Tom French (Moore, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There is a particular kind of shopfront that people in my electorate know well. The windows are blacked out, the signage is usually doing a lot of the work, the product range is not exactly subtle and the whole operation has the unmistakeable feel of a business that would prefer nobody asked too many questions. People in Moore see these shops. They see the cheap cigarettes. They see the vapes. They see the young people going in and out. They see legitimate businesses trying to do the right thing, while other operators appear to be making their own rules, and they ask, 'How is this still happening?' That is the practical question behind this bill.

The Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026 is not a lecture about smoking. It is not about making life harder for small businesses that comply with the law. It is not about chasing someone for a minor mistake at the counter. It is about a growing illegal market in tobacco and nicotine products and the need for Commonwealth law to respond properly to the scale of that market. Australians are not naive. They know illegal markets exist, but what concerns them is when the whole thing starts to look open, normalised and almost casual. That is why this bill is necessary.

Before I came into this place, I was an electrician and then a lawyer. Neither trade leaves you with much patience for people who think the rules are optional. On a worksite, rules exist because people get hurt when they are ignored. In employment law, rules exist because power gets abused when they are ignored. In public health, rules exist because harm does not fall evenly; it falls hardest on the people with fewer choices and fewer resources.

The illicit tobacco market is not just a bit of tax avoidance. It is not just a few cartons being moved under the counter. It is a large, profitable and increasingly visible illegal market. The basic point is this: illicit tobacco is now estimated to make up at least half of the tobacco market in Australia. The profits are counted in the billions. The revenue lost to the Australian community is counted in the billions. Almost every vape sold in this country is estimated to be illegal. It is happening in suburban shopping strips, near schools, near legitimate retailers, near families and in communities like mine. While the public-facing end might look like a small shop with blacked out windows, behind it sits something much more serious: illegal supply chains, unlawful importation, storage facilities, cash movements, money laundering, intimidation and significant criminal profit.

There is also a public health issue here. Australia has spent decades reducing smoking rates. Plain packaging, advertising restrictions, public health campaigns and tobacco excise have all played a role. Those reforms are not perfect, but they worked. Fewer people smoke. Fewer people start smoking. Fewer people die from tobacco related illness. But, when illegal cigarettes are being sold for a fraction of the lawful price, that work is undermined. When illegal vapes are cheap, colourful, easy to get and plainly attractive to young people, we are dealing with what is already in front of us. A young person who might never have smoked a cigarette can be drawn into nicotine addiction through a vape that should never have been sold to them in the first place, and I do not accept the argument that the answer is to surrender the field to the illicit market and cut the tobacco excise because illegal operators have found a profitable gap. That is actually a very strange argument. It's basically saying that, because the system has been exploited, the sensible policy is to weaken the system. I do not think that is the lesson we should be drawing. The lesson is that, where an illegal market becomes too profitable and too low risk, the law has to change the calculation.

That is what this bill does. The bill has three main parts. First, it increases penalties for illicit tobacco offences. Second, it improves the investigative tools available to law enforcement. Third, it strengthens the proceeds of crime regime so agencies can better pursue money and assets connected to this trade.

The first part of the bill increases criminal penalties offences for the importation, possession, buying, selling, supply, production and manufacture of illegal tobacco. That includes increasing the maximum penalty for intentional importation of tobacco to defraud the revenue from 10 years to 15 years imprisonment. It also significantly increases the financial penalties attached to this offending. That is necessary because the current risk profile is simply not enough. The profits are substantial, and the consequences are manageable. Penalties risk becoming part of the cost of doing business. Illegal markets respond to incentives like any other market. This is not about imposing heavy penalties for the sake of looking tough; it's about matching the law to the scale of the conduct. When an illegal market is generating billions of dollars, penalties have to be more than an inconvenience.

The second part of this bill gives law enforcement better investigative tools. Under the Surveillance Devices Act, some powers are only available where the relevant offence carries a sufficient maximum penalty. By increasing penalties for illicit tobacco offences, the bill allows law enforcement to use tools such as surveillance device warrants, computer access warrants and tracking capabilities across a broader range of offending. That is important because this trade does not operate through one person at one counter. These are networks. They use phones, encrypted messages, bank accounts, corporate arrangements, storage sites, drivers, shopfronts and people whose role may be to keep others at a distance from the day-to-day offending. If we want law enforcement to deal with that properly, they need the tools to match the conduct.

The bill also amends the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act so that specified illicit tobacco offences are treated as serious offences. That means agencies will be able to seek telecommunications interception warrants when investigating these networks. That is a significant power, and it should be treated as such. No parliament should casually expand enforcement powers and then hope for the best. There should be warrants, there should be thresholds, there should be accountability, and there should be scrutiny. But, if illegal networks are using sophisticated communications to import, distribute and profit from illicit tobacco and nicotine products, then lawful enforcement must be able to investigate that conduct lawfully and effectively.

