Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026
Dr SCAMPS (Mackellar) (10:47): I rise to speak on the Combating Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026. This bill responds to the Illicit Tobacco and E‑cigarette Commissioner's 2024-25 report, which sets out four key actions needed to combat the illicit tobacco market in Australia. These are: stronger consequences for criminal actors, improved multiagency capability, unified information and data, and demand reduction.
The bill expands law enforcement powers to investigate illicit tobacco related offending, including computer access and surveillance capabilities. It also increases the penalties for people involved in illicit tobacco offences relating to the importation, possession, buying, selling, supply, production and manufacturing of these illegal products. These are positive and much needed steps.
In recent years, Commonwealth, state and territory governments have taken commendable action to strengthen regulation, enforcement, licensing and penalties to curtail both legal and illegal tobacco use. Legislative reforms, including the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023, reflect the Commonwealth's ongoing commitment to tobacco control. The Commonwealth allocated $156 million in March 2025 and a further $20 million in the recent budget to strengthen compliance and enforcement action.
The government has also established the Illicit Tobacco National Disruption Group, bringing together law enforcement agencies and regulators at both the Commonwealth and state and territory levels. The group targets mid-level criminals and enablers operating through small businesses, intermediaries and sole traders who import, distribute or sell illicit tobacco and vapes.
These reforms have already contributed to the seizure of billions of illegal cigarettes, tonnes of loose leaf tobacco, vapes and large amounts of cash. But the reality remains that large volumes of illegal tobacco are still flooding the Australian market and ending up in the hands of consumers. The ITEC Commissioner estimates that, at current tobacco consumption trends, the illicit tobacco market now comprises 55 per cent of the total domestic tobacco market in Australia.
In addition, it's estimated that 95 per cent of vapes purchased in Australia are illegal. The enforcement challenge is therefore real and urgent. The rapid growth in tobacconists and convenience stores across Australian shopping strips is undermining years of public health progress.
Research shows that the efforts to quit and success in quitting fall as tobacco retail availability increases. Generation Vape research shows that young people are regularly exposed to vaping products sold illegally through retail outlets and informal channels. Disposable flavoured vapes and oral nicotine pouches are being sold from retail shops, with storefronts advertising products popular with children and young people, including American candy and novelty toys.
This normalises nicotine use and increases the risk of addiction, reinforcing the need for decisive action to disrupt illicit supply and the retail environments that place young people at risk. A recent survey of over 5,000 Australian adults, conducted by the Cancer Council's Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer, reveals a clear mandate for reform not only to tackle illicit tobacco but to address the sheer oversupply of tobacco retailers across the country.
These concerns are strongly reflected in my electorate of Mackellar on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Residents are increasingly alarmed at the rapid spread of tobacconists and vaping stores across their communities, particularly in the neighbourhood shopping strips and areas close to schools. In suburbs such as Newport, Dee Why, Mona Vale, Frenchs Forest, Narrabeen and Avalon, locals report a surge in shopfronts selling tobacco, vapes and sweets aimed at young people, and when one shuts down it seems like another one just pops up.
Residents have raised serious concerns about the influence of these shops on young people, the apparent ease with which illegal products are being sold and the broader role some of these businesses may be playing in enabling organised criminal activity in our suburbs. One Newport resident expressed concern about the number of vaping shops 'sneaking into our community and drawing in our youth'.
They said, 'I really hope you can help and change this increasing threat to our community's health.' A resident of Bilgola Plateau wrote to me about the opening of a tobacco and vape store less than 500 metres from Bilgola Plateau Primary School. They raised concerns about the influence this shop could have on local children, saying: Even more troubling is the shop's decor, which is styled like a candy store.
This seems like a deliberate tactic to attract the attention of young children, which is both inappropriate and irresponsible. The notion of cheap cigarettes and sweets being sold under the same roof within walking distance of a primary school is not just disturbing. It's unacceptable.
What kind of message are we sending to the next generation? I completely agree. This is why enforcement cannot be limited to the border.
It must also reach the retail environments where illicit tobacco, illegal vapes and other nicotine products are being sold directly to our communities. It's imperative that state and territory tobacco-licensing inspectors have the authority, resources and powers they need to act against retailers engaged not only in the illicit tobacco trade but also in the illegal supply of non-therapeutic nicotine products.
The Australian Council on Smoking & Health recently released an illicit tobacco leaderboard, comparing the progress of each state and territory in tackling illicit tobacco. Queensland and South Australia are identified as frontrunners in enforcement and reform. Other jurisdictions, however, are only just beginning to scratch the surface.
Cancer Council Australia has made it clear that coordinated, vigorous and proactive compliance and enforcement between all jurisdictions is needed to protect our communities. This is a nationwide issue. Around 40,000 stores sell tobacco in Australia, despite fewer than 10 per cent of Australians smoking.
