Rudd the Terminator

Opposition leader Tony Abbott and executives from Big Tobacco appear to be alone in their opposition to the Federal Government's draconian measures to cut smoking.
Last week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd imposed an immediate 25 per cent tax increase on tobacco products and signalled his intention to require plain paper packaging by 2012.

Abbott stressed that he is opposed to smoking, but questioned the Prime Minister's motives, claiming that Rudd is making a panicked 'tax grab' to pay for his addiction to spending.

While his reasoning suggests opposition for opposition's sake, Abbott is right to ask questions. However it's not so much the tax grab that is a worry, but the shift towards regressive taxation to fund the health system. In other words, increasing the cost of cigarettes hurts the poor more than the rich. If James Packer still smokes, it does not matter to him whether he has to pay $13 or $20 for a packet of cigarettes. But it makes a big difference to many other Australians.

The regressiveness of tobacco tax is compounded by the reality that smoking is much more prevalent among those from lower socio-economic and disadvantaged Australians. Health policy analyst Jennifer Doggett says that while the 'white collar' smoking rate is just 13 per cent, the Indigenous figure is 50 per cent, and the rate for those with schizophrenia is 90 per cent.

Such figures are quoted whenever tobacco tax hikes are threatened because welfare advocates know that many Australians with a small discretionary income will give priority to cigarettes over food and clothing for themselves and their families. Such is the nature of addictive substances, and it only demonstrates that some form of draconian action against tobacco is necessary.

However Rudd is acting with the callous efficiency of The Terminator when he really needs to find a more equitable incentive to give up smoking. Not only does he appear committed to unfair regressive taxation, but there is a lack of empathy towards those who will suffer most from this particular form of tough love.

He may not be a smoker himself, but he makes no attempt to encourage smokers from lower socio-economic groups to feel that he is one with them. In the past he has demonstrated empathy in some of his prepared speeches, for example the allusion in the health debate to his upbringing in a family of nurses. Instead his rhetoric here was combative, and it was as if smokers were as much the enemy as Big Tobacco.

'Cigarettes kill people. Therefore the Government makes no apology whatsoever for what it's doing … This will be the most hardline regime for cigarette packaging anywhere in the world for which we make no apology whatsoever.'

The action on smoking is clearly part of a strategy of taking an easy option to get runs on the board before this year's election following a series of spectacular failures and backflips. But the punishing manner in which he is executing his plan could cause it to backfire, and leave him offside with the 'battlers' whose quality of life is noticeably diminished by the regressive tobacco tax slug.