Optus breach included Medicare numbers; Anthony Albanese meets Kamala Harris, Fumio Kishida; NACC legislation to be introduced; Shinzo Abe state funeral held; Lidia Thorpe’s Greens ranks closed

Meanwhile, in health news, former federal health minister Nicola Roxon has urged Australian governments to clamp down on vaping, describing the boom in use among teenagers as “a ticking bomb for the next generations”.

“What on earth are we doing here, letting this continue?” Roxon asked in a recent speech.

“The boom in vape usage is amongst teenagers in Australia who have never smoked, so I simply cannot accept the harm reduction argument … teenagers are using an untested product, sucked into their lungs at a young age, causing untold and unknown damage we may not see for many years.”

Roxon, who introduced the world’s first cigarette plain packaging laws in the Australian parliament in 2012, urged governments to “act with urgency on vaping” and not allow tobacco’s harmful history to repeat itself.

“Let’s not wait and see if vaping is safe, let’s use all opportunities stop it wherever we can, until it is proved so,” she said.

“Let’s better protect our young people from being manipulated.”

During the election campaign earlier this year, Labor national secretary Paul Erickson pointed to the party’s “proven track record of acting on harmful products”, specifically highlighting cigarette plain packaging, while assuring public health advocates that an Albanese government would consider further regulatory protections on unhealthy products.

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Former health minister Greg Hunt tried to ban the importation of liquid nicotine and e-cigarettes in 2020, but after a Coalition backbench revolt opted for a prescription model.

Vapers are now required to have a doctor’s prescription to import liquid nicotine, but products remain widely available and the Cancer Council has called for stronger action from all levels of government.

The federal health department is finalising the national tobacco strategy, a draft of which recommends new restrictions on “the marketing, availability and use of all e-cigarette components in Australia, regardless of their nicotine content”.

Roxon, who is the chair of industry super fund HESTA and VicHealth, has mostly avoided the media since she retired from politics ahead of the 2013 election.

She made the comments about vaping, in a speech to the Population Health Conference last week, in a personal capacity.