While all states and territories now have licensing schemes in place for tobacco retailers, and many have strengthened legislative controls, we need to do more—much more. Divergences in the scope and administration of these licensing schemes have meant that some states have been more proactive and effective in their compliance and enforcement than others. New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, in particular, have enacted legislative measures to broaden the enforcement powers of licensing authorities and increase penalties for noncompliance.
But enforcement capacity also varies considerably across jurisdictions. According to reported figures, Queensland Health has 200 authorised persons, the New South Wales department of health has 78 inspectors, South Australia's Consumer and Business Services has 45 authorised officers, the Western Australian Department of Health has 40 investigators, and Tobacco Licensing Victoria has just 14 licensing inspectors.
Authorised officers who enforce penalties against tobacconists and retail stores selling illicit tobacco should be specialist enforcement officers who receive the right training, resources and support to deal with organised crime. This is grounded in Better Regulation Victoria's Review into Victoria's approach to illicit tobacco regulation, done in 2021. This highlighted concerns that environmental health officers were underresourced and lacked the skills and support to investigate organised-crime-linked offences.
This issue was also raised by submitters to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Law Enforcement inquiry into illicit tobacco in 2019. Consistency across all jurisdictions matters, and we have known this for a long time. At the start of the 2019 inquiry, which began in 2015 and lapsed twice before it was finally completed in 2020, the committee heard that the illicit tobacco market in Australia was 'flourishing'.
Chief among the reasons why was the 'lack of coordinated enforcement'. Yet, over 10 years later, we are still talking about the need for national consistency in enforcement. To stamp out illicit trade, states and territories must have both the legal authority and the enforcement capacity to respond to the scale of the problem in their own jurisdictions.
We need firm, effective and nationally consistent enforcement, right now. This includes addressing regulatory gaps that leave our children unnecessarily exposed to tobacco promotion in retail environments. These gaps include the absence of restrictions on the location of tobacco retailers, including proximity to schools, playgrounds or youth services; a lack of bans on child-friendly displays in tobacconists' windows or at their entrance points; and a lack of prohibitions on selling tobacco in shops that primarily cater to children.
These gaps present a clear and urgent opportunity to further strengthen tobacco control laws. Australia's National tobacco strategy 2023-2030 includes the priority action item of exploring 'options to further regulate where tobacco products are retailed, including regulatory approaches to control or restrict the number, type and location of tobacco outlets'. Restrictions on the number and locations of tobacco licensees was also a recommendation of the Victorian parliament's Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry into vaping and tobacco controls in 2024.
The protection of our children must be a guiding principle of any policy that regulates the density and location of tobacco retailers. This includes setting minimum distance requirements between tobacco outlets and youth focused locations, such as childcare centres, schools and sporting grounds. Internationally, municipalities such as Huntington Park and Santa Clara county in California have implemented requirements for minimum spacing between tobacco retailers of 200 feet and 500 feet respectively.
Other strategies include capping the total number of tobacco retailers based on population size—a model used in Hungary, where only one tobacco shop is permitted per 2,000 residents. Similarly, San Francisco has both capped the total number of retailers per district and banned new outlets from opening within 500 feet of an existing store. The health of Australians must come first.
Smoking is a known cause of 16 types of cancer. Two out of three people who continue to smoke will die as a result of their addiction to these products. The real crisis is that, if we continue to allow illicit tobacco to exploit our communities, more of these preventable deaths will occur.
That's why efforts to reduce the supply of illicit tobacco must be matched by efforts to reduce demand. The ITEC Commissioner has identified several factors driving the illicit trade, including a lack of consumer awareness about the links to organised crime and the ease with which consumers can access illegal tobacco through retail and online channels. We must be clear with the Australian public: illicit tobacco is not harmless.
It fuels organised crime, it undermines public health laws, it exposes young people to addictive products and it makes it harder for people who smoke to quit. That's why demand reduction must be central to the national response. This means stronger public education about the harms of illicit tobacco and vaping; it means better access to cessation supports for Australians trying to quit; it means ensuring young people understand the risks of nicotine addiction; and it means making sure our public health system is equipped to respond to both smoking and vaping related harms.
The bill before us is an important and long-overdue part of this response. It strengthens penalties, it improves enforcement tools, it supports greater disruption of the illicit tobacco market and it sends a clear message that criminal actors profiting from addiction and harm will face stronger consequences. But there is certainly more work to do.
For the sake of our children, our communities and the health of Australians, we cannot allow another decade to pass while criminal networks exploit addiction, undermine our laws and place young people in harm's way. I commend the bill to the House.