PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Ms ALDRED (Monash—Opposition Whip) (12:20): I move: That this House notes the: (1) $41.9 billion collapse in revenue from tobacco excise in this year's budget, and that downgraded forecasts now reveal the Government expects to collect just $2.1 billion, the lowest tobacco excise collection this century, despite a 282 per cent increase in the excise rate since 2013; (2) Government's failure to arrest smoking rates; (3) continued and rapid escalation of violent crime from the illegal tobacco trade, including over 200 firebombings of supermarkets and tobacconists since 2023 under this Government as well as the proceeds funding terrorist activities; and (4) calls by the New South Wales State, Premier Chris Minns, and former Deputy Australian Chief Medical Officer, Dr Nick Coatsworth, for a complete overhaul of tobacco excise and law enforcement resourcing to combat illegal tobacco.

There's an old saying: 'insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result'. That is exactly what this Albanese Labor government is doing. Same excise policy, same enforcement-only rhetoric, same denial—and every single day Australian lives are being put at risk.

Let me start with Sunshine in Melbourne's west. Recently, people were inside a building when a suspected illegal tobacco shop was torched in a suspected arson attack. Five people—not statistics and not a regulatory issue, as this government likes to call it, but five human beings—could've died in their sleep, at work or by simply going about their day because organised crime is now waging a war on our streets, and it's funded by a market that this government's own policy has created, is driving and is sustaining.

Sunshine isn't an isolated case. It's one entry in a ledger that now runs to hundreds of firebombings across this country—Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane. This is not a Victorian problem or a 'Melbourne's tobacco wars' headline to be shrugged off like the government tried to do last week.

This is a national crisis, and, while Victoria is the capital, Australians in every state now live with the consequences of a Commonwealth government policy failure. Consider who is actually paying the price here. It's retail staff.

They're often young, and it's often their first experience in a workplace. For many, they are standing behind a counter as part of their job, but it's with roller doors and CCTV cameras. Many of them, after being held at gunpoint for a 20-pack, are too scared to come to work.

For a government that is supposed to be the parliamentary wing of the union movement to stand up for workers, this is a shameful omission. There are retail workers across this country that are bearing mental and physical scars of abusive attacks in their workplaces, and they deserve better. These are kids.

They're somebody's daughter; they're somebody's son. They didn't sign up to be at the front line of a criminal economy. This government's policy has put them there, and this prime minister's arrogance and obstinance is keeping them there.

I'd like to talk about Kaz Hamad for a moment, who the AFP has linked to a terrorist act that was carried out on Australian soil and who has built and maintained an illicit tobacco empire that's been funded by the very price gap this government's excise settings have created. Let's just sit with that for a moment. Money that should be going nowhere near organised crime is instead flowing to a network that's connected to terrorism, bikie gangs and firebombings, and successive excise increases—the tax excise is up nearly 300 per cent from 2012—have made the illegal product simply too profitable to ignore.

I'd say this. Prohibition didn't stop Al Capone in the 1920s, and it won't stop Kaz Hamad in the 2020s. The government's own figures now show that the illicit market has surged past half of total tobacco consumption worth billions of dollars every year, and every dollar of that is not going to roads, schools or hospitals as part of general revenue.

It's going to fund criminal syndicates. Meanwhile, smoking rates are up. The entire justification for this policy, which was to slow smoking rates and hopefully reduce them, has failed.

For the first time in decades, Western Australia has recorded an increase in their smoking rates. In New South Wales, the most populous state, the New South Wales department of health, no less, has found that smoking rates have tipped over 15 per cent. So it's not working.

If you really care about driving down smoking rates in this country, this policy is not working. We've seen the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission wastewater report showing a four per cent increase over a 12-month period in regional and metro areas. Small-business owners—many of whom, may I say, are migrants who have come to this country seeking a better life, started and built small businesses to help raise their families and worked 16-hour days—are now being ram raided, firebombed and bullied into stocking illegal products.

(Time expired) The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Sharkie ): Is the motion seconded? Ms Price: I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.