CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (13:21): Australia is in the grips of an illegal tobacco crisis, and the report released yesterday on household tobacco consumption and illegal nicotine by the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirms our very worst fears. We are now looking at an illegal tobacco market in Australia that grips 80 per cent of the whole market.

That means just 20 per cent of the nicotine and tobacco market in Australia operates through legal avenues. What's worse is that we're now looking at a 40 per cent increase in nicotine consumption over eight years. There should be three imperatives when looking at this issue.

First, the most important job of any government is to keep Australians safe. On that metric, this federal Labor government is failing terribly. We've seen organised crime and over 300 firebombings, and Nick McKenzie's investigation into the CFMEU showed clear links to the illegal tobacco trade.

We're losing billions of dollars in lost excise revenue. In fact, just $4.1 billion will be brought in, in downgraded Treasury forecasts. For my region, that represents about five new West Gippsland hospitals.

The forecast to 2029 has been downgraded by nearly $15 billion. That's money that's not being spent on roads, schools and hospitals. The federal government has completely outsourced this issue to organised crime and the illicit market, and that is having a terrible consequence.

The Victorian government have just made an announcement on tougher penalties. The thing I would say about the Victorian Labor government is that they're always slow to react and they're always wrong on these issues. States like Queensland and Tasmania have done a great job of bringing in tough new laws to shut down illegal tobacco shops and change their leasing arrangements, but we cannot have one focus on one solution to this problem.

We need a Swiss Army knife approach to combating illegal tobacco. Law enforcement alone won't work. We need to look at excise tax reductions, beefed-up law enforcement and an education campaign, because, at the moment, we are going to see a continuation of the illicit market.

We're going to see tragic cases like that of the woman in Melbourne who was killed as a result of mistaken identity in a house fire and that of a young woman going to work at a convenience store who was held up for a pack of 20s. They're the sorts of stories I'm hearing every day. It's not good enough.

The federal government need to change their approach and get real on illicit tobacco.