's new vaping band is doing to both the Greens and the Coalition as they decide whether to vote for it. Parents sick of seeing their kids sneaking a vapor putting pressure on the Coalition, while the Greens don't want to look like squares to their younger voters. Today the Saturday Papers, Jason katsukis on the politics of the new band and why it'll be so hard to police.
It's Friday, June seven. Jason.
If the Health Minister Mark Butler has his there'll be some massive changes around who can buy vapes and where you can buy them in about a month from now.
Tell me more about this plan.
So, when vapes first came onto the market around twenty years ago, the pitch was that vapes were another alternative to cigarette smoking.
And a friend of mine who was a get concerned about about my switched back to smoking cigarettes, So what are you doing when you try vaping? So since I switched to vaping, I've been able to walk upstairs a lot easier, and.
That offered a pathway to quit smoking, and they were sold as a therapeutic good.
I tried vaping and I just switched instantly. I've never had a cigarette since that day, and I've never craved a cigarette.
But over the last twenty years, we've seen people take up vaping, not to quit smoking, but just as an entirely new habit Here.
We are Paris a vape expot twenty twenty four. It's a show that I've never been to before, and I've always wanted to.
And we've got to the point where there's around one point seven million people who are vaping on a regular basis. We've seen a surge in the number of teenagers aged fourteen to seventeen take up vaping. I think it's now up to around ten percent. The previous government decided not to band vapes, and when this government came into power in around two years ago, the government is under a lot of pressure from peak medical bodies, also from the education sector and just ordinary constituents.
This is one of the.
Top issues that MPs say that voters engage them on. You know, why aren't you doing something to stop vaping.
This is what a New South Wales principal said last year quote, students are so desperate to have the next vape or get money to have the next vape, that students have become more aggressive, more agitated, less cooperatively, less cooperative, less engaged with their school work.
Mark Butler's introduced new regulations. He's banned the importation of vapes at the border.
In the last few days the Australian government had the Health Minister, mister Mark but Head. Butler made some announcements in the mainstream media that they will be bringing in some of these planned tough regulations.
He's introduced other regulations so that you can only get nicotine vapes through a pharmacy.
They've been flooding into the last several years, literally flooding in, and we gave them those ready sources and in just the first two months or not quite two months of the ban being an effect, they've seized amind by more than three hundred and sixty thousand disposable vapes, so now illegal.
At the moment tobacco shops.
Convenience stores are allowed to solve vapes that don't contain nicotine. The trouble is it's very difficult to police. We don't have enough police or customs officials to go around testing every vape in every shop. Marc Butler wants to stop that, and he thinks the best way to do that is just to.
Ban all vapes.
If Labors Planned successfully navigates Parliament, Australia would have the world's toughest anti vaping laws, and with one in four young adults using these cigarettes in Australia, health experts say it's desperately needed.
Thanks so after that first wave of regulatory changes, we're now at the second stage of reforms. If this law passes the Senate, you won't be able to go into a convenience store or any other retail outlet and buy a vape anymore. All those specialty vape shops that have sprung up in shopping malls and shopping strips around the country over the last ten years, they'll be forced out of business overnight, so that the only place you can get a vape is at a pharmacy. And while that
may sound like a fairly simple idea. It's actually quite a complex issue for all the different parties that will be debating this issue when it actually goes into the Senate for a vote.
So, the legislation to ban vapes, like you said, it's before the Senate at the moment, and the government's presumably in talks with the other parties to get the support.
It needs to pass it.
Where does the coalition sit on this, because that's the easiest route to pass in this legislation.
Right, that's right.
The Coalition is actually quite divided on this issue. A significant number of Coalition members and senators believe that vapes should be regulated like any.
Other tobacco product.
David Little Proud, the Nationals leader, Yeah, he's come out very strongly in favor of allowing vapes to be sold over the counter.
But the reality is is that prohibition hasn't worked.
The National Party has been seen over the years to be quite close to the tobacco industry, so their position is clear and they will vote against this legislation work.
And when we did regulate cigarettes through point of sale to eighteen years plus through licensed premises, then what happens is as well as controlling the ingredients and the packaging. We saw an eighty percent reduction of juvenile use of cigarettes. And then you collect that GST, you collect that xcize and you can put that.
But then you have other coalition members and senators who
are concerned about the health impact of vaping. I mean, what's really interesting to me about this issue is how vaping is probably one of the issues that is of most concern to professional women and one of the things that has really seen a decline in the coalition's vote over the last ten to fifteen years is professional women leaving the Liberal Party And if the Coalition votes against this legislation, then I think that's really going to hurt the coalition with professional women voters.
And so there are.
A significant number of Liberal Party MPs who are really worried about how that's going to look if the Coalition votes against this legislation.
I think it's a tricky dilemma.
For Peter Dutton because if he backs voting for this legislation, then the law will pass and that is essentially a loss for David Littlproud and the NATS. And because the Nationals party room is so divided, there's those that still believe Barnaby Joyce should be the leader. I think there's no doubt that he would like to become the Leader of the Nationals once again if he gets the chance,
and if this legislation becomes law. There are some Liberal Party MPs and senators who are worried that this would give a bit of a win for Barnaby Joyce and could unsettle a coalition.
Okay, so negotiating with the coalition is one path the government has and potentially the easiest. But what about one of the other paths, and that's talking to the Greens. Where do they sit on this ban?
Well, the Greens are very concerned that they don't want to see vaping prohibited, so they don't want to see any sort of circumstance where it becomes that if you are vaping, that you are committing a crime.
So there's no way that they will allow that to happen. And I think.
There's a lot of Green's voters who are probably vapors.
