PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mr VENNING (Grey) (12:51): I thank the member for Monash for bringing this very important motion before the House. Tobacco excise raised $8 billion last year and $16 the year before. This year it is expected to be $2 billion.
If that collapse meant Australia had quit smoking, I would be the first here to celebrate it. But that is not what the data says. The ABS says tobacco consumption has risen around 30 per cent over the last four years.
More children are smoking. In 2017, illegal tobacco had a 10 per cent market share. Last year it hit 80 per cent.
Australians have not stopped smoking. Organised crime has swallowed the market. Smoking rates are up.
Vaping is up. Billions of dollars have been hand to criminals. Honestly, I do not know how Labor could have made the situation any worse if they'd tried, and now they're trying to defend a clearly broken system.
This is not exclusively a capital city problem. This trade has embedded itself into all corners of this nation. While police and enforcement agencies are doing as much as they can, the black market is continuing to grow.
Shut one shop, and another one opens. It has turned into a recurring game of Whack-a-Mole. Every packet of illicit cigarettes is funding criminal gangs and organised crime.
The government's own estimate is that these gangs are raking in somewhere between $4 billion to $7 billion a year to organised crime. No police force can arrest its way out of numbers like those. A legal pack of cigarettes costs around 50 bucks, with more than $30 of that being tobacco excise.
An illegal packet sells for around $20 or, some say, even less. That price gap is the entire business model. Until that gap is closed, the gangs will keep coming back, so the coalition will close it.
Deputy Speaker Wilkie, if you told me that a policy could (1) cut tax, (2) smash organised crime and (3) improve the budget by $8 billion, I would tell you that you were absolutely dreaming. But dream no more. That is the situation under this current Labor government.
It is common sense. The coalition's plan to kill the illicit tobacco market and smash gangs will do four things. It will (1) cut tobacco excise by 80 per cent, drastically reducing the price advantage enjoyed by the black market; (2) back this with a $200 million law enforcement surge: more raids, more seizures, more arrests and stronger marching orders for Border Force, the AFP and AUSTRAC to go after the supply chains and the money; (3) legalise, regulate and tax vapes and nicotine pouches—plain packaging, Australian rules and stronger protections for children—criminals do not check for an ID when you go and buy a vape; and (4) fund a $60 million national awareness campaign so Australians know the dangers of smoking and exactly where the money from an illegal packet ends up.
The Parliamentary Budget Office here in this place has modelled this policy. It is set to improve the budget bottom line by $8 billion over four years and by more than $20 billion over a decade. That is not a choice between cutting a tax and enforcing the law; it is both.
The government's response to this plan has been to attack it. Two weeks ago, the Minister for Health and Ageing called our plan 'grossly irresponsible'. Then, just days after, the Saturday Paper reported that the Labor government has asked the Illicit Tobacco Commissioner to model a tobacco excise cut.
It's 'grossly irresponsible' in public, but worth modelling in private. Don't just take my word for it. Even the New South Wales Premier, Chris Minns, reaffirmed his support for cutting the excise last week.
A Labor premier can see the issue, the police can see it, and the community living with the ongoing firebombings can see it, yet the Albanese Labor government cannot face the reality of this situation. The coalition's plan is not about encouraging the uptake of smoking. Nobody here wants a new generation of smokers.
It is about deciding who controls the market: Australian law or criminal gangs. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Georganas ): I understand the member for Pearce would like to present a copy of her speech for incorporation into Hansard, in accordance with the resolution agreed to on 6 November 2025.