STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator HUME (Victoria—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (13:42): In the early hours of 1 July, 50 metres from my electorate office in Richmond, a tobacco shop was firebombed; just five days later, on Victoria Street, around the corner, a car rammed into another tobacco shop and the building was torched—80 firefighters, 10 businesses damaged and 30 people out of work.

One of those people is Ngoc Pham. Ngoc is an extraordinary woman. After migrating from Vietnam she opened her own business, a nail salon, and built it from absolutely nothing while raising three children.

When she needed staff, she hired the residents of the public housing estate just across the road. Her salon is gone—entirely gone, burnt to the ground—all because a tobacco shop in her strip was a target of organised crime. That's what the tobacco wars really look like, and it's the consequence of a policy that has fundamentally failed.

There have been just over 200 tobacco related arsons in my home state of Victoria and six homicides around the country. Organised crime is clearing up to $7 billion every year, which is ploughed straight back into drugs, into scams, into money laundering and into other organised crime activities. Illicit tobacco is now around 80 per cent of the tobacco market.

Excise revenue and tobacco consumption has actually increased. The coalition will destroy this business model. We'll cut excise by 80 per cent so the gangs lose their price advantage.

We'll back it with a $200 million enforcement surge to shut the shops, seize the products and follow the money. We'll regulate vapes and nicotine pouches instead of leaving this to criminals. Labor has had its chance to do this.

Australians don't need more excuses; what we need is to take back control. That is exactly what the coalition plan does. (Time expired)