Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Inverloch is one of the most beautiful parts of my electorate. It's where Australia's best soil meets jewel encrusted seas. But, like many parts of Australia right now, Inverloch has an illegal tobacco and vape outlet in town. I've had local residents reach out to voice their concerns. Despite being raided by federal authorities just days ago, this outlet continues to allegedly sell vapes to children. Members of the Therapeutic Goods Administration raided the outlet in late January and removed hundreds of vapes from the shelves, according to the Herald Sun. While the TGA continues to consider what to do next, the outlet remains open for business. This is not an isolated incident. Despite the tobacco wars terrorising our community for years now, it only occurred to the Victorian government last week to do something. The 14 inspectors from the Tobacco Licensing Victoria agency are expected to cover the entire state to dish out fines but not shut down illegal shops. When the Victorian Labor government minister was asked why, he said the government was still considering whether such laws were even possible. What he should have said was, 'We're going to roll out new laws to pull down the shutters on illegal tobacco shops, give lease termination powers to landlords and stop them selling illicit products.' That would have been the responsible thing to do.

Gangland thugs like Kaz Hamad are directing their cartels from here and abroad, terrorising small-business owners, assaulting retail staff and short-changing the tax office. Hamad was arrested in Iraq last month, where a court declared him to be one of the most dangerous men in the world. He has been named by the gangland taskforce, looking at a spate of violent home invasions and arson, as directing those crimes from overseas. Martin McKenzie-Murray has written very thoroughly on Hamad in the Saturday Paper. He has noted the AFP's identification of Hamad as a national security risk. I quote:

The AFP's interest in Hamad intensified when it began to suspect his involvement, on behalf of the Iranians, in organising the torching of a Melbourne synagogue in December 2024.

Since 2023, there have been around 200 firebombings of grocers and tobacco shops that are related to this. The retail industry estimate they have lost $2 billion in legal sales to the illegal racket over the last four years. A growing number of legal retailers are now not selling cigarettes at all. Just a few days ago, a machine that can produce up to 3.6 million illicit cigarettes a day was seized by Australian Border Force. Australian Border Force data for the final quarter of last year reveals that officers seized more than 467 tonnes of cigarettes and tobacco before it entered the country. The black market cigarettes and vapes would have been worth more than $1 billion in evaded excise that would have gone towards funding roads, schools and hospitals in Australia. It's time for radical reform at a federal level.

Up another five per cent last year, government price increases on cigarettes are driving up crime and smoking. That effectively taxes $28 out of every $50 pack of smokes. Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission wastewater statistics show that more nicotine was consumed by Australia last year than eight years ago, with an illegal pack of smokes now at around $12. One of the biggest losers has been the ATO. Since 2013, under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, the excise started to rocket up and has since then increased by 282 per cent. New South Wales Labor premier Chris Minns has consistently called out his federal Labor colleagues for not doing enough and not addressing the excise issue. To those who argue that reducing the excise encourages smoking, the Laffer economic curve disproves this. It demonstrates that, by driving taxation of tobacco beyond a reasonable level, it actually encourages people to a black market of illegal tobacco. This is where we see an uptick in smoking. Taking the excise back to 2018-19 levels would help to address this.

I also think we need to look at an AFP taskforce, with teams in each state, particularly Victoria, where the illegal trade is flourishing. We should combine that with landlord termination powers, licensing and a fit-and-proper-person test, and then Australia would have a plan that works.

Illegal tobacco is putting all Australians at risk. It's about time the federal government and this minister got serious about addressing it.

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