Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026
Dr TRISH COOK (Bullwinkel) (16:22): I rise to speak in strong support of the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026. This bill is the next vital step in the Albanese Labor government's systematic crackdown on organised crime syndicates that have, for too long, sought to operate in the shadows of our economy and have cast a dangerous pall over our communities.
For years the illicit tobacco trade was treated as a victimless tax dodge. The reality on the ground in our suburbs, however, tells a more sinister story. What we are witnessing is an organised crime crisis that threatens community safety, undermines legitimate small businesses and targets our children.
The Albanese Labor government will never surrender our nation's public health policy to criminal syndicates or big tobacco, whose entire business model relies on hooking a new generation on nicotine. Illicit tobacco is a global issue. Across the world, regardless of local tax rates, countries are battling illicit cartels.
A packet of 20 cigarettes can be produced in South-East Asia for as little as 28c. Smuggled past our borders, those same cigarettes sell for $7 or even $8 a pack on the black market. The massive profit margins build a multibillion-dollar criminal war chest.
And that money does not stay in tobacco. It funds illicit drug imports, cyber scams that rob our seniors and violent turf wars that put our neighbourhoods at risk. Rather than waving the white flag, our government has committed over $365 million since 2024 to combat illegal tobacco before it arrives at the border and across our communities.
This bill amends the Customs Act 1901 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 to close legal loopholes, overhaul seizure rules, restore customs control and strip the profits straight out of the criminals' hands. As member for Bullwinkel, I see these impacts firsthand. My electorate spans from the Perth Hills to the growing suburbs in the valley, home to hundreds of family run newsagents, convenience stores and service station operators.
These are small business owners that do the right thing every day. They pay their taxes. They enforce strict age checks and support the local economy.
When an illegal pop-up shop opens up down the road selling unregulated chop-chop and vapes at pocket money prices, it's not competition; it's economic sabotage. It draws intimidation, violence and criminal networks into our community shopping strips. This issue is also deeply personal to me.
As a nurse, I have seen the devastating end-stage consequences of tobacco use up close. I have held the hands of patients gasping for air, suffering through terminal emphysema and lung cancer. I have sat with families navigating the heartbreak of an illness that was entirely preventable.
In clinical care, you fight to save lives one person at a time. But in this parliament, as legislators, we have the ability and responsibility to protect millions. Smoking remains one of the leading causes of preventable disease in Australia.
It kills 66 Australians every single day. Two in three long-term smokers will die of a smoking related illness, and tobacco accounts for 20 per cent of our cancer burden. Speaker, I remember—maybe you do too; maybe you're too young—when people smoked freely on buses, in aeroplanes and in offices, but we have come too far over the past three decades to let criminal syndicates torch that progress for a quick buck.
Some in the public debate have lost sight of Australia's extraordinary achievements in reducing smoking rates to among the lowest in the developed world. The latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data proves our policies are delivering results. Daily smoking among adults aged 18 and over has dropped to a historic low of 5.8 per cent, well below our 10 per cent target, representing 500,000 fewer daily smokers than just three years ago—half a million.
For Australians aged 14 and over, daily smoking sits at 5.6 per cent. And after years of alarming increases, daily vaping has stabilised at 3.6 per cent, while overall current vape use has fallen from seven per cent to six per cent. These aren't just statistics; they represent the hospital beds spared and lives saved.
But, as the Australian Council of Smoking CEO, Laura Hunter, pointed out, when a product that kills two in three long-term users is still sold across tens of thousands of retail outlets nationwide, it normalises supply and creates avenues for criminals to exploit it. That's why our enforcement must be unrelenting. This government is backing our frontline agencies with unprecedented funding with $188.5 million in 2024-25 for the Australian Border Force to bolster interdiction; $156.7 million in 2025-26 to strengthen national compliance, including $49 million to expand the AFP led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce; and $20.3 million in 2026-27 to support state and territory compliance, fund storage and disposal and monitor consumption trends.
We established the National Disruption Group led by the ABF, uniting Commonwealth, state and territory agencies against the entire supply chain. The results are record breaking. Pre border, working with international partners between December 2025 and March 2026, we stopped over 35.6 million cigarette sticks, 257 kilos of loose-leaf tobacco and half a million vapes before they ever reached our shores.
