House debates Questions without Notice
Tobacco Control
Mr Tony Burke Watson, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House
2:35 pm
The last thing this parliament should ever do is outsource its health policy to organised crime—the last thing it should do. And that is exactly what the opposition proposes. Think about this simple fact. The simple fact is that the raw cost of an illicit pack of cigarettes is one-sixth the cost of legal cigarettes before you get to the excise. So, even if you reduce the excise in the way that the opposition are saying, you still have a massive price differential between what organised crime are able to do and what would be available in a shop. That is why the way to deal with this has to be through law enforcement. That is why the process has to be through the national disruption group. It has to be through the work that is being done by bringing together the Australian Federal Police, AUSTRAC and the Criminal Intelligence Commission—with the work that they're doing together.
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