I would be more careful trusting The Australian on anything to do with smoking (and a few other issues) given their writers' links to the tobacco-funded IPA. Media Watch put it a lot better than I could, with sources:
"Do the figures mean more people are smoking?
Well, no ... the industry admits , the number of smokers fell in 2013 by 1.4%. "
and they link to: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/1420_bata.pdf
“From 2008 to 2012 smoking incidence, or the number of people smoking, was declining at an average rate of -3.3 per cent a year. Since plain packaging was introduced, that decline rate slowed to -1.4 per cent,” Mr McIntyre said.
“Over the five years in the lead-up to the introduction of plain packaging, total tobacco industry volumes were declining at an average rate of -4.1 per cent.
So the source material appears to support the case that plain packaging has not been an effective policy and may have slowed the decline in smoking.
The plain packaging policy looks a lot like rainmaking. Propose a policy that sounds like it might bring a decrease in smoking in an environment where smoking is already decreasing and then when smoking continues to decrease claim that it was a success.