The coalition thinks that taking good, sensible law enforcement measures to deal with illegal tobacco is a good start, and we support it. But we also will make very clear, and we do so through some of the amendments in this bill, that just taking these measures will not fix the problem of illegal tobacco in this country. The problem of illegal tobacco in this country comes down to one simple fact: we've taxed tobacco to death. And what's happening is the criminals have stepped in, have found a market and are exploiting it to the tune of somewhere between $4 billion and $6 billion and potentially $8 billion or more. What has happened is criminal revenue has gone up, through to the sky, and the government's revenue has fallen through the floor. You don't need to have a PhD in economics to understand what the solution to this is.

Excise is killing government revenue. Excise is absolutely lining the pockets of the criminals, so much so that—and I know the members on our side know this because we see it in our constituencies—we're seeing illegal tobacco shops pop up everywhere. This is bad enough that these criminal gangs are making a motza. They're making billions and billions of dollars. But it's worse than that. It's actually causing serious security issues in our communities because a lot of these tobacco shops are in main streets. I've got them in towns right throughout my electorate, and guess what? You've got the shop, and then, especially in rural communities, you'll often have a flat on top which is rented out. Those people, unbeknownst to what's happening in the shop below, could sadly be victims of firebombings. They could be asleep at night and all of a sudden—bang! There's a firebombing. Their safety is seriously at risk, and the government won't address the fundamental problem. We get enforcement modernisation; we're happy to do that. Our policy actually touches on that as well. We think what you need to do is, and the sensible approach is to, cut the excise. Government actually makes more revenue by cutting the excise. That's how bad things have got out of proportion.

So you cut the excise, and the government makes more revenue. Why do they make more revenue? Because more legal tobacco is sold and less illegal tobacco is sold, so the government makes more revenue. Then what do you do with that revenue? You have an antismoking campaign—good, sensible stuff—and you make sure you invest in law enforcement to deal with the rogue criminal elements which are left. This isn't 'way out there' policy. This isn't policy where the government should sit and say, 'For this reason and that reason we're not going to go anywhere near it.' What the government should do is say, 'The coalition's had another good idea.' Coalition MPs have put a lot of time and work into making sure that we've come up with this good policy, and I commend those MPs for having done that. I particularly single out the member for Monash. They've done a lot of hard work. And what you should be able to do, government, is something like happened with the previous bill: a bit of bipartisanship, and all of a sudden you've got $8 billion in revenue that you don't have now and you desperately need, because that could go to savings, and we would be getting rid of all the criminal elements.

I don't understand why your ego, your pride won't allow you to realise that we've come up with a ripping policy and you should adopt it. I say to all those in government, on the government benches: you need to seriously think about this, because it's the type of policy that would make the Australian people think, 'For once they're getting it; for once the government understands.' And I can tell you, out there at the moment the Australian people think the government has its priorities completely and utterly wrong. One of the areas where they think you've got it wrong is around crime, and what's causing a lot of the crime is that you are funding criminal activity, criminal gangs through your failed policies. And this one is the doozy of all doozies: you're funding up to $8 billion to criminal activity in this country. We've all seen the photographs: the Lamborghinis and Ferraris they're buying, the overseas holidays they're having—how this network actually funding overseas holidays. As a matter of fact, some of the criminal heads live overseas. This is what this policy is doing.

We need to deal with crime in this nation. We have to make sure we're doing everything we can to limit it, to restrict it, not to fund it. That's what this policy is doing. It is funding it. That's why we will support what you're doing here in terms of your enforcement modernisation, but we say to the government, this isn't enough; you've got to address the underlying problem. And what's the underlying problem? There is a tax policy. We all know that the policy was put in place with the right intentions. The excise was put in place to make tobacco more expensive so people would say, 'I don't think I should smoke, because I can't afford it.' But there are some people—and I get this; I understand—who want to smoke, and it's legal for them to do so. They want to keep doing it, and that's their right. They know the health impacts; it's made very clear to them. But they decide they want to do it. For those people, we've got to make sure that they're being supplied with tobacco legally rather than illegally.

There are actually some good health arguments for why this should be so. With illegal tobacco, no-one knows what the hell's in it. Through tests that have been done, we know there is some awful stuff in it. There's some stuff that is carcinogenic beyond belief. People who legally want to smoke but, because of the cost-of-living crisis we're in because the government, through their spending addiction, keep driving inflation through the roof, are now forced to go onto the black market to buy their tobacco, and they're doing more harm to their health by doing that. How can that be a good thing? Not only are we funding criminals; we're actually leading to detrimental health outcomes for Australians through this policy.

