The government announced today that it will push ahead with plans to force all cigarettes sold in Australia to be packaged in the same olive packages. A friend commented to me that the new minimalist packaging, in the colour of the season to boot, was actually quite appealing to him, though I doubt hipsters are the target of this policy.
In all seriousness though, it is far from clear that this is a good idea. Smoking rates in Australia have fallen since the government banned various forms of cigarette advertising in the 80s. Smoking among those aged 14 and over has fallen from 30.5% of the population in 1988 to 16.6% of the population in 2007. That has obviously been a great result - letting adults choose behaviours and products that harm their health is probably a necessary incident of freedom, but letting companies manipulatively peddle addictive products to addicts probably isn't.
But it seems that the argument for plain packaging relies, at least in part, on thinking that standarising packaging - and therefore branding - is analogous to cutting advertising. Perhaps it is, but its effect will certainly be far more marginal. And as the cigarette lobby has pointed out, there's no actual evidence that plain packaging will work.
I think this policy is actually about politics, and the health benefits that may come will be a welcome bonus for the ALP. The first political benefit is that the government is seen to be doing something about a problem that most people want to see addressed. Indeed they can boast, as they have, that they're imposing the toughest laws in the world. I've little sympathy for this kind of political pandering - especially when it's based on stripping the rights of unpopular groups who are none the less law abiding. (Populism, even when directed against criminal groups is usually distasteful.)
However the bigger political benefit, as I see it, is that this issue wedges the Liberals in a quite spectacular fashion. On the one hand, there is definitely some milage for the Liberals in opposing this is big government overreach. But at the same time, the Liberals accept political donations from tobacco companies. This morning, when they equivocated on the policy, Nicola Roxon was straight at them, saying: "There is a clear question for Mr Abbott today: will you join with the Gillard government or will you continue to be in the pocket of big tobacco and accept their donations?"
That, I think, is what's really behind this policy. If the Liberals oppose it, they can be painted as stooges of big tobacco. If they support it, they may well have to kiss goodbye to some or all of their tobacco donations. Political donations are a bit like your dirty washing - they never look very good when the media explores every single item. Having the political debate focus for days or weeks on how much cash the Liberals take from big tobacco could be more than they can take.
Maybe I'm a cynic, but I think this government deserves to have its policies, and the timing of their announcement, scrutinised for political manoeuvres. And I'm a little too cynical to believe that this announcement, coming in a week where the government has been distracted by Kevin Rudd, is both pure coincidence and pure policy.