Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026

Mr LITTLEPROUD (Maranoa) (17:50): I stand to support the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026 and I commend the government for the intent of what they bring forward to this parliament. But I fear what we are doing is what this parliament, as well as the three parliaments I've been part of previously, has failed to understand in trying to tackle this problem.

We are only tinkering at the edges by not understanding the real issues at play that need to be addressed in a bipartisan way. We've made great movements in the last 20 or 30 years. In fact, I pay homage to Nicola Roxon, the former minister for health minister and ageing, who, back in the late 1990s and the 2000s, made significant reforms in tackling the use of tobacco by Australians—in particular, by young Australians.

She did a great job in regulating the product, making sure that the product was sold under a regulated process through licensed outlets. This ensured that young people were protected. We also invested in education to ensure that Australians understood the risks of the intake of tobacco and smoking and understood the health effects there.

Investing in that education has saved us billions of dollars. But subsequent to that, governments of all persuasions, including governments that I've been part of, have not understood that, in creating this excise and placing it year in, year out, we have created market behaviours that have now got us to this juncture where we have created another market. The regulated market has been overtaken by an illicit market and organised crime.

That's our failure. It is a failure of parliaments of the past. We should stand up and admit that we got it wrong, and when you add to that the complexity of vaping and how it interacts with the illicit tobacco market, you see that we're not tackling the root cause here.

When we talk about the people who will primarily be impacted, we're talking about those who don't have disposable income. They are forced to change their market behaviours. They look to go to the illicit market because we are taxing this thing till it is out of their reach.

We are putting them into an illicit market and a product that we do not have confidence in. And it's not just vapes; it is also illicit tobacco. In fact, there's a report out today that talks about how they cannot verify many of the carcinogens that are in the illicit tobacco that is being brought into this country.

It's far more dangerous than the regulated product. We are getting to a juncture where there has been a concerted campaign against big tobacco. I don't want big tobacco, but I can't stop people's behaviour.

Prohibition has never worked in society. It will never work, and we have to face up to that. But at least, with a regulated product, tobacco companies are bound to maintain a product that is safe, to the extent that we can put it on the shelves of our shops.

This is where we have lost the real intent of what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to protect Australians, and we see that organised crime has taken over the market because the government has taxed the market, taking many Australians out of it and putting them into the hands of the illicit market and organised crime. We've lost somewhere between $7 billion and $12 billion worth of excise that would have gone towards funding the health issues that we are going to have from those who continue to remain on not just illicit tobacco but also vapes.

We don't have that revenue stream to pay for those health consequences that we will have. What we are missing in all this is that, unless we're prepared to face up to the consequences of prohibition not working and to the fact that we will need to reshape the marketplace and the behaviour within that marketplace to get people back onto a regulated product, we are going to continue to make the mistakes of previous parliaments and the previous governments that I was part of.

I made those mistakes, and I don't contest the science in any way, shape or form. And I know the AMA have been very strong and very critical—even of myself, personally, because of my personal beliefs—but the AMA's capabilities start and finish at the science around these products being bad for us, and I don't contest that for one moment. I agree with them 100 per cent.

But they have no ability to regulate a market or to understand borders and market behaviours. Their expertise starts and finishes with the science. We have got ourselves into many of the problems.

We have allowed health professionals to force us into a position of thinking that we can tax ourselves out of this problem when we cannot. We are going to face the health consequences without the economic grunt to be able to solve them. That is the stark reality of what we are doing again in this parliament.

I stand ready to admit I got it wrong. It's important that we don't do this for much longer. If we continue down this pathway we will see a regulated market leave, because we are only a small part of the international market.

We will be left with an illicit market and with organised crime organising our tobacco and vapes in this country. An opportunity has been lost by this government. I don't condemn them for the intent of what they bring forward, but we are only tinkering at the edges if we believe that changing and modernising some of the enforcement around this will stop the black market.

That will not stop them. That will not deter them. They will continue on, because this is lucrative to them.