I can't see how this makes any sense whatsoever, especially when there is a policy that's fixed this and the policy has been through the Parliamentary Budget Office. They have said, 'Yes, coalition, you have this right.' Cut the excise by 80 per cent and increase revenue to the government by $8 billion. And guess what? You'd be selling legal tobacco to those people in Australia who want to smoke so you'd actually get better health outcomes for those people. With the $8 billion that you get back in revenue, you can have an anti-smoking campaign, like the good ones we used to run in this country, and everyone's a winner.

At the moment this illegal issue is like an elephant, and all this approach, your enforcement modernisation bill, is doing is removing a little pimple off that elephant's back. You have to address the fundamental problem, and that is the elephant size of excise on tobacco in this country. You've got to deal with that. If you deal with that, then you deal with the criminal gangs and the criminal activities and you make the community safer. That means that all those illegal tobacco shops, which are springing up left, right and centre right across this nation, all of a sudden don't have a business model anymore. We've all seen it. They are usually gift shops, those tobacco shops, and you'll see people walking in to get gifts at eight in the morning. They're not going in there to buy their illegal cigarettes. They're going in there to get gifts. Well, you start to put pay to that because people who want to smoke can afford to do it and can afford to do it legally.

So once again, I say to the government: just think about the national interests. Don't think of your political interests. Think about the national interests. Think about what's in the interests of the community. Think about what's in the interests of law enforcement. Imagine if law enforcement didn't have to deal with illegal tobacco. Imagine if law enforcement didn't have to deal with criminal gangs which are funded to the tune of $4 billion to $6 billion, maybe $8 billion, by this policy. Imagine if they could go about keeping communities safe. Imagine if people who lived above tobacco shops didn't have to worry about their flat catching on fire or being firebombed and their lives and their kids being put at risk. Imagine if communities didn't have to worry about some of the money that is used by those criminal gangs to recruit young Australians to get them to do their errands and start them on a life of crime. Imagine if we were able to deal with all that.

We can. We just need the government to open its eyes. We need the Prime Minister to get out amongst the community. I'm happy, if he wants to come to Wannon, to show him where the illegal tobacco shops are. I'm happy to say to him that there's a better way to deal with this. I'm happy to introduce him to local police officers who can explain to him what's fundamentally wrong with the current approach. We can do all that by just making sure we have a prime minister who gets out and about and knows what's going on in the community, and then he might come back and say to the relevant ministers: 'You know what? We need to fix this.'

The coalition stands ready. We've got a policy ready to go. It's a costed policy ready to go. It will deal with this issue. Bipartisan support means the criminal gangs stop getting funded. Bipartisan support means smokers who want to legally smoke in this country can do so and can do so knowing what's in their cigarette rather than not knowing what the criminals have put into the illegal tobacco they're smoking. There's a sensible way forward on this policy. I look forward to hearing from the next government speaker on this, saying that she's seen the light, and that the coalition has the right path.

When most Australians hear the words 'illicit tobacco', they might picture a few cheap packets being sold under a counter, but that picture is dangerously out of date. Illicit tobacco is not a harmless cash economy. It is a sophisticated, highly profitable market, increasingly exploited by organised crime. The people behind it are not simply avoiding tax; they are building criminal supply chains. They conceal ownership, misuse legitimate freight networks, move money through layers of people and businesses, and profit by selling an addictive and deadly product outside of every safeguard Australians expect. They do not care about public health. They do not care who they sell to. They do not care about the legitimate small businesses they undercut. And they do not care where their profits go next.

When organised crime changes the way it operates, our laws must keep pace. That is why the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026 matters. It strengthens our ability to stop illicit tobacco at the border, secure it while it's under customs control, seize and forfeit it efficiently, investigate those behind it, and strip away the profits that make this trade attractive. It is practical legislation, but its purpose is very clear: to make Australia a harder place for organised crime to do business.

This issue is especially relevant to communities like mine. Bonner is home to more than 14,000 businesses. They include family-owned retailers, manufacturers, customs and freight businesses, transport operators, warehouses and logistics companies. It is also home to the Port of Brisbane, one of the most important trade gateways in our country. In 2024-25 the port handled around 1.6 million 20-foot equivalent containers, 34.9 million tonnes of trade and approximately $73.5 billion in international trade. The port and its supply chain support around 73,000 jobs. Those figures tell us something very important: trade is not an abstract idea in Bonner. It means jobs, investment and opportunity. It means the truck driver starting before dawn, the worker on the wharves, the customs broker checking a consignment, the small manufacturer waiting on an input, and a local business getting its product to market every day.

