"Unfortunately the Labor Party does not understand the legal ramifications attached to such a move."
Socialist dictatorships have very little respect for laws except for how they can distort the law to use it to their advantage to further oppress and imporverish the population that manage to capture (that's us)...
The tobacco companies have invested many many millions, if not billions of dollars building their trademarks and intelectual property that goes into their brand and image.
It could be argued by tobacco company lawyers, some of the best lawyers on earth by the way, that these tradmarks, brands and image represent a considerable part of shareholder value and of course share-price...
The tobacco companies can draw out a litigation on this for years. No other country has even attempted to introduce such a counter-productive and useless action, although apparently a number of countries have looked at it and abandonned the idea probably on better advice than gillard's nonsenical stance.
- Australia will be quite a lonely figure
- The cigarette companies if they chose to comply can demand significant compensation from the Australian government for loss of shareholder value
- IP (intellectual property for the slow,gullible ones) is currently a hot-button issue in most of the western world since it represents much of the inherent value of the products still produced by the west. If Australia does not uphold and respect and companies IP, why should China and India and other third world developing countries uphold and respect a companies IP, they also can just follow Australia's example and copy/restrict whatever products they like...
- Where does it stop? Alcohol can be classified as just as damaging, as can fast-food, soft-drinks, driving a car or motorbike, skiing and surfing, playing football... the list goes no and on and no socialist dictatorship has ever been known to show much restraint once they understand that the population will accept the stupidity they are forcing on it...
- If gillard is serious about the health aspects of cigarettes she will call for a complete sales ban. gillard will not do that since she wants to continue collecting the taxes from cigarette sales to waste on rort-filled white elephants and cronies...
Tony Abbott is just being sensible and staying out of this mess...
Another gillard catastrophe is on the way and better for Tony to let gillard have all teh rope she needs to hang herself... unfortunately gillard will probably also hang us...
