I would guess that big tobacco has a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to vigorously protect their brandname and the image of their brand and their marketing strategies.
The gillard governments plan seems to me that it could be presented and interpreted in a court of law as an attempt to destroy the cigarette companies brandname and brand image in Australlia, something that has considerable value to the cigeratte companies and something they have invested many, many millions of dollars over the years in marketing research and advertising.
I would guess that the cigarette companies will likely feel compelled to take this issue before the courts and I would also guess that they have a reasonable idea that with sufficient money spent over a long enough time, that the cigarette companies will prevail...
None of this is good for either the cigarette companies or the government, only good for the lawyers and I would bet that the cigarette companies have much smarter legal muscle than thos incompetent government of unions and various other stooges...
look at the mind-numbingly incompetent gillard as an possible example of a current government level lawyer.
In any case this incompetent gillard government will not likely survive much longer, it could be gone in weeks or months, and so it might even be an easy battle for the cigarette companies to restrain the government action to force plain paper, until a final court verdict after all appeals have been exhausted in 5 or 10 years...
I dont smoke and personally consider it a filthy and unhealthy habit, but I can see how the cigarette companies might view this approach of the incompetent gillard government as somewhat like a monty python type comedy sketch...
In view of gillard's obvious history of serial incompetence and outright policy stupidity , the cigarette companies might feel that they will be impelled to sucessfuly and wastefully defend their brands and marketing efforts and that it is likely that they will be succesful even if only by waiting out until the demise of gillard and her unworkable collection of keystone cops...
Persoanally it seems to me that Tony Abbott is just being sensible and looking for other ways among the many alternatives, to actively discourage smoking rather than take a confrontational, potentially expensive and probably legally indefensible approach that the incompetent gillard seems fixated on...
