Australian cigarette tax is all smokes and mirrors

THE first cigarette I smoked was a Peter Stuyvesant, described in its advertisements as "the international passport to smoking pleasure".

Hiding under the family home at Holland Park, I didn't really get the feeling I was on the Champs-Elysees. Perhaps the copy writers had it wrong.

Maybe I should have tried Benson and Hedges – "when only the best will do".

I remember the packaging – the pale blue of Belair packets, the heavily seriphed type of the Chesterfield packs, the white and blue of Rothmans, the red circle on white of Lucky Strikes and the dark red of the Lark brand which boasted "charcoal filters".

All gone, victims of another piece of political grandstanding by a Federal Government obsessed with the creation of shimmering PR images designed to dance on the political horizon until the federal election. Cigarettes will from 2012 be sold in plain packaging and the price will go up by $2.60 or more a packet. Wow! Another first for Australia!Watching Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on television announcing this, I cringed. The tobacco companies, he crowed, would hate the move and would fight it. "Bring it on" was the message from Action Man Rudd.

"PM gets tough on Tobacco Giants" was the message the PM's office was shovelling. Was this the same Man of Steel who'd tossed his ETS out the window the moment the political wind shifted?

Was it the same tower of strength who hung Environment Minister Peter Garrett out to dry when there was overwhelming evidence that despite the Prime Minister's office having been advised that the ceiling insulation scheme was fatally flawed, it insisted that it be rushed out into the suburbs regardless?

The same, and now he is challenging the tobacco companies to the best of 15 rounds to be fought bareknuckle with no quarter given, this titanic struggle to take place beneath the banner of a health initiative.

It's a stunt, and a transparent one. Of course the tobacco companies will fight it as Rudd hoped they would. They're defending their individual brands but in provoking this conflict, the PM is trying to portray himself as the fearless warrior unsheathing his sword to wage a holy war against the ravages of smoking-related disease.

People will stop smoking, we are told, if cigarettes are sold in plain packets. Crap. People will keep smoking because smoking is addictive and it's really hard to stop. I know what I'm talking about here.

People stop smoking because they are afraid it will kill them.

If this move is going to stop people smoking then why is the Government hoping that increasing the price will tip billions of extra dollars into the Treasury's coffers?

The other insupportable claim that is being woven around the announcement is that if cigarettes are sold in plain packaging, people who have not previously smoked will not take up the habit. Crap. People smoke because it's always been viewed as slightly outrageous and not something that "really nice" people do. It's marginally rebellious. It's a nose-thumb at society and its anti-smoking regulations.

Attractive packaging may well sway smokers in their selection of brand, the gold of the B&H exerting more visual allure than the blue and white of the Winfields, but it won't drive them to take smoking up in the first place.

If the Government is right in its approach, which is plainly an attempt to deflect attention away from the policy disasters now mounting around it, then it has unwittingly stumbled upon the answer to the social evil of binge drinking. Henceforth, all alcohol must be served in plain packaging. No more exotic beer labels or fine artwork on wine bottles which will now just read Fourex beer or Lindemans chardonnay.

This move, if the Government's case for tobacco is well-founded, will cause young people to lose all interest in drinking because it's the packaging that's been attracting them, not the product which lies within.

Putting up the price of cigarettes merely means more kids will go hungry. Thirty-eight per cent of unemployed people smoke, as do 50 per cent of indigenous Australians. They're not going to stop because it's become more expensive, which means the extra money will have to come from somewhere.

The tobacco companies will take legal action which will drag on. In due course, the PM's initiative may be disallowed by the courts but it doesn't matter.

The extra money will continue to be squeezed from smokers and the packaging issue can be held up as a "health initiative" until the election, which is all that was ever intended of it. If this is not the most cynical government in Australian political history, will someone please tell me which was.