Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) | Hansard source

I want to start by saying that we support this legislation and the spirit in which it's achieved, but I also want to reflect on just how inadequate it truly is. Let's look at the reality. Under this government, there has been a thriving illicit tobacco market that has fed organised crime across Australia, and nowhere has it been more acute than in my home state of Victoria. Frankly, it's an absolute national disgrace that this crisis has allowed itself to get to this point. We have seen Australian small businesses firebombed by criminal gangs as part of a turf war over an illicit product, and this didn't come out of nowhere.

Australians were consistently warned about the consequences of a reckless approach to tobacco regulation by so many people, including academics and myself. That fell on deaf ears inside this Labor government and earlier Labor governments. None of this is a surprise. None of this is a shock. It is a direct and deliberate consequence of the policy design of the Albanese government, the Gillard government and the Rudd government. Think about it. You have a situation where you take a lawful product, you put it into plain packaging akin to other illegal products which already thrive within organised criminal gangs and then you increase the tax rates to the point where it becomes an attractive proposition for organised crime gangs to enter into the market and to be able to enjoy outrageous proceeds off the back of otherwise lawful citizens.

We've seen this in human history. One of my great political heroes is a woman by the name of Pauline Sabin, and I suspect nobody else in this chamber has heard about her. Pauline Sabin was a woman who was part of the saloon movement that tried to introduce prohibition in the United States. She supported it because she wanted to stop the issues of domestic violence, which were particularly targeted towards women at the time from drunken men coming home from saloons. She then watched the prohibition movement not only lead to a flurry of illegal product but turn lawful citizens into unlawful actors. People actively engaged in subversion of the law at every level just to be able to go about their daily lives and consume a product. At the time, what were called the progressives, by the way—we need to be clear—thought that they knew how to live people's lives better.

That is exactly what has happened here. Thank you, Nicola Roxon. Thank you to the ministers who have decided to firebomb small businesses across this country under poor policy framing. What we have had is a replication of the problems of prohibition in Australia at every level—problems where the federal government introduced legislation and then the states couldn't be bothered or failed to enforce it, creating premiums for illegal activity, which have been harvested by organised crime and profiteering. We have had consistent failure of enforcement at every level—state and federal levels—thinking that they can somehow decide what goes on in the hearts of men. What we've now seen, of course, are turf wars. Exactly the same thing occurred in prohibition, where people died. Now, we're seeing the firebombing of small businesses across the country.

We're seeing it in the Goldstein electorate too. There have been firebombings, I understand, in Moorabbin. Lawful businesses that have not been involved in the illegal tobacco trade have also been targeted in Sandringham, all because we have seen a profiteering motive that government has actively stoked. As a consequence, the profits have been so great that they have led to the attraction of organised crime gangs from overseas and our own country to profiteer.

It's even worse than that. We've gone from a problem of just illegal tobacco to now shifting towards illicit alcohol. This is one of the things that's emerging very strongly in the state of Victoria. There are distribution networks available to those who are engaged in unlawful tobacco, and now they're shifting over to illicit alcohol on the same basis—that the excise is providing such a premium that they can displace lawful products.

What a shock: when there's an expansion in the volume of illegal products, organised crime gangs don't report their data to the ATO. So what we have is a government that's still indulging in the idea that somehow it's seeing cigarette rates and consumption rates decline and that the Australian community is going to be healthier as a consequence. The drunken denial that we continue to see from this government, not just drunken denial to its broken promises in the budget but drunken denial and deceit in its response to illicit tobacco, is one that is now costing the taxpayer billions in forgone revenue. As I pointed out, illegal gangs tend not to pay tax and tend not to report their data to the Australian tax office. And, of course, we're continuing to live with the downstream consequences of the health impacts associated with what is likely to be a rising level of illicit tobacco consumption.

I do appreciate that the government has finally woken up after fuelling this crisis—fuelling a situation where businesses are being firebombed, fuelling the very environment that has led to an otherwise lawfully consumed product becoming illicit to the benefit of organised criminal gangs. I acknowledge that they've finally woken up to the fact that even they can't go on pretending that there's nothing wrong here. Now, they're taking, frankly, pretty modest measures to say 'maybe we better stamp this stuff out'. The Australian small businesses who they've targeted with a firebombing in their budget have now experienced firebombing in the literal sense—by the organised crime gangs that profit off illicit tobacco.

A consequence of this trade is that there has been a decline in the pretty basic proposition of respect for the law. Again, I go back to the prohibition movement: we saw exactly the same thing then, back in the 1920s and 1930s in the United States, when honest citizens were engaged in dishonest activity or illegal activity, and the law actually propagated a disrespect for the law. This government has been an active participant in creating disrespect for the law. That is a disastrous outcome for our community.

We have had a complete overdose of denial and deceit by this government about the impacts of its policy arrangements and a complete unwillingness to actually address the root cause of the problem. I understand that Labor does not want to confront this problem, but Australians are living the consequences of the problem Labor caused: illegal activity, organised crime, violence and firebombing on our streets, in our strip shops. That has increased not just the cost to small businesses—although it has directly for those who are attracted to it—but the cost to all small businesses across the board, because what we've seen is an increase in insurance premiums directly off the back of the government stoking criminal conduct.

I can't believe that, as we're debating this bill, some of the Labor members are saying how virtuous their actions are. They have been directly complicit in fuelling organised crime. They have been directly complicit in supporting the legislation that has created the situation that we are now facing as a country. They have been directly complicit—

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