Enormous volumes of legitimate goods move through my electorate. Overwhelmingly, the people involved in that system are doing the right thing. They follow Australia's customs rules. They keep records. They pay their workers and their taxes. They carry the cost of compliance because they understand that a trusted border protects us all. They deserve a level playing field. They should not be forced to compete with the black market, whose competitive advantage is breaking the law. The most reputable businesses operating around the port should not have their industries or their community defined by criminals seeking to exploit legitimate supply chains. Strong enforcement protects the integrity of trade. It protects reputable operators, and it protects public confidence in the systems that allow goods to move efficiently into and across our country.

The scale of this problem is no longer open to any doubt. Recent operations in Queensland show both the size of the illicit market and the value of coordinated enforcement. In March this year, a multi-agency operation in North Queensland seized more than 5.89 million illicit cigarettes, more than 1.2 tonnes of loose-leaf tobacco and more than 18,800 vapes. The combined estimated street value and duty evaded was over $12.5 million. In another Queensland operation, authorities seized more than 13.7 million illicit cigarettes, more than 380 kilos of loose-leaf tobacco and more than 27,000 vapes, dealing an estimated $23 million blow to the illegal market. And in August, the Australian Federal Police alleged that one network had used around 88 air cargo consignments, since May, to import illicit tobacco before storing it for distribution.

These are not isolated packets changing hands. They are commercial-scale operations requiring money coordination, storage, transport and distribution. That is precisely why the government established the Illicit Tobacco National Disruption Group to bring agencies together and target the mid-level criminals and enablers who import, store, move and distribute these products. No single agency can dismantle an entire criminal business model on its own. We need intelligence shared, we need action coordinated, we need pressure applied at every point in the supply chain and we need legislation that supports that work rather than slowing it down.

There is also a public health truth we cannot allow to disappear from this debate: tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death in Australia. Smoking takes more than 24,000 Australian lives each year. That is around 66 people every single day. My grandfather died of lung cancer, and he was a very heavy smoker throughout his life.

Australia has made extraordinary progress in reducing smoking. The latest national data show daily smoking among people aged 14 and over has fallen by more than 70 per cent since 2001. That progress is not accidental; it came from evidence based public health policy, education, plain packaging, advertising restrictions, quit support and tobacco taxes that reduce consumption, particularly among young people. We should be proud of that progress and determined to protect it. We should also be clear that illicit tobacco threatens it. Illegal sellers do not apply health standards. They do not respect packaging laws. They do not check whether a young customer is becoming addicted for their health and safety. Their only concern is making the sale.

The answer is not to surrender decades of public health progress by making a deadly product cheaper. The World Health Organization is clear that tobacco taxes are among the most effective ways to reduce tobacco use, especially among young people and people on lower incomes. International experience also shows that illicit trade can be confronted while strong tobacco taxes are maintained. The responsible answer is a strong public health policy and strong enforcement operating together. We can protect Australians from tobacco related disease and target the criminals exploiting the illicit market. In fact, we must do both.

We are already seeing the results of that work in my home state of Queensland, backed by more than $18 million in Albanese Labor government funding. New data shows legal tobacco sales jumped 55 per cent following stronger enforcement measures and remained 40 to 45 per cent above previous levels six months later. Calls to Quitline have more than doubled following major enforcement operations. That is what strong enforcement can achieve: disrupting criminal profits, supporting legitimate businesses and encouraging Australians to quit smoking.

One of the weaknesses in the existing illicit tobacco framework is that parts of it were designed for a different operating environment. Under existing offence provisions, authorities can be required to prove that tobacco was imported with an intention to defraud the revenue. That sounds straightforward on paper. In a sophisticated criminal network, it can be anything but. Organised crime deliberately creates distance between the person directing an operation and the product at the border. Ownership is hidden, documents are manipulated and goods pass through multiple hands. Corporate structures and intermediaries are used to blur responsibility.

This legislation modernises the offence framework by creating new offences covering the importation, possession and conveyance of tobacco where there is reasonable suspicion that it has been unlawfully imported or that its importation would defraud the revenue. It also allows tobacco to be prescribed as a Tier 1 good that enables existing serious customs offence pathways to apply where tobacco is imported without the permission or approvals required by law. These changes are about closing gaps between what enforcement agencies can see and what they can prove under laws written for another time.

Protecting the border does not end when a ship docks at the Port of Brisbane, when a plane lands or when a container is unloaded. Goods may move through licensed depots and warehouses before they are lawfully released. That period of time matters. Tobacco that's technically within customs control can still be targeted for diversion into the illicit market. The legislation therefore strengthens controls over tobacco held in licensed warehouses and introduces tobacco-related licence conditions for customs brokers, depots and warehouses authorised to handle these goods.