At the border, in the 2025-26 year, the ABF seized over 2,300 tonnes of illicit tobacco and 13.2 million vaping devices. That is a staggering 496 per cent increase in cigarette stick seizures and a 232 per cent surge in domestic seizures. Under Operation PRINTWALL alone, the ABF intercepted more than a kiloton of tobacco in just four months.
There's also domestic confiscation. The AFP led taskforce has restrained over $47.5 million in criminal assets. AUSTRAC intelligence has triggered more than 700 suspicious matters reports, resulting in over a thousand illicit tobacco banking profiles being exited.
The Multi Agency Strike Team has dismantled two major syndicates, charging seven individuals and seizing over 245,000 vapes and 60,000 nicotine pouches valued at over $12 million. But the Commonwealth government cannot do this alone. State and territory compliance teams are also needed.
The state and territory compliance teams have already shut down over a thousand illicit shops. In South Australia, closing more than 320 stores has driven up black market prices, altering the risk-reward equation for criminals. In Queensland, regional blitzes targeting 100 per cent of illicit outlets have collapsed local black markets and driven consumers back to legal channels.
I also want to commend the work being done in Western Australia, my home state, by the Cook Labor government. Premier Roger Cook and health minister Meredith Hammat introduced nation-leading laws with penalties of up to $21 million for corporations, 15-year jail sentences and 12-month closure orders. Crucially, jurisdictions must back these powers with strong landlord penalties.
If a commercial property owner knowingly leases a shopfront to an illicit tobacco operation targeting local kids, they are complicit in that enterprise, and we must shut those doors and keep them locked. This bill modernises the Customs Act 1901 to remove outdated procedural hurdles. These reforms were developed in deep consultation with Health, Treasury, the ATO, the Attorney-General's Department, the CDPP and the AFP.
The bill modernises offence provisions under part 13. Organised syndicates exploit the system using complex freight chains and front companies to mask intent. This bill introduces offences based on reasonable suspicion that goods were unlawfully imported or that importation would defraud the revenue.
It also facilitates prescribing tobacco as a tier 1 good, unlocking serious penalties of up to 10 years. This bill restores customs control over duty-refundable tobacco. It overhauls seizure, notification and disposal provisions because currently syndicates use lengthy appeal windows and spurious return claims to tie up seized goods in Commonwealth warehouses at immense public expense.
This bill introduces alternative notification methods, including direct, bulk and electronic notices, and prevents claims for the return of specific illicit tobacco seized under prescribed powers, providing immediate forfeiture and swift destruction. Fourthly, we are securing logistics supply chains. This bill establishes statutory licence conditions for custom brokers, depots and warehouses handling tobacco.
We're expanding the remit of the National Customs Broker Licensing Advisory Committee to cover depots and warehouses, renaming it to the National Customs Licensing Advisory Committee. Intercepting cargo at the port is only half the battle. If penalties are treated merely as operating expenses, cartels will simply factor them into their bottom line.
This bill amends the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. It hits production orders by increasing penalties for destroying or tampering with documents. It also hits pecuniary penalty orders and unexplained wealth.
We're streamlining the definition of total wealth so traced assets originating from a single source are not counted redundantly, ensuring faster civil confiscation of unexplained criminal wealth. The contrast with the opposition could not be more stark. What they're proposing—to slash tobacco excise by 80 per cent, when they have offered no economic modelling and no health analysis—we know would be a disaster.
It would strip billions from public services, flood hospital wards with preventable diseases and drive smoking rates up. Their proposal would destroy 20 years of bipartisan health policy, and, as a nurse, I can't take it. When the coalition was in government, they increased tobacco excise by over 215 per cent without investing that revenue back into public health.
Vapes are not harmless, nicotine is not harmless and vapes are an on-ramp to addiction. This bill is about the kinds of communities that we choose to build. Do we accept a status quo where organised cartels operate brazen storefronts down the street from our schools, or do we stand up for lawful retailers, back our border officers and protect the health of our children?
The Albanese Labor government chooses community health and the rule of law. This legislation modernises our border enforcement, closes regulatory gaps, accelerates the destruction of seized contraband and dismantles the financial empires of organised crime syndicates. I commend the bill to the House.