We need them to hear that this is important to us. At the last election, the Greens stole quite a few seats off of Labor and if they want to do a little bit more of that, then getting support of the vapors is something I'm sure they'll be interested in, So please, guys, this is our last chance.
We've got a week or two.
My guess is that the Greens will end up supporting this legislation with some important amendments, and that in return for that they're going to get a win on some other piece of legislation that they want to amend in a certain way. That's my sense of how the Greens are going to handle this. The Coalition, I think to be quite a difficult debate for the party room, and I genuinely don't know how they're going to come down
on this one. I do think it would be very hard for the Coalition to vote against this legislation.
But having said.
That, there are a lot of Coalition MPs and senators who don't want this legislation to become law.
After the break, he'll be in charge of enforcing a ban and who's going to copy fine.
Jason.
Given the proliferation of vapes and tobacco shops and corner store is selling vapes, it doesn't sound like this will be the easiest of bands to enforce. So talk to me about the logistics of how they're saying they'll.
Actually do it, we don't actually have the logistical plan yet, and it is going to be in credib difficult to enforce it because it's not just a matter of banning vapes and they go away. Firstly, you've got to try to stop vapes getting into the country, and that's almost impossible.
If the Australian Border Force wanted to, they could fill your whole warehouses full of illegal vapes being imported into the country every month, but they just don't have the policing power to stop all the vapes getting through the border. While they do have sophisticated detection technology, they just don't have enough to stop vapes coming into the country. And also there's a question as to whether it's worth it because there's other things that are perhaps a more serious.
Threat to society than vapes.
And then because there's so many shops and convenience stores that are selling vapes, it's going to be very difficult to suddenly go around to each store and police whether they are selling vapes over the counter or under the counter. It's become so much a part of daily life it's going to be very difficult to stamp it.
Out.
You know, the big stick here is the fines and possible prison centers that will apply to people who are selling the vapes on a commercial level, a commercial quantity.
So it wouldn't be somebody who gives you one or two vapes.
It would be that convenience store that is selling vapes on a regular basis, or someone that's organizing or facilitating the importation of vapes to sell online, et cetera. That's who will be targeted by this new law. Exactly how they're going to do that though it's not yet clear.
It's been more than a year now since Mike Butler first spoke about banning vapes. Why has it taken both so long? And also you know why now is there this rush to push it through the Senate before the winter break.
I think the government wants to have a legislative victory before the winter break. It's another it's something else that they consult to voters as look, we're taking action, where moving to fix something that a lot of people are concerned about. And I think the government is under a lot of pressure from the Australian Medical Association and various
other leading health groups. They went to see the new Health Minister Mark Butler and urged him to try to do everything he could to stamp out the growth of vaping his a habit.
It's interesting talking to you about the internal machinations of the Coalition and the Greens around this. What does it tell you about how these types of issues percolate internally.
I think this is one of those issues where it completely crosses the traditional kind of party divides, and people across the Parliament, no matter which party they're in, have very different views about this, and that is what is going to make it so difficult to resolve. One thing that really did surprise me when I started doing this story was the number of submissions that I read, you know, argued passionately in favor of making vapes available just as cigarettes are available.
You know.
One of the most interesting, but was certainly quite valid, was from Fiona Patten, the former Victorian Upper House MP, and she made an argument that vapes had really helped her finally quit smoking and that by banning vapes we're doing her and many others like her. She argued a real kind of disservice and that forcing her to go to a GP is just not going to work, and it's not going to work for all those other people
that are using vapes as a substitute for smoking. So that really struck me just how complex this issue is. At first, I had thought, well, you know, vaping is an evil that we must stamp out, but I think it's it is more complex than that.
It's essentially two stories in one, isn't it.
Like You've got people like Fiona Pattern and people like that who use it to stop smoking, and then you've got teenagers and they can't vote, their parents vote, and their parents are mad.
Yeah, well that's exactly right.
And I think what Mark Butler is saying is we don't want teenagers taking up vaping and becoming addicted to something new for the rest of their lives, something that's not good for them. We know that vaping does damage, and when you read some of the chemicals that are
contained in vapes, they can't be good for you. So what he's arguing is we've got to do something to create a whole new health problem for our country ten twenty thirty years down the track, and that the only way that we can stamp this art is through your
tough legislative action. I think there's no easy way to regulate vapes, because because this issue crosses all party lines and there's no kind of coherent ideology here which says that it's a good or bad thing to vape, a lot of different groups of people have completely different views about that vaping.
Jason, thanks so much for your time today, Ashland.
Always a pleasure.
Thanks for having me on seven AM.
Also in the news today, Green's leader Adam Band is threatening legal action against the Attorney General over comments Band
claims were defametory to him and the Greens party. Both the government and opposition joined together in the House of Representatives to accuse the Greens of inciting pro Palestinian protesters that have targeted the officers of some politicians, but in comments made outside of parliamentary privilege, Attorney General Mark Dreyfus claimed the Greens have been encouraging criminal damage of MP's electorate officers and New South Waleses Premier Chris Mins has
formally apologized on behalf of the government to people convicted of homosexual acts. Forty years after the state decriminalized homosexual activity. New South Wales is the last Dake to issue an apology. Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper.
It's produced by.
Kara Jensen, McKinnon, Shane Anderson and Salton Fecho. Our senior producer is Chris Dengate. Our technical producer is Atticus Bastow. Our editor is Scott Mitchell. Sarah mcviee is our head of audio. Eric Jensen is our editor in chief. Mixing by Travis Evans and Atticus Bastow. Our theme music is by Ned Buckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Ordio. My name's Ashlin McGhee. Thanks for your company this week. We'll see you again on Monday.