A licence is not merely permission to operate. It carries a responsibility to protect the integrity of the system. Where an operator is entrusted with goods under customs control, government must be able to set appropriate conditions and respond when those conditions are breached. For legitimate customs, freight and warehousing businesses in Bonner, this is fundamentally about confidence that standards apply across the industry, that bad actors cannot gain an unfair advantage and that government will act when legitimate infrastructure is misused.

The legislation also addresses a practical question: what happens after illicit tobacco is found? Enforcement does not become effective simply because goods have been located. The seizure and forfeiture process must also be fit for purpose. Existing administrative arrangements can require significant time and resources even where the nature of the goods and the circumstances of the seizure are clear. This bill modernises notification arrangements by enabling direct, bulk and electronic notices, as well as the publication of seizure information. For specified tobacco seized under the prescribed powers, it removes the ability to make a claim for return and allows the goods to be immediately forfeited. That means less time and public money spent processing claims that serve no legitimate purpose. It means seized products can be dealt with safely and efficiently, and it also means that our enforcement agencies can focus their people and resources on identifying networks, gathering evidence and disrupting the next shipment.

Finding and confiscating the product is still only part of the task. If we want to hurt organised crime, we must go after what organised crime cares about the most: the money. The illicit tobacco market exists because it is profitable. The product may be tobacco, but its objective, of course, is wealth. That is why the amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act are so important. We do not only want to intercept a consignment and leave the financial structure behind intact. We want to identify the assets, trace the proceeds and dismantle the business model. We want the people financing and directing these networks to know that distance from the box or the warehouse will not place their profits beyond reach. Crime should never be a pathway to wealth, and no criminal enterprise should be able to treat the occasional seizure as simply a cost of doing business.

The world in which these investigations occur has also changed enormously. Once, obtaining a document meant identifying the office cabinet or archive where it was stored. Today, a document may be stored on a server on the other side of the country or the other side of the world and be accessed instantly from a laptop in Brisbane. The relevant evidence may sit across accounts, across devices and, of course, across jurisdictions. This legislation clarifies that production orders can be sought after proceedings have commenced and removes outdated jurisdictional limitations. The bill also strengthens the consequences for destroying, defacing or interfering with documents subject to a production order because deleting evidence must not be some easy way out. A person who deliberately frustrates a lawful investigation should face consequences that reflect the seriousness of that conduct.

These reforms take a coordinated approach to tackling illicit tobacco, strengthening border offences, tightening supply chain controls, modernising seizure and forfeiture processes, and improving investigations into organised crime and its profits. Developed through a whole-of-government approach, they recognise that illicit tobacco is not just a border issue. It is an organised crime, revenue, business integrity and public health issue.

The overwhelming majority of Australian businesses do the right thing. They pay their workers, meet their obligations and contribute to their communities. Across Bonner, I see hardworking business owners building their livelihoods and supporting our local economy. They deserve a level playing field free from unfair competition driven by illegal activity. This legislation sends a very clear message: as criminal networks adapt, so will our laws and enforcement efforts. We will continue to back honest Australian businesses, protect our communities and ensure that organised crime has no easy path to profit. I commend the bill to the House.

I stand to support the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026 and I commend the government for the intent of what they bring forward to this parliament. But I fear what we are doing is what this parliament, as well as the three parliaments I've been part of previously, has failed to understand in trying to tackle this problem. We are only tinkering at the edges by not understanding the real issues at play that need to be addressed in a bipartisan way.

We've made great movements in the last 20 or 30 years. In fact, I pay homage to Nicola Roxon, the former minister for health minister and ageing, who, back in the late 1990s and the 2000s, made significant reforms in tackling the use of tobacco by Australians—in particular, by young Australians. She did a great job in regulating the product, making sure that the product was sold under a regulated process through licensed outlets. This ensured that young people were protected. We also invested in education to ensure that Australians understood the risks of the intake of tobacco and smoking and understood the health effects there. Investing in that education has saved us billions of dollars.

But subsequent to that, governments of all persuasions, including governments that I've been part of, have not understood that, in creating this excise and placing it year in, year out, we have created market behaviours that have now got us to this juncture where we have created another market. The regulated market has been overtaken by an illicit market and organised crime. That's our failure. It is a failure of parliaments of the past. We should stand up and admit that we got it wrong, and when you add to that the complexity of vaping and how it interacts with the illicit tobacco market, you see that we're not tackling the root cause here.

