Barring any possible glitches, cigarettes marketed in Australia will hit the shelves on December 2012 bearing nothing but a plain olive brown packaging and a bold health advisory meant to dissuade smokers from lighting their next stick.

Australian Senators voted on Thursday to approve the landmark legislation that would force tobacco manufacturers to strip their products of any enticing marks, overcoming procedural delays employed by opposition lawmakers who labelled the measures as a backward economic policy.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon was well aware that much of the world monitors the Australian effort of further limiting cigarette's penetration within its borders while at the same time discouraging the growth of smoking, which medical experts maintain causes serious health problems.

"Plain packaging means that the glamour is gone from smoking and cigarettes are now exposed for what they are, killer products that destroy thousands of Australian families," Roxon told Reuters during an interview after the bill's passage in the upper chamber of the Parliament.

She added that getting the laws through stringent conservative opposition serves both as a victory for the federal government and for the Australian public, who, she stressed, will reap much of the health benefits attached with the measures.

The federal government, Roxon added, is all prepared to take up the legal obstacles that the tobacco industry is expected to launch in order to neutralise the new laws.

Led by the British American Tobacco Australia (BATA), major Australian cigarette makers have threatened to challenge the new policy through lawsuits, which they claim is unconstitutional for disbarring them from using their trademarks and intellectual properties in selling their products.

BATA argued that the new tobacco measure, if implemented, should come with just compensation for their projected losses.

"The result of BATA's legal challenges could force Health Minister Nicola Roxon to pay tobacco companies billions of dollars for the removal of trademarks, brands and pack space," the giant tobacco manufacturers said in a statement.

Roxon, however, remains unfazed by the prospect of legal and financial troubles for the government and insisted "we won't be bullied by tobacco companies threatening litigation and we are prepared to fight them if they do take that step."

The health minister asserted that smoking brings about health complications and unnecessary expenses for Australian.

While these assertions were not countered by BATA, the industry group reminded Roxon that the new laws will do nothing in reducing smokers in the country and in turn encourage the proliferation of smuggled cigarettes.