One of the local obsessions is that Australia does (bad) policy to provide leadership to the rest of the world. So we have a carbon tax and plain packaging and the like. I always find this particular argument to be quite weak. So how is our latest stunt of providing world leadership going?
As the first dispatches from Australia indicate that plain packaging has had no initial impact since its introduction there, momentum towards its introduction in further markets appears to have stalled – even in countries such as New Zealand and the UK which up until recently had seemed near certainties to follow the Australian government down a standardised path. While the lack of significant market changes in Australia is no more than was predicted by Euromonitor and for other governments there was always going to be an element of wait and see, the tobacco industry appears to have regrouped in its rearguard action against plain packaging and shifting political realities are also contributing to the lengthening of odds and timescales.
…
However, certain countries remain as far from even the hint of plain packaging as ever. The major tobacco markets of China, Russia and Indonesia have all recently passed comprehensive tobacco control legislation without even so much as a passing mention of the concept. In the US, the federal regulatory authority the FDA has become embroiled in a legal wrangle regarding the imposition of a 50% graphic health warning which has found its way to the Supreme Court and which suggests that standardised packaging in the world’s 3rd largest tobacco market is a non-runner for the foreseeable future. Indeed, there was an intriguing vignette last week as the Irish Independent newspaper reported US trade groups’ less than gentle warning to Enda Kenny, Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of anti-tobacco regulation pioneer Ireland that the introduction of standardised cigarette packaging there would be seen as an ‘assault’ on the rights of tobacco companies which would send a ‘troubling message’ to Ireland’s trade partners. Further evidence, if it were needed, that the plain packaging debate has gone global and has a tortuous, rough and tumble road yet to run.
That report from Euromonitor International.
Is is all quite interesting; just two weeks ago I was being told that Nicola Roxon had built up huge credit on the left with the plain packaging legislation passing the parliament and the subsequent High Court victory – yet she was dumped from cabinet in the middle of night under circumstances yet to become public. I don’t know what has changed – but the international leadership argument doesn’t seem to have worked.
Apparently the way to “provide leadership to the rest of the world” is to follow it down the same path of interfering, authoritarian nannying that the rest of the world is treading.
Plato Sandilands
15 Feb 13 at 11:43 am
The most despicable woman in Australian history.
Infidel Tiger
15 Feb 13 at 11:48 am
I think Ms Roxon had got a lot of goodwill from the public for her stance on plain packaged cigarettes, that’s one thing that went well for Labor.
So it’s truly baffling why they got rid of her.
candy
15 Feb 13 at 11:49 am
Yes, it certainly is – and there I was thinking she was cutting and running due to labor facing electoral annihilation…
Rabz
15 Feb 13 at 12:01 pm
Yes, the Australian people have a deep and abiding love for this unwashed, unkempt, Nazi. In a righteous world she’d be marching through a baying crowd to the gallows in the middle of Federation Square.
Infidel Tiger
15 Feb 13 at 12:09 pm
“The most despicable woman in Australian history”.
No.That’s Gillard.
By a nose…..
cynical1
15 Feb 13 at 12:13 pm
Perhaps a lawyer can tell me: is the Boss Lawyer of the Land the Fed AG or the CJ of the High Court?
Pickles
15 Feb 13 at 12:16 pm
Currently the Chief flaw officer is the Attorney-General.
Tintarella di Luna
15 Feb 13 at 12:26 pm
Roxy’s replacement should ban styrofoam cups, CocaCola and plastic bags.
Why am I saying this, the left doesn’t understand satire. I should stop giving the blighters ideas.
Bruce
15 Feb 13 at 12:43 pm
Yes and no, Candy. Many people see reasons to dislike cigarettes and smoking, but I think that the heavy-handed approach has also turned a lot of people right off. I am hearing quite a bit of “I don’t agree with smoking but … ” about plain packaging and also about tax gouging on the cigs. Perhaps Roxon’s Reformatory will turn out to be one of those things people like in the abstract, but not when they have to live in it.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
15 Feb 13 at 1:30 pm
The Child Bride is a smoker and it doesn’t worry me in the slightest. In fact when she goes away for a couple of months to work, I miss the odd smell of smoke.
What really pisses me off though, is the pictures on the pack. Each time I see one, I am reminded that no one wanted them in our house, but there they are.
It reminds me of what a pack of Fascist Bastards this government is.
Winston SMITH
15 Feb 13 at 1:39 pm
If they were truely serious all they had to do is reclassify them as an S4 drug requiring a doctors prescription and move supply to the back room of Pharmacies.
They could plain package alcohol with a label marked poison and skull and cross bones with a picture of a derro dead in a street gutter and I would still buy it.
Splatacrobat
15 Feb 13 at 1:53 pm
If they plain packaged alcohol they’d be definitely kicked out of government, that’s just going way too far interference in people’s lives for no reason at all.
candy
15 Feb 13 at 2:00 pm
Big call. The competition is pretty fierce at the moment. I’d have her second to TLS.
jupes
15 Feb 13 at 2:10 pm
Did someone mention historically awful women?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VJVw32EkIM
C.L.
15 Feb 13 at 2:20 pm
Thanks for nothing, CL! What has always struck me about this clip is the adolescent self-consciousness of the faux boody-shakers. Who is the gastropod on the right who looks like a school library assistant?
Des Deskperson
15 Feb 13 at 2:35 pm
FMD CL – who the hell were those Emilys List harpies “dancing” around with Mother Russia on guitar?
H B Bear
15 Feb 13 at 2:38 pm
The only leadership the Labor Government is providing is to take us down the garden path.
Samuel J
15 Feb 13 at 4:44 pm
That High Court decision marked the formal death of property rights in Australia.
An analogous situation would be a mandated 20m high fence around your block, with no gate, and no chance of it ever being removed.
e-girl
15 Feb 13 at 5:38 pm
Obviously you have never had to contend with ecoNazi rules in relation to a property you own…
NoFixedAddress
15 Feb 13 at 6:14 pm
I challenge every Catallaxy person to go and buy a packet of cigarettes and then compare that process to purchasing any other product in Australia…..
And if anyone tells me that the ACCC is about helping consumers then I will tell you to take your head out of your arrested rear end!
Roxon would go well in Brussels….
And by the way… didn’t she inherit the AWU file from a certain naive ‘solicitor’ many years ago?
NoFixedAddress
15 Feb 13 at 6:27 pm
Now you are resigning Ropshitz ,wheres the file on your serial slut redheaded fellow Liar (llb)?
Borisgodunov
15 Feb 13 at 8:29 pm