When we talk about the people who will primarily be impacted, we're talking about those who don't have disposable income. They are forced to change their market behaviours. They look to go to the illicit market because we are taxing this thing till it is out of their reach. We are putting them into an illicit market and a product that we do not have confidence in. And it's not just vapes; it is also illicit tobacco. In fact, there's a report out today that talks about how they cannot verify many of the carcinogens that are in the illicit tobacco that is being brought into this country. It's far more dangerous than the regulated product.

We are getting to a juncture where there has been a concerted campaign against big tobacco. I don't want big tobacco, but I can't stop people's behaviour. Prohibition has never worked in society. It will never work, and we have to face up to that. But at least, with a regulated product, tobacco companies are bound to maintain a product that is safe, to the extent that we can put it on the shelves of our shops. This is where we have lost the real intent of what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to protect Australians, and we see that organised crime has taken over the market because the government has taxed the market, taking many Australians out of it and putting them into the hands of the illicit market and organised crime.

We've lost somewhere between $7 billion and $12 billion worth of excise that would have gone towards funding the health issues that we are going to have from those who continue to remain on not just illicit tobacco but also vapes. We don't have that revenue stream to pay for those health consequences that we will have. What we are missing in all this is that, unless we're prepared to face up to the consequences of prohibition not working and to the fact that we will need to reshape the marketplace and the behaviour within that marketplace to get people back onto a regulated product, we are going to continue to make the mistakes of previous parliaments and the previous governments that I was part of.

I made those mistakes, and I don't contest the science in any way, shape or form. And I know the AMA have been very strong and very critical—even of myself, personally, because of my personal beliefs—but the AMA's capabilities start and finish at the science around these products being bad for us, and I don't contest that for one moment. I agree with them 100 per cent. But they have no ability to regulate a market or to understand borders and market behaviours. Their expertise starts and finishes with the science.

We have got ourselves into many of the problems. We have allowed health professionals to force us into a position of thinking that we can tax ourselves out of this problem when we cannot. We are going to face the health consequences without the economic grunt to be able to solve them. That is the stark reality of what we are doing again in this parliament. I stand ready to admit I got it wrong. It's important that we don't do this for much longer. If we continue down this pathway we will see a regulated market leave, because we are only a small part of the international market. We will be left with an illicit market and with organised crime organising our tobacco and vapes in this country.

An opportunity has been lost by this government. I don't condemn them for the intent of what they bring forward, but we are only tinkering at the edges if we believe that changing and modernising some of the enforcement around this will stop the black market. That will not stop them. That will not deter them. They will continue on, because this is lucrative to them. That's the stark reality of the situation that we find ourselves in. That's why we've said very clearly that we have to be bold in tackling this. We must be bold. We've said that we will cut the excise by 80 per cent, and the reason for that is around reshaping that marketplace.

The PBO has clearly identified that there would be increased revenue from excise because we reshaped that market. If we re-educate that market to buy a regulated product, that gets us the excise that has been taken away from us, and that gives us the money to not only be able to face up to the health consequences but also, in a responsible way, modernise many of the programs that Nicola Roxon put in place when she was health minister. We are allocating $60 million to make sure we continue to educate and get the next generation away from illicit tobacco and vaping. And, with $200 million into law enforcement, we can make sure we have the resources to undertake border enforcement. But you can only do that if you have the revenue stream to be able to pay for it, and that's what we haven't had since we've seen the illicit market take over, because we have lost that $7 billion to $12 billion in excise revenue. That's the consequence that we face up to at the moment.

I believe that, unless there is an epiphany from this government, we will miss this opportunity that lays in front of us again in this parliament. I believe that there is an opportunity for some bipartisanship to not only understand the real consequences of this problem—how it got here and how we have all contributed to it in some way—but also for us to acknowledge that simply believing that beating them at the border is the only way to beat organised crime and illicit tobacco in this country is naive at best. History has shown us that. I've seen it, and I'm prepared to admit it. It is now time for us to understand that there is a better way for us to tackle this problem and to protect the next generation.

No-one challenges the science. I passionately want to see these things gone. But I'm not naive enough to think that I'm going to stop people from smoking or that prohibition will work. When you look at what we've done with vapes—putting them through chemists, who don't even want to sell them anyway—of the people who have gone on to vapes, fewer than 10 per cent have a prescription. Let's be honest; that hasn't worked. That was one of the transition products away from tobacco. I will put my hand up. I was part of a cabinet that did that. We got it wrong, thinking that we could have a vaping market that wasn't regulated like cigarettes, that protected young people. That's why we've seen this explosion of crime and why we've seen illegal stores put up everywhere.

