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

Mr WOOD (La Trobe) (13:28): Going back to the former Liberal-National government, a lot of work was done in this place when it came to tackling illegal tobacco, from the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce to bringing in mandatory tobacco import permits—I was the minister responsible—to giving the Australian Border Force, who had the responsibility of looking after our borders, permits to quickly go to a magistrate and have products destroyed.

The problem, though, is like when I visited the mail house in New South Wales, with the number of boxes of contraband coming in—the ABF were like Santa's little helpers. Every second or third box had tobacco in it. That's how massive this problem is.

Something I was trying to push for at the time—I had it on the national agenda—when we had the police and ministerial conference, where all the police ministers and the attorneys-general turn up, was for the states and territories to take account and be responsible for this. At the time, I spoke to the former Victorian chief commissioner of police and the Attorney-General and said: 'This is going to be a huge problem.

You need to do something about it.' And they said: 'Do you know what? It's not a problem in Victoria.' Well, sadly, it's a massive problem in Victoria. The state Labor government has completely failed.

So many victims and so many little supermarkets such as Ritchies and others have been really impacted by this. It needs to have a penalty regime in place that makes it easy for law enforcement to issue these penalties. When it comes to this, the coalition does support the bill.

But, when it comes to excise, something has to happen, because criminals are making a mountain of money out of illegal tobacco.