Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I go back to my time—many, many years ago—at the organised crime squad in Victoria Police. Back in 2000, you'll find, organised crime realised there was money to be made in tobacco. At the time we didn't have very strong Commonwealth laws or state laws, and they were pretty much evading tax. There was a huge investigation by the tactical investigation unit. Subsequently, the power of legislation wasn't there, and they lost the court case.

I entered parliament in 2004 and was on the committee for law enforcement. We went down with the customs officers—they were showing us how much tobacco was being seized—and my question was: how do you go with prosecutions? They said: 'We don't. It's too dangerous for the customs officers.' This shows, going back in time, how bad the problem was. Over the years, it has just got worse.

I took over the role of assistant minister in the Morrison government. One of the responsibilities I had was to look at tobacco, and a request came through from the Australian Border Force. They needed certificates to have a magistrate basically declare that an item seized was tobacco. For, initially, three months they had to store the tobacco there. We changed that so it could be immediately destroyed. Once I went down there and visited the customs office where there was a mail house for items coming in from around the world. It was incredible to see how many cigarettes were being seized at that time.

And then you look at shipments. In Australia, organised crime just need one shipment out of 70 to get through—it could be a bathtub full of cigarettes—and they've made their profits. I've been exceptionally disappointed with Victorian Labor governments. We had a police ministers conference where I actually raised it with the Attorney-General and the chief commissioner at the time, to say we really needed to do something about tobacco and organised crime. Sadly, the response at the time was, 'It's not an issue, so we don't need to worry about it.' Obviously, we've now seen all the firebombings and everything since.

When it comes to law enforcement, the easiest way to do this—this is something I've been pushing for; I made speeches on it when in government—is for the states to have a penalty notice regime. The Commonwealth powers—the legislation changes and the stronger penalties—are fantastic, but the state and territory police are not going to use them. Even the surveillance powers and search warrants—again, the Australian Border Force can't use these powers. I say to the government: you need to give the Australian Border Force the surveillance powers, the telephone intercept powers, because they have to call on the Australian Federal Police when they're with these operations, with the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce. If members are seconded there and the ones who aren't have another operation—it could be a paedophile ring or major drug trafficking—that's always going to get priority. We need the Australian Border Force to get that priority.

To come back to the point I was making before, the state police need to be given something similar to a penalty notice, where they can issue fines. It could be, initially, $10,000 or $100,000—and it goes to a million dollars. At the moment in Victoria, under state Labor, there are only 14 of these so-called tobacco licensing inspectors for 10,000 venues. It's absolutely ridiculous—only 14! They've seized a half a tonne or something of cigarettes. It is a complete failure. I'm especially blaming the state Labor government of Victoria. If they had got on this years ago, we wouldn't be in this situation.

When it comes to tariffs, I do agree with colleagues. Reducing them does make a difference. When it comes to the excise—

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