Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026

Ms CHANEY (Curtin) (15:53): I rise to support the Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026. Smoking still kills about 66 Australians every day. After decades of hard work, daily smoking rates halved between 2001 and 2022 from 22 per cent to 11 per cent.

Australia was a genuine world leader in tobacco control. The illicit market now threatens to undo much of that progress, fuelling organised crime and hooking a new generation. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, the combined rate of smoking and vaping has climbed back to 28 per cent, higher than it was a decade ago, and that's a trend that should alarm every member of this House.

The illicit tobacco market is now estimated to be larger than the combined Australian illicit market for cannabis, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy. So the case for stronger enforcement is clear. This bill responds by creating new offences for large-scale illicit tobacco activity linked to organised crime and substantially increases penalties across the full supply chain.

It expands unexplained-wealth and proceeds-of-crime tools, enables wiretaps for serious tobacco offences and improves information sharing between law enforcement bodies. These are sensible, proportionate reforms. But enforcement alone will not win this battle.

Australia has a national target of reducing daily smoking prevalence to five per cent by 2030. If we rely on enforcement alone, without addressing underlying demand, we will be chasing this problem indefinitely. That means maintaining our public health infrastructure, funding quitting support, and holding the line on plain packaging, advertising restrictions and excise.

And it means being alert to who is shaping these settings and how. Tobacco companies have a well documented history of seeking to influence public health policy in ways that serve their commercial interests rather than the public's health. That history is why Australia, as a party to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, has clear obligations to protect public health policy from industry influence and to ensure full transparency in any interactions that do occur.

It's also why I seconded the amendment from the member for Kooyong to ban political donations from tobacco companies. The long and troubling history of hidden influence by tobacco companies brings me to the Senate inquiry into the illicit tobacco crisis and specifically to the hearing on 4 May, where the committee allowed tobacco industry representatives to give evidence in a closed session.

I wrote to the committee chair to express my deep concerns. I asked why private briefings from tobacco companies were considered appropriate, when the transcript of the Philip Morris session would be released and how the committee would ensure that the remainder of the inquiry remained consistent with our international public health obligations. I have now received a response.

The committee advises that it may call any witnesses it deems relevant, that transparency is its first preference and that the Philip Morris transcript was published on 7 May, and I welcome the publication of that transcript. But the committee's response does not fully address my concerns. It doesn't explain why a closed session was the initial preference.

Neither does it address how the inquiry will remain consistent with our obligations under the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, which requires governments to protect health policy from commercial and vested interests of the tobacco industry. This matters. Parliamentary inquiries play a vital role in building public trust in decision-making, particularly on matters of public health.

Where that process appears opaque, where some witnesses get public scrutiny and others get a closed room, it invites entirely reasonable questions about whose voices are being heard and whose interests are being served. We cannot allow the legitimate concern about illicit tobacco to become a Trojan Horse for the tobacco industry to rehabilitate itself as a policy partner, to insert itself into regulatory processes or to subtly water down the public health settings that have made Australia a world leader.

It's worth noting that right now the gambling industry is copying straight from the tobacco playbook, casting doubt on where the harm is done, resisting proper regulation, wining and dining decision-makers, and now pointing earnestly to overseas illegal gambling sites, claiming that that should be the focus of regulation. We've seen it all before, and we can't be fooled by it from tobacco or from gambling.

If this bill is to achieve what it promises, the enforcement framework it creates must be matched by an unwavering commitment to public health policy that's developed transparently and free from industry capture. I urge the committee and this House to ensure that when we scrutinise the illicit tobacco trade we do so with our eyes open to the criminals who profit from it and to the legal industry that has never stopped trying to protect its market share at the expense of public health.

I commend this bill to the House.