It is time for us to actually face up to the real problem. While the government is doing the right thing in these amendments—we support them wholeheartedly, and I thank them for that—I think realistically we have to understand as a parliament that, unless we're prepared to look ourselves in the mirror, look at what has come before us, look at what has been done and look at what has got us to this position, this won't change anything. This won't stop organised crime. This won't get young people away from going to illegal stores and getting illegal vapes or illegal chop-chop, products that we don't know anything about what's inside them. That's the stark reality. I know it's unpalatable for many who have a pure sense of the world in thinking that what we do in here will reshape it by what we do with this and by talking big numbers of what we stop at the borders, but it won't do three-fifths of bugger all. The stark reality is organised crime has changed the behaviour of a marketplace. The only way to take control of this is to take control of the market. That is the missed opportunity in this bill and this parliament to reshape and take control of the marketplace and to get back into a regulated market that gives us a revenue stream to pay for the health consequences and give us an opportunity to get rid of organised crime.

I'll finish on this. You can see this business model now going into alcohol. I fear that we'll be sitting in the next parliament or the parliament after, facing up to illicit alcohol. We are excising and taxing ourselves and people out of a regulated market, taking them out of pubs and clubs in a regulated environment that protects them and that protects the community. What we are doing is doing exactly what we've done with tobacco and with vapes. What's happened here is the canary in the coal mine. I can tell you, alcohol is the next frontier. We will see those licensed premises pay the same costs, the same price, as we have of these small retailers that are regulated and that do the right thing to protect young children in making sure that they can't get hold of cigarettes or vapes. That is a responsible way to regulate a product where prohibition can never work.

I commend the government for what they have put forward. I support it, but I ask them in all honesty to look in the mirror and look at what we've done. Yes, there are some great things we have achieved, but we are putting our heads in the sand if we believe the only way to solve this is through a market mechanism, and that is about retaking the market, reshaping the market back into a regulated model rather than a black-market model. This bill, unfortunately, will not do that.

One Nation and the coalition want to tell the Australian people that their policies to cut excise are a step forward, but standing still on the edge of a cliff is not progress. Hearing contributions and discussions on this debate, there has been something that continues to get lost—the extraordinary progress Australia has made in reducing smoking rates in this country.

Twenty-five years ago, smoking was a much more ordinary part of Australian life. In 2001, 19.5 per cent of Australians aged 14 and over, smoked daily. Among adults aged 18 and over, the figure was 20.1 per cent. Today, those numbers are dramatically different. The latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's National Drug Strategy Household Survey shows that in 2025, just 5.6 per cent of Australians aged 14 and over smoked daily. Among adults aged 18 and over, the rate was 5.8 per cent. That is a fall of more than two-thirds since 2001, and that is good national policy. The number of Australians smoking daily has fallen from around three million to just 1.3 million. This is an important and excellent public outcome, which reduces the burden on our healthcare system. Current vaping declined from seven per cent to six per cent over this period, 2025-2026. Dunkley is part of that story. That progress matters because tobacco remains one of Australia's major preventable causes of disease and death. It is a burden on our health system.

When we talk about illicit tobacco, we need to understand what is at stake. We're not simply talking about an unpaid tax bill. We're talking about an illegal market operating outside the regulatory system that Australia has spent decades building. Illicit tobacco is a global problem. Countries with very different approaches to tobacco taxation and regulation experience problems with illegal tobacco markets. Australia is not unique in confronting organised criminal networks that see tobacco as an opportunity for profit. In 1994 Canada sought to stop illegal smuggling by cutting the excise by 48 per cent. This resulted in 30,000 preventable and premature deaths and, later, a class action which saw a $32.5 billion settlement.

The coalition are proposing an 80 per cent cut to the excise. These so-called policies by One Nation and the coalition will lead to more smoking-related deaths and increased pressure on our health system. So my question to them is: how many deaths are you willing to accept? With this policy, any shred of credibility that the coalition and One Nation claim to have on health goes up literally in smoke. The economics of the illegal market help explain why. A pack of cigarettes can reportedly be manufactured cheaply in parts of South-East Asia and then sold for several dollars a packet on Australia's illicit market. That creates an enormous margin of profit for people prepared to break the law, and that is where the public policy problem becomes much bigger than tobacco excise. When criminal organisations can make substantial profits from importing, manufacturing and distributing illicit tobacco, they have an incentive to establish supply chains, recruit people, move money and find businesses through which to distribute their products illegally.

