Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 3:20:45 to 3:27:00
Comparison of smoking and vaping data between AIHW surveys, ABS wastewater analysis, and the HILDA survey regarding illicit tobacco use.
Topics: Health, Integrity
Speakers: Hon Anne Ruston, Dr Zoran Bolevich, Blair Comley, Dr Liz Develin, Alistair Beasley
Sure. In your report, you also say that 34% of respondents who smoke reported using illicit tobacco or accessing their products illicitly. However, the ABS data shows in 2025 that illicit sources accounted for 80% of all nicotine consumptions, uh consumption. And sort of just interested, um, I mean, obviously they didn't determine that it was illicit tobacco through their wastewater sample. They've obviously used it and another means by which to get that information. Why do you think there is such a large discrepancy there between two different government data sources?
Well, um obviously, as you said yourself, uh uh ABS had to extrapolate from uh their chemical analysis uh of some of these results that you talked about, and it is probably best to address those questions to ABS so they can properly explain their uh methodology for our survey. Uh we focused on specifically two forms of illicit tobacco, the branded illicit tobacco, which is where you have a product that looks like a legitimate um uh product, uh, but is actually um not and does not have the normal um cautionary um labels on them and that's that kind of thing. And then the unbranded illicit tobacco uh which is usually sold in Lewis bags and things like that, etc. etcetera. So that's why our survey actually asked people not do you smoke illicit tobacco, but what was the uh form of tobacco that they used? How did it look? So it's it is really trying to uh understand those behaviours uh in quite specific level of detail, and that's the sort of information and care that is taken to designing these questionnaires with our expert community.
Um interestingly, in the um the department's um annual report shows that daily smoking rates nearly um through they reference the Hilda survey um and that shows daily smoking rates nearly double the smoking rates that you have. Are you aware of that, Hilda survey?
Uh I'm not personally, Senator. Um the team may well be.
Um, I mean, obviously, if you have not aware of it, then I can hardly ask you to explain the difference. Um I just you know maybe um maybe on notice if somebody does have that, I'd be very interested to understand. Um I'm just sort of keen to understand. I I I totally accept your explanation about the the different things that you survey for, um, but there is obviously significant discrepancy in some of these, um, so be keen to understand in more depth how you reconcile the.
But that but there are also lots of synergies because there are other surveys and other sources of data which show um um very similar analogous trend to ours, which is that the smoking prevalence is decreased for stabilised uh and that the uh use of illicit tobacco has increased. So um our survey is very consistent with findings of all those other surveys in those regards.
Yeah. So um so it interested maybe to you, Secretary. Um the the reference to Hilda survey results in relation to this target in its annual report. Why did you reference that instead of referencing the AIHW?
Ms. Develin will comment on that. I just have a flicked to the page at the end of a report, page 44 that has program 1.5. And I I may have misheard, but I thought you uh indicated the Hilda data was showing an increase in smoking rates, whereas we have the according to the Hilda data, uh daily smoking rates in 25-26 was 10.3%, which is down from the 24-25 result of 10.7%.
Yeah, I didn't say that. I said that it showed smoking rates that were significantly higher than the smoking rates that were quoted in the um AIHW report.
I just I just want to make it clear that at least on that measure, there's a 10.3%. We do have a progressive.
I wasn't talking about dropping rates, I was talking about the difference between the two data sources.
So I I think Ms. Develin will comment. I think what Dr. Bolevich is also saying is each of these various surveys have different methodologies, different coverage. It's different. It's not the ones right or wrong or the perfect answer, they illustrate from different perspectives. But Dr. Develin might want to add.
Thank you, Senator. The reason why the Hilda survey is used is because it's longitudinal. And for the annual report, we're trying to give an annual update. And obviously, with surveys uh like the ones that the institute does, the state and territory epidemiological studies, they are point-in-time and they'll collect data once every couple of years. So they produce sort of a different um trend line, but the Hilda is longitudinal and it provides us annual data, so that's why we've chosen that for the annual.
Okay, I'm still really keen to understand what the the you how you reconcile against the various different sources. There may be very logical reason why these figures all look very, very different. Um just quickly NH MRC and then the Rural Health Commissioner. Hey, hi, I just um Keen, um, then our ChMRC was tasked by the Minister some time ago to undertake comprehensive review