Public consultation on plain packaging of cigarettes

In April 2010 the Australian Government announced that, in a world first, all tobacco products sold in Australia would be required to be sold in plain packaging by 1 July 2012. Following Government amendments, the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 will require that all tobacco products sold in Australia are in plain packaging by 1 December 2012.

The Government’s legislation on plain packaging aims to prevent tobacco advertising and/or promotion on tobacco product packaging in order to:

• reduce the attractiveness and appeal of tobacco products to consumers, particularly young people;
• increase the noticeability and effectiveness of mandated health warnings;
• reduce the ability of the tobacco product packaging to mislead consumers about the harms of smoking; and
• through the achievement of these objectives in the long term, as part of a comprehensive suite of tobacco control measures, contribute to efforts to reduce smoking rates.

To enable full stakeholder and community engagement in the process, the exposure draft of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 and the Consultation Paper were released for public comment from 7 April 2011 to 6 June 2011. The Consultation Paper outlined the Government’s approach to implementing plain packaging, its response to design testing and targeted consultations, and provided an explanation of the key provisions of the exposure draft Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2010.

Public submissions closed at 5.00pm, 6 June 2011. Over 250 submissions were received

The Department of Health and Ageing commissioned a report providing a summary of submissions received during the public consultation.

• Public Consultation on the Exposure Draft of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011: Summary of Submissions (PDF 390 KB)

• Public Consultation on the Exposure Draft of the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011: Summary of Submissions (HTML)

Examples of proposed plain packaging

The images below illustrate the proposed design for plain packaging of cigarettes.

NOTE: Please note that the colour of these images may vary depending on your monitor settings or, if printed, your printer's quality. Therefore colours are indicative only. Plain packaging regulations will prescribe a specific dark olive brown colour for print purposes.

                                 

Click on an image above to download a high resolution version of the image. Note that the high resolution images are up to 2.5Mb in size.