That is why the response cannot be simply about decreasing a tax rate; rather, it must be about not legitimising the black-market trade. This problem requires compliance and enforcement, it requires cooperation between Commonwealth agencies and state and territory authorities and it requires action at every stage of the supply chain. The government has committed more than $365 million since 2024 to tackling illegal tobacco and nicotine products. That includes $188.5 million in the 2024-25 budget for the Australian Border Force to strengthen action against illegal tobacco imports. It also includes $156 million in the 2025-26 budget to strengthen compliance and enforcement against illicit tobacco and nicotine products. The 2026-27 budget includes a further $20 million for measures including supporting state and territory compliance.

The government has also established the national disruption group, led by the Australian Border Force, bringing together Commonwealth, state and territory agencies. That matters because the illicit market does not respect jurisdictional boundaries. The response therefore cannot be confined to one agency or one level of government. There is work before tobacco reaches Australia. There is work at the border. The Australian Border Force is working with international partners to identify and disrupt shipments even before they reach our shores. Between 2025 and 2026, that preborder work prevented more than 35 million cigarettes, 26 tonnes of illicit tobacco and around 500,000 vapes from entering Australia.

At the border, the scale of seizures has also increased significantly. The ABF reports that in 2025-26 it seized more than 2,300 tonnes of illicit tobacco and 13 million vaping devices. Offshore seizures of cigarette sticks increased by 496 per cent, compared with an increase of 232 per cent in the previous financial year. Those numbers represent products that did not reach Australian communities and revenue that criminal organisations did not receive. But seizures are only part of the response. Once illicit tobacco has entered Australia, state and territory authorities have an important role to play. More than 1,000 stores have been shut down nationally under state and territory enforcement regimes.

The Commonwealth has also been working to follow the money. The AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce has restrained more than $47.5 million in assets since June 2026. The Illicit Tobacco National Disruption Group has identified more than 100 people of interest associated with the illicit tobacco industry. AUSTRAC has received more than 700 suspicious-matter reports relating to illicit tobacco. And the Multi Agency Strike Team, involving agencies such as the AFP and the ATO, has charged seven people in operations targeting two multimillion-dollar criminal organisations involved in the illicit tobacco trade. These are examples of what a disruption strategy looks like when it moves beyond the border and follows the criminal enterprise through its finances and distribution networks.

But there is another group that deserves attention in this debate: local retailers. The overwhelming majority of small businesses in communities like Dunkley are legitimate businesses. They employ local people, pay rent and wages, comply with the law, and contribute to their communities. An illicit tobacco market can put those businesses in a very difficult position, particularly when illegal products are sold through premises operating outside the rules that legitimate retailers are expected to follow. That is why enforcement cannot stop with Commonwealth border operations. States and territories need effective compliance teams and powers that allow them to close premises where illegal tobacco is repeatedly being sold. Landlords also have a role to play when premises are knowingly being used for illegal activity. Long-term closure orders and appropriate landlord penalties can form part of a broader enforcement response.

But enforcement is only one side of tobacco policy. The other side is helping people quit. It's important that we do not turn smokers into the target of this debate. Nicotine dependence is an important part of the picture. It's an addiction. The public policy objective is to reduce smoking and nicotine dependence while ensuring that people who want to quit can access appropriate support. The latest national figures give us reason to continue that work. The decline in daily smoking means Australia has made enormous progress. But 5.6 per cent still represents around 1.3 million people smoking daily. There are people who have smoked for decades, there are people who are trying to quit and there are others who have tried several times and not yet succeeded. Then there are families supporting someone they love through the process. That is why tobacco control has to combine prevention, regulation, enforcement and cessation support.

We also need to recognise that nicotine use is changing. The 2025 survey found that daily vaping among Australians aged 14 and over is around the same level as it was in 2022-23. That gives us an opportunity to respond to the evidence rather than treat every nicotine product as though it presents exactly the same policy challenge. The principle remains straightforward: Australia's public health policy should be based on reducing tobacco related harm, preventing young people from becoming dependent on nicotine and supporting people who want to quit. And illicit tobacco should not be allowed to undermine that work.

The government's approach is, therefore, about disruption before the border, at the border, after the border and through the financial system. It's about cooperation between agencies and governments, making illegal supply chains harder to operate and removing criminal profits. We are ensuring that legitimate businesses are not left to compete with an illegal market. There is no single measure that will eliminate illicit tobacco. The scale of the international market means that enforcement will remain an ongoing task. But that is not an argument for giving up, like those opposite proposed we do. It's an argument for continuing to improve intelligence, border enforcement, financial disruption, and state and territory compliance.

