ADJOURNMENT

Mr PIKE (Bowman) (19:39): I rise today to speak about a growing law and order crisis in Australia that has become impossible to ignore: the illicit tobacco trade. This is not some abstract national problem that exists in the shadows. My community has seen the consequences of this in the Redlands.

Last year, businesses in Capalaba were forced to close while damage was cleaned up following the third firebombing of a shopping centre tobacconist in just six months. In an earlier incident—and you'll appreciate this one, Mr Speaker—an offender managed to set himself alight before fleeing the scene, still driving his vehicle while on fire, travelling the wrong way down Finucane Road, the busiest arterial road in my electorate, and dumping his vehicle in a nearby park.

These are not the actions of some harmless black market retailers; these are the actions of organised criminals. And, when we see illicit tobacco stores opening and operating across the Redlands, we should be deeply concerned about what is happening behind those shopfronts. The illicit tobacco trade has become a major source of revenue for organised crime.

Government estimates put the profits being made by organised crime groups from illicit tobacco at between $4.1 billion and $6.9 billion. That is an extraordinary amount of money, and that is why the coalition believes we need to take a different approach. We need to attack these criminal networks where it hurts most: their profits.

Current government policy has created an enormous price gap between legal and illegal tobacco. When a legal pack of cigarettes carries around $30 in tobacco excise while an illicit product can be sold for a fraction of that price, we should not be surprised criminals have found an extraordinarily profitable market. The coalition's plan is to cut tobacco excise by 80 per cent, reducing the excise on a standard packet of 20 cigarettes from around $30 to around $6.

The Parliamentary Budget Office has modelled the impact of this policy and found that the excise reduction would bring legal tobacco prices into alignment with illicit tobacco products, and that's an important point. The Parliamentary Budget Office has also informed us that, by cutting the excise so dramatically, we actually increase the revenue that the government collects.

It's about recognising that the current approach has allowed organised crime to take control of a huge part of the market. We want fewer Australians smoking, but we also want Australians living in communities where businesses are not firebombed because criminal gangs are fighting over market share. We want a tobacco and nicotine market controlled by Australian law, not by organised crime.

That is why the coalition's plan goes well beyond simply reducing the excise. We will fund a $60 million national advertising and education campaign to discourage smoking. We'll also legalise and regulate vapes and oral nicotine pouches for adults with additional taxation and stronger regulation.

The objective is to bring these products back into a legal and regulated framework, rather than leaving consumers to an uncontrolled black market. But bringing the market back into the legal economy does not mean giving criminals a free pass. The coalition will back this policy with a $200 million nationwide law enforcement surge.

That means more raids, more arrests and more seizures. It means stripping them of their profits and then kicking them while they're down. The message to organised crime will be simple: the illicit tobacco trade will no longer be allowed to operate as a virtual uncontrolled source of criminal profit.

We've seen policy changes in Queensland, where we're seeing a far more stronger approach from the state government to try to enforce the laws and bring these operators out of business. The independent Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that the coalition's package would improve the budget by around $8 billion over four years and more than $20 billion over a decade by bringing sales out of the black market and back into the legal economy.

It's one of these classic cases where you lower the tax rate, but you actually end up with far more revenue. The people of the Redlands, or any other Australian community, should not have to put up with firebombings, criminal intimidation or illicit tobacco stores appearing in their local communities—nor should they have to encounter a human torch driving the wrong way down Finucane Road in Alexandra Hills!

The coalition believes there is a better way. It is about reclaiming the tobacco and nicotine market back from organised crime, it's about putting the market back under the control of Australian law and, most importantly, it's about protecting communities like mine from criminal gangs and campaigns of violence.