MATTERS OF URGENCY

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (16:53): There you have it—the Greens in all their glory. They'd rather see money and profits going to organised crime than corporate businesses. This is where we go with this.

We hear all the stories. We heard 'there have been four years' and, 'We didn't create this problem. We didn't have this problem from the other side.' But imagine if you had a leaking tap and your tap's dripping when you come into the house.

You call your plumber. Four years later, it's not dripping anymore; it's rushing out. But you say, 'No, we spent two $365 million on it, we appointed a commissioner, we had an inquiry, we looked at it and we did all that.

It's not our fault your tap's now rushing.' That is what we get from this side. It was dripping. There was illegal tobacco coming into Australia four years ago but now it's rushing in.

Why? Because this government has become the facilitator, the marketing arm, of serious organised crime in the tobacco industry. There have been more than 200 fire bombings in Melbourne.

There have been 51 organised crime shootings in New South Wales. This is because there has never been more money on the table with less penalties there. They go: 'We've got a residential.

You sell it on your property. We're going to shut it down. We're going to put a thing.' I'll tell you what happens.

They put a sticker on the shutters of your door. You scan the sticker and someone will deliver the tobacco to you now. It's even better because that's what's going on.

This is the reality of the world. It's not what we like to think. They say: 'But tobacco use is going down.

Cigarette use is going down.' It's because they're taking retail sales data. I tell you what, serious organised crime doesn't take part in too many business surveys. They don't leave a 'rate me' on any of these things and say, 'How was your illegal transaction today?' Double Happiness cigarettes don't exist anywhere but the illegal market, and I can buy merch for it.

I can be out there and do this. The reality is: billions and billions of dollars fuel organised crime because no-one stands up and says 'enough'. We saw it on vapes.

We see it on tobacco. Who knows what goes into these properties? If it is a corporation that sells these products in Australia, I can sue them.

I can tax them. I can hold them to standards. We saw the vapes coming in with arsenic and rumours of Chinese cigarettes that had all sorts of things in them—arsenic again but also radioactive elements.

Who do you sue when the organised crime family sells you this stuff? Who do we go after to make them liable? No-one.

This is what we're stuck with here: 'Trust me. It was all our problem four years ago.' Well, it is not. It is on our doorsteps.

A staff member of mine couldn't get a building they own insured four doors up from a tobacconist. Imagine that. You're not a tobacconist.

You're not next door to a tobacconist. You are four doors up, and you can't get a building you own insured because of the threat to it. This is the reality.

When you're looking at tobacco use and when you're looking at smoking use, look at the things on sewerage outlets. Look at the indicators on the wastewater. It is up, and it is up because cigarettes are cheaper.

It is up because all of this absolution—'no, we can't do it'—has failed. They are coming into the country. There are slaps on the wrist for importing this stuff.

What we're trying to do is have a way where we take that profit motive out so the risk actually exceeds the rewards. At the moment, the rewards are so great. We look at it in the vaping industry because this will have touched this.

Before, I could go and buy a vape from any place even though I've never vaped in my life. If I went into a place dressed like this, like a bit of a square—I wouldn't sell to me; I look like a narc if ever there was one—I could still buy one for 30 bucks. I go to the same place today, and I can still do it.

I was going to bring in a prop, but I know you wouldn't appreciate that. Eighty bucks—I can still buy it. It just costs more.

That is the reality of prohibition. We are driving more money to crime. We are driving more money to other bad ventures and to firebombing.

We saw the guy burnt to a crisp in Melbourne the other day. It is wrong. What we want to do is find a way to stop that.

With the price of vapes now at about 80 bucks, the kids that we were worried about before are going and smoking now because it's cheaper. They can get their Double Happiness hit, get their tobacco hit, for $15 or $20. How in the perverse world do we think the policy that is driving billions to organised crime and driving young people to cigarettes and pouches instead of vapes is right?

How do we think that policy is working? When we've heard the numbers that have gone down, we've halved the income to the government from tobacco. One thing this government does get is how to take money.

This needs to stop. We need to do this, and this policy should go. The PRESIDENT: The question is that the urgency motion, as moved by Senator Cash, be agreed to.