Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill

I wish to say that I support the bill.

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I’m rising on behalf of the National Party in support of the Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill in its second reading. Can I begin, as it’s my first contribution for 2020, to wish everyone well for a busy and successful year ahead.

I think this bill actually sums up this Government: potentially good intention—because I think no one disagrees with the principle that adults shouldn’t be smoking in cars with young kids in it—but poorly delivered. I mean, how did we get in a position where vaping is not included in this bill? The reason is because the current Government has dragged its heels on vaping—told the House last year that it was a matter of weeks away, new vaping legislation, and that has not appeared. So here we have a bill that’s half-baked. It should have had vaping in, and it’s an area that we cannot now address.

The second issue we have with this bill—a bill with good intention but that actually fails to deliver, because actually what it should have had as its title is “Smoke-free Environments (Prohibiting Smoking in Moving Motor Vehicles Carrying Children) Amendment Bill”, because this bill actually only applies to cars that are pretty much moving. My point is that if they’re stationary because people are living in them, because this Government has not delivered on its pledge on removing people out of cars in its first term, now they’re having to legislate to allow people to continue to smoke in their cars if they’re living in them. How did we get to a point where we did not include vaping and now we’re saying, “In fact, if you live in your car, you’re excluded.”? The child is still going to be impacted by that cigarette smoke whether the car’s moving or stationary.

Equally, now we have written into this bill around enforcement—in fact, there pretty much won’t be much enforcement. So, yes, a good bill—I don’t think anyone disagrees in this House that adults should not be smoking in cars with kids—but a bill that has been poorly delivered. We received 120 submissions. I would like to take some of the credit for that number of submissions, because I boldly got up in the House and said it was such a good bill that we would only get about three or four submissions, and people, obviously, heard that.

We had a great range of submissions—a lot of young people turned up—and that led to one of the most bizarre situations I think any select committee saw last year. We had one person turn up who was a submitter that tried to argue the proposition that second-hand smoke for kids was not bad for them and, in fact, over time, their body would repair. Alarmingly, we found out retrospectively that that person’s argument was based on research that had been funded by the tobacco companies themselves, and I think that that very much calls into question the intent of some submitters.

I think what is agreed, irrespective of what party you’re in, is that it’s not only the physical impact of being exposed to second-hand smoke, but we also know from young people that it’s the psychological impact of being trapped in that car while adults are smoking. So here we have a bill in its second reading that failed to actually deliver what the intent was, and I’m looking forward to the National Party—the Opposition party—turning up with the Supplementary Order Papers in the committee of the whole House stage to actually do what the Government should have done, and that’s deliver. That’s what we’re going to deliver in this bill, and, in fact, that’s what we’ll be doing in 2020—delivering. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Just once—just once—I would like to see the Opposition look at a bill. It does exactly what it’s meant to do. It protects children in cars. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a second time.