The third part of this bill strengthens the proceeds of crime regime. There is limited value in only catching the person at the counter if the proceeds continue to move through the broader network. There is limited value in seizing a few boxes of illegal tobacco if the people organising, financing or benefiting from the trade are left untouched. If we are serious about disrupting this market, we have to make it less profitable. The bill amends the Proceeds of Crime Act to make it easier to pursue the proceeds, instruments and benefits of crime. It expands search warrant powers, including person-search warrants. It updates provisions dealing with electronic devices, account based data and cloud based material. It expands examination orders. It improves information-sharing with Commonwealth regulators. Put more plainly, it helps law enforcement follow the money—not just public statements, not just seizures and not just activity at the shopfront. The financial structures behind the trade also have to be addressed.

The proceeds of crime changes are also about keeping pace with how criminal wealth is held and moved. Once upon a time, evidence might have been in a filing cabinet, a ledger or a shoebox full of cash. Sometimes, I suspect, it still is, but criminal innovation is not always as glamorous as television makes it look. Increasingly, relevant information is on a phone, in an app, behind a login, in cloud storage, in account based data or connected to digital assets. The law cannot pretend that all evidence lives in a drawer.

Financial arrangements linked to serious offending are often deliberately difficult to untangle. They may involve layers, nominees, businesses, relatives, cash, property or other arrangements designed to separate the person directing the conduct from the money being made. The bill also allows information obtained under proceeds of crime powers to be shared with other Commonwealth authorities for specified regulatory purposes, including such regulators as AUSTRAC, ASIC and APRA. That is sensible.

Illicit tobacco is not just moved through the ports and shopfronts; it is moved through accounts, businesses, financial services and professional structures. If a regulator has a role in protecting public revenue, monitoring obligations, licensing or enforcing regulatory standards, relevant information should not sit uselessly in a silo. Government agencies are very good at creating silos. Sometimes we even give them acronyms so they look more official. But illegal markets do not respect administrative boundaries.

The bill also removes the requirement for a preliminary unexplained wealth order before a court can consider the main unexplained wealth application. That might sound technical, but technical steps matter. Anyone who has spent time around litigation knows that process can be used properly, and process can be used as a fog machine. If a procedural step adds work without adding fairness, then it is not protecting justice; it is protecting the person with the better lawyer and the longer runway. This bill sensibly removes that duplicated step.

The bill also deals with protective orders, closed court orders, equitable sharing arrangements and service of documents including electronic surveillance. These amendments are designed to make the system work more effectively.

I also want to say something about legitimate businesses. There are businesses in our community that follow the law. They pay tax. They meet their obligations. They deal with the inspections, compliance costs, licensing requirements, employment obligations, insurance, rent, wages and all the other realities of running a business. They should not be expected to compete with operators selling illegal products at unlawful prices. That is not competition. It is cheating. The same principle applies in workplaces, procurement, taxation and small business. Rules only work if they are enforced with enough seriousness that compliance is not treated as a mug's game. This bill is part of restoring that seriousness.

I also acknowledge that scrutiny committees have raised issues about increased penalties, privacy impacts and search warrant powers. Those questions should be taken seriously. A parliament should not expand coercive powers without asking hard questions. Enforcement powers must be justified. Safeguards must be real. Warrants must not become rubberstamps. Privacy should not be treated as a decorative extra, nor should we pretend the current position is acceptable. It is not acceptable for legitimate businesses trying to compete with illegal operators. It is not acceptable for communities dealing with intimidation and criminal activity. It is not acceptable for parents to worry about illegal vapes being sold to kids. And it is not acceptable to the public health system that it bears the cost of tobacco related illness.

Doing nothing has consequences, too, and those consequences are already visible. In Moore, I often speak about the basic expectation that government should deal with the problems people can see in front of them, and this is one of those problems. People do not need a 40-page explainer to know something is wrong when the illegal tobacco shops are operating openly in our streets. They do not need a lecture about customs law to know that the law should already apply in practice, not just on paper. They want the law enforced. They want the illegal profits pursued through proper legal processes. They want young people to be protected. They want legitimate businesses treated fairly. And they want the rules to apply consistently.

This bill will not solve the whole problem by itself, and no serious person would claim that. We still need the cooperation of the states and territories. We still need broader enforcement. We still need local policing. We still need public health work. We still need action on illegal vapes. We still need to keep the pressure on financial networks to allow illicit profits to move around the economy.

But this bill is a necessary step. It increases the penalties, improves investigative powers, strengthens the proceeds-of-crime laws, supports a more joined-up Commonwealth response and sends a clear message that the Commonwealth is not only concerned with packets being sold at the counter but is also concerned with the networks, the money and the structures behind the illicit trade, and that is the right approach. People in Moore are entitled to expect better, and I commend the bill to the House.

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