An individual may publish a tobacco advertisement if it is not in the course of the manufacture, distribution or sale of tobacco products. The individual must have published on his or her own initiative and received no benefit in doing so – s.20. This exemption only applies to individuals and not corporations.So, if you were to put that picture up for auction and turn a profit in the process, would your gain be safe from Big Nanny's grasping hand? She is serious, you know. While the sanction above has been in force since 2007, Nits Roxon has muscled-up the campaign to further limit free speech and property rights. From the legislation of which she is so proud:
And why might government agents be turning your shop upside down? Well it could be for something as trivial as selling, say, a packet of imported Silk Cut or Luckies without having re-packaged them in an officially approved Roxon box. Bad luck if your nicotine weakness favours one of those exotic brands.In executing a warrant, an authorised officer, or a person assisting an authorised officer, may use such force against things as is necessary and reasonable in the circumstances.
You will just have to switch before Nits sends the heavies around.
The face of plain packaging indeed.
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of things to complain about with Nicola Roxon. But give her credit for daring to implement this limitation on cigarette advertising.
ReplyDeleteIs it going to have any effect on smoking statistics? Judging by the way the cancer-peddlers and the journalists in their pockets are screaming abut the Nanny State, it looks like it will.
Today...cigarettes. Tomorrow... alcohol, sugar, saturated fats, fizzy drinks, caffeine, lollies ...
DeletePedro of Adelaide
Like 'Craven A', the Labor Party never varies from its zeal in regulating how we proles are to live our lives. I've never been a smoker, but if people want to smoke, they should be allowed to do so without all this nanny state rubbish. Well, I expect a visit from the Thought Police any time soon. Can I have O'Brien as my 'educator'?
ReplyDeleteGet Hollywood involved Prof. Remove from Australian cinemas and video stores all film that portray positive images of people smoking.
ReplyDeleteEg. Johnny Depp in the Tourist.
Not only does the hero, Alexander Pierce, smoke, but returns to smoking having given up for a while. Moreover the heroine, tells him, she likes a man who does what he wants.'
Sedition 101.
ps. By comparison the Chinese government are more pragmatic, less ideologically driven. You can hear them muttering under their breath about those Commos down south.
I think it was Tim Blair who noted that, during this year’s telecast of the Bathurst motor car races, historical footage of races from the 1970’s was pixelated to hide the ciggy ads on the bonnets of the Ford Prefects or Tin Lizzies or whatever they were driving.
ReplyDeleteThe Irish Lion
If Roxon and the A.L.P. had REALLY wanted to stop smoking in Australia, she could have legislated to make cigarette companies responsible for 100% of the health costs of addicts, together with, say, a 50% loading for the burden which smokers impose on the National health system.
ReplyDeleteIf you or I manufacture food or drink laced with arsenic, we would be prosecuted and rightly thrown in prison. Tobacco companies, with the collusion of the A.L.P., manufacture killer drugs of addiction which kill 15,000 Australians per year and all the A.L.P. do is to tinker with the decor of the product packaging.
Changing the colour of cigarette packets to olive green will save precisely the same number of lives, as painting the deck chairs of the Titanic olive green would have done in 1912.
Maybe it is just my suspicious mind, but I can't help wondering if there are not some very large bags of cash being passed 'under the counter' by tobacco companies, to A.L.P. politicians over this latest scam.
In order to reduce the incidence of Australians - and particularly children - suffering from passive stupidity, passive ignorance, passive deceit, passive embezzlement, passive corruption, passive misogyny, passive misandry, passive wallet-stuffing, would it be possible for Nicola Roxon, Minister for Enforcement of Therapeutic Decor, to legislate for all A.L.P. politicians to be painted olive green?
ReplyDeleteJust as olive green cigarette packaging cures cancer, by the same logic, painting all A.L.P. politicians olive green would magically transform them into honest, sentient, literate, numerate, competent human beings.
If it works in Canberra, we could then apply the Dulux to Piggy Howes, Big Bill Ludwig (and his many relatives and dependants), and everybody in the grants-funded "arts" community.
Tip a can of Wattle Solar-guard over Wayne Swan, and he might discover the difference between a 'deficit' and a 'surplus'.
Slap a coat of olive green paint on Bill Shorten, Minister for Employing his Relation in the Workplace, and he might eventually be able to competently purchase a meat pie.
Truly excellent suggestion Up the Workers!.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid "Up The Workers!" you are among those who actually believe Cigarette Smokers are a "cost" to the Community, too be fair it's a very common belief and one that no Government has any interest in dispelling.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that smokers are massive net contributors to public revenues; drinkers contribute more and much more to private revenues, but per head smokers are the largest volunteers of revenue to the state and all that is BEFORE you even deduct off the savings on their 10 Years (By average) shorter life span. 10 Years being $170,000 in un-indexed old age pension alone, not to mention dying young enough not to need things like hip and knee surgery.
Even that that great driver of more regulations for people with working class habits the BBC has had to admit it's just a moral crusade not a financial one. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8238919.stm
As for Nicola Roxon she represents everything that is wrong with the Labor Party, all symbolism not substance, massive taxing, massive spending, command and control with all roads leading to Canberra. Then you can add to that lot, vindictive and authoritarian over any petty issue, e.g. cartoonist making fun of her nanny state threatened with huge fines. She is talented at one thing only, politicking! Working the affirmative action card for all it worth and giving that ALP a stack of Women promoted well beyond any talent they actually have.
Given that the Preventative Health Task is a Roxon creation designed for the curtain-twitching middle-class puritan, drawn to careers in public health who see the poor not as people, but a problem to be tidied up, it would do the Liberals no harm to remind people that looking after yourself is a personal responsibility, not a licence to tax the crap out of people, that might help a few of Labor’s rusted on low income voters to find the “How to Vote Liberal” card in some marginal electorates.
Prof, reckon you should consider this purchase. Just to stick it up 'em.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&clk_rvr_id=423788974286&item=261140783093
Roxon Box. I hope that catches on.
ReplyDeleteMe too. Drab Green with a splash of horror.
DeleteNow I understand why dope is so unpopular - plain packaging.
ReplyDeleteRemember Prof when your chair broke depositing you on terra firma with the happy ending that you discovered that tasty packet of silk cuts?
ReplyDeleteThose were the good old days, eh?
Well IF I had a shop, I'd be quite tempted to put up a sign:
ReplyDelete"A Pox On Roxon"
In this house she is known as the Timewarp Teeniebopper, but lately she is more like some evil black widow spider and I think if she doesn't watch out the nightmares she causes could lead to her being the subject of a few voodoo dolls!