That's the stark reality of the situation that we find ourselves in. That's why we've said very clearly that we have to be bold in tackling this. We must be bold.

We've said that we will cut the excise by 80 per cent, and the reason for that is around reshaping that marketplace. The PBO has clearly identified that there would be increased revenue from excise because we reshaped that market. If we re-educate that market to buy a regulated product, that gets us the excise that has been taken away from us, and that gives us the money to not only be able to face up to the health consequences but also, in a responsible way, modernise many of the programs that Nicola Roxon put in place when she was health minister.

We are allocating $60 million to make sure we continue to educate and get the next generation away from illicit tobacco and vaping. And, with $200 million into law enforcement, we can make sure we have the resources to undertake border enforcement. But you can only do that if you have the revenue stream to be able to pay for it, and that's what we haven't had since we've seen the illicit market take over, because we have lost that $7 billion to $12 billion in excise revenue.

That's the consequence that we face up to at the moment. I believe that, unless there is an epiphany from this government, we will miss this opportunity that lays in front of us again in this parliament. I believe that there is an opportunity for some bipartisanship to not only understand the real consequences of this problem—how it got here and how we have all contributed to it in some way—but also for us to acknowledge that simply believing that beating them at the border is the only way to beat organised crime and illicit tobacco in this country is naive at best.

History has shown us that. I've seen it, and I'm prepared to admit it. It is now time for us to understand that there is a better way for us to tackle this problem and to protect the next generation.

No-one challenges the science. I passionately want to see these things gone. But I'm not naive enough to think that I'm going to stop people from smoking or that prohibition will work.

When you look at what we've done with vapes—putting them through chemists, who don't even want to sell them anyway—of the people who have gone on to vapes, fewer than 10 per cent have a prescription. Let's be honest; that hasn't worked. That was one of the transition products away from tobacco.

I will put my hand up. I was part of a cabinet that did that. We got it wrong, thinking that we could have a vaping market that wasn't regulated like cigarettes, that protected young people.

That's why we've seen this explosion of crime and why we've seen illegal stores put up everywhere. It is time for us to actually face up to the real problem. While the government is doing the right thing in these amendments—we support them wholeheartedly, and I thank them for that—I think realistically we have to understand as a parliament that, unless we're prepared to look ourselves in the mirror, look at what has come before us, look at what has been done and look at what has got us to this position, this won't change anything.

This won't stop organised crime. This won't get young people away from going to illegal stores and getting illegal vapes or illegal chop-chop, products that we don't know anything about what's inside them. That's the stark reality.

I know it's unpalatable for many who have a pure sense of the world in thinking that what we do in here will reshape it by what we do with this and by talking big numbers of what we stop at the borders, but it won't do three-fifths of bugger all. The stark reality is organised crime has changed the behaviour of a marketplace. The only way to take control of this is to take control of the market.

That is the missed opportunity in this bill and this parliament to reshape and take control of the marketplace and to get back into a regulated market that gives us a revenue stream to pay for the health consequences and give us an opportunity to get rid of organised crime. I'll finish on this. You can see this business model now going into alcohol.

I fear that we'll be sitting in the next parliament or the parliament after, facing up to illicit alcohol. We are excising and taxing ourselves and people out of a regulated market, taking them out of pubs and clubs in a regulated environment that protects them and that protects the community. What we are doing is doing exactly what we've done with tobacco and with vapes.

What's happened here is the canary in the coal mine. I can tell you, alcohol is the next frontier. We will see those licensed premises pay the same costs, the same price, as we have of these small retailers that are regulated and that do the right thing to protect young children in making sure that they can't get hold of cigarettes or vapes.

That is a responsible way to regulate a product where prohibition can never work. I commend the government for what they have put forward. I support it, but I ask them in all honesty to look in the mirror and look at what we've done.

Yes, there are some great things we have achieved, but we are putting our heads in the sand if we believe the only way to solve this is through a market mechanism, and that is about retaking the market, reshaping the market back into a regulated model rather than a black-market model. This bill, unfortunately, will not do that.