Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026

Mr HILL (Bruce—Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs and Assistant Minister for International Education) (17:11): I thank the member for Mackellar for the very constructive discussions we've had. It is a very well-intentioned amendment, and I appreciate where it came from. The government is not able to support it, and I'll put on the record, in reasonably succinct form, the reasons.

Tobacco manufacturing equipment is inherently multipurpose. It's also used to make a wide range of pharmaceutical products, food and beverage, as well as chemical processing. If members are deeply interested or fascinated to learn more, they're of course very welcome to come and have a separate conversation, where we could talk about granulation and compression of pharmaceuticals, powder dosing and filling of pharmaceuticals, and the extraction of pharmaceuticals, all of which occurs on the same basic machinery.

Or we could talk about the conditioning and thermal drying of food and beverage products, the mixing and blending of food and beverage products, industrial extraction of food and beverage products, or of course the grinding and slicing or liquid spraying as part of chemical processing. It's all the same basic equipment. I appreciate the comparator and the discussions we've had with respect to the analogy, if you like, of tablet presses, which are regulated.

The very firm and clear advice from the Australian Border Force is to not include tobacco manufacturing equipment in a border control framework. Their advice is that the comparator—and we've had a look through it again, and there's detail if any members are interested to talk about it later—is not the same, given the scope of uses across pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and food and beverage.

Tablet presses are controlled, as you note, under the regulations. Importation is prohibited unless a permit is granted. Control is targeted to equipment but not parts, and that's a further complication.

Legitimate industries can access equipment and require a permit. But the comparison just doesn't sit in a practical level with the broad types of multipurpose equipment detailed above that large swathes of legitimate industries need to import for their product. All these things, then, are a question of cost and benefit.

To set up such a regulatory regime would be a more significant diversion of Border Force's resources than perhaps is appreciated, given the wide range of machinery. And right now I think the priority, which I accept, for the Australian Border Force in their operational advice is not to divert those resources away from inspecting containers at the border. I'll just put on the record the appreciation of the work they've done over the last six to 12 months.

They've had record levels of seizures at the border. Campaign Printwall, now ongoing Operation Printwall, between December and March seized more than a kilotonne of illegal tobacco. They had a record month in March, a record week in March, a record month in April and a record week in April.

And I think in the circumstances we should listen to their advice and not divert those resources into a complex regulatory regime for which the cost-benefit doesn't stack up. The final point I'd make is that my office has engaged with the Cancer Council on this and taken them through it. I don't want to verbal them, but I think there's broad understanding and acceptance about the posture at the moment.

But I thank the member for Mackellar as well as her fellow doctor sitting next to her, the member for Kooyong, for your genuine interest in this topic. Question negatived. Bill agreed to.