Mitch Fifield has never voted on tobacco plain packaging

The majority voted against an amendment introduced by Katter's Australian Party Senator Fraser Anning (Qld), which means it failed. Senator Anning explains what he had hoped to do:

This amendment seeks to give tobacco manufacturers the right of veto over government efforts to impose plain packaging on their products. The likelihood is that, if this amendment were passed, so-called plain packaging of tobacco products would come to an end. This amendment seeks to ensure that the property rights expropriated by the original Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 are restored.

In other words, the amendment would have basically put an end to the plain packaging laws.

The majority voted in favour of a motion to read the bill for a second time.(Read more about the stages that a bill must pass through here. ) This means that the majority agree with the main idea of the bill.

Background to the bill

The bill was introduced with the Tobacco Plain Packaging Bill 2011 to amend the Trade Marks Act 1995(Read more about trade mark law in Australia here. ) to ensure "that regulations may be made in relation to the plain packaging of tobacco so that businesses are not prevented from registering new trade marks or from protecting trade marks against infringement".(Read more about the bill, including its explanatory memorandum and bills digest, here. ) If these two bills succeed, Australia will be the first country in the world to introduce plain packaging.(Read more about plain packaging here, and more about the government's reasons for introducing the bills here.)

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