Imperial Tobacco and British American Tobacco (BAT) were told to stop watermarking their cigarettes with travel destinations. These breaches first came to light in early October.
"They have letters on them like NYC, LDN for London, SYD for Sydney, AUS for Australia, we think those sort of letter tags suggest some meaning to people who are smoking," she said.
"It's a sort of watermark in the paper of some of the cigarettes. We believe that it is a breach. We believe plain paper means plain paper, it doesn't mean watermarked paper, so we've also told the tobacco companies that they need to change that," she said.
Minister Pilbersek believes the watermark codes try to associate cigarettes with "the glamour of travel."
Tobacco companies are permitted to stamp their cigarettes with alpha-numeric codes for manufacturing and recall purposes, but they should not have any form of advertising related to their brand.
After the High Court ruling in April, it is now illegal to produce cigarettes that don't comply with the new plain packaging laws. From December 1, all cigarette packs must come in drab olive-brown packaging and covered with large graphic health warnings.
If manufacturers are found to breach the rules, they could be faced with fines of more than $100 million. Their products will also be recalled.
Nevertheless, it didn't stop tobacco giants from trying to “push the boundaries”.
"They were testing the boundaries and we've gone after them and they've rolled over, they've agreed to change what they're doing,” said Minister Pilbersek.
"There is a clear set of rules about what is allowed and if we start allowing variations then the tobacco companies will push the boundaries.”
BAT has agreed to change the cigarettes.
Scott McIntyre, a spokeperson for BAT, said the company was “more than happy” to comply with the rules as soon as they were notified by the Health Department.
"We were very upfront about being more than happy to work with them for a mutually beneficial outcome," McIntyre said.