Australia has spent decades building a tobacco-control system that has delivered one of the most significant public health challenges of our generation. The task now is to make sure that progress continues. We should not confuse a declining smoking rate with a problem that has disappeared. For Dunkley, as for communities across Australia, the goals should be clear: fewer people taking up smoking, more people able to quit, legitimate businesses protected from illegal competition, and organised criminal networks prevented from profiting from tobacco. The measure of success will be whether fewer young Australians become addicted to nicotine, more smokers are able to quit, and the next generation is smoking even less than the current generation. And that is progress worth protecting.

Last week, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare released new data. Daily smoking prevalence has fallen to a new record low of 5.6 per cent in 2025, down from 8.3 per cent in 2022-23. Taken at face value, that's the best news in the history of Australian tobacco control. I want to be the first to say it plainly: the antismoking investment worked and it must be protected. But we owe this chamber the honesty about those numbers and what they do not tell us. These figures come from a self-report survey. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare has acknowledged that the respondents tend to underestimate their actual consumption levels and that illicit use is particularly undercounted.

So here's the problem: when the previous survey ran in 2022-23, most tobacco was still bought legally. But by 2025, the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated 80 per cent of all nicotine products were illicit. So the steepest fall in reported smoking in the survey's history was recorded over exactly the period in which smoking moved underground and became harder to measure. That doesn't mean smoking isn't falling; it means we should be cautious before we declare victory on the back of a number we can no longer fully see.

Regardless of the true rate, the bills keep arriving. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare tells us that smoking costs our health system circa $7.9 billion every year; smoking attributed to ill health, $29.8 billion; premature mortality, $107 billion; and a total social cost of $160 billion in 2022-23 alone. And 1.4 to 1.5 million Australians still smoke. These are some of the most expensive Australians to look after, and that cost lands on every taxpayer in this nation and in this chamber.

The violence is now a crisis in its own right. Since 2023, nearly 300 arson attacks linked to the trade have been reported nation wide, alongside countless episodes of extortion, intimidation and several murders. Australians now spend up to $8.5 billion a year on illicit nicotine. That's a big number compared to cannabis, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin. That makes illicit nicotine one of the largest and certainly the fastest growing black markets in our history.

The ports are working, but they can't do it alone. I want to give credit where credit is due. Australian Border Force officers are doing extraordinary work. In 2025-26, this current year, the ABF seized more than 2.2 billion illicit cigarettes, 586.7 tonnes of loose-leaf tobacco and over 13.2 million illegal vapes. Those seizures represented an estimated $4.7 billion of evaded tobacco duty, largely detected through maritime cargo screening, container X-ray technology, intelligence sharing and offshore targeting. Through international intelligence partnerships, the Australian Border Force prevented a further 514.9 million cigarettes and 3.1 million vapes from ever reaching our shores. In the drug space, Australian Federal Police and Australian Border Force seized 33.7 tonnes of illicit drugs and the precursors to them in 2023-24—methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and MDMA.

Australian ports are among the most sophisticated border control environments in the world. This is the crux of my argument: the fact that we have a market worth up to $8.5 billion tells you enforcement alone is not solving the problem. Australia processes millions of containers annually. Only a fraction can be physically inspected. Criminal groups exploit false cargo descriptions, complex supply chains, multiple transhipment ports, corrupt freight operators and small-parcel postal channels. The Australian Border Force itself frames success as disrupting criminal networks and increasing their costs, not achieving complete elimination. Australian Border Force commander Ken McKern said plainly:

Unfortunately we can't seize this problem away.

Let me put it this way. Australian Border Force officers are seizing record quantities of illicit tobacco at our ports, but the size of the black market demonstrates that enforcement alone cannot solve the problem. We must also address the economic incentive that makes tobacco smuggling so profitable for organised crime.

We are currently not helping police. Every gram that gets through places a burden on our law enforcement agencies. Every seizure, every investigation, every firebombing consumes police resources, forensic teams and court time. Officers who should be hunting drug traffickers, child exploitation networks and violent offenders are being diverted into policing a black market that our own tax settings helped create. Then come the courts. Then come the prisons. Incarcerating a single offender commonly exceeds $150,000 a year. High excise creates the market, criminals exploit it, police and courts respond, and taxpayers fund the whole cycle. That is not a loss of revenue; that is a cascade of cost flowing through every level of government.

There are three things we clearly must do. Our tobacco control policies were designed when criminal suppliers played only a marginal role. Now they dominate the market. Those policies need an urgent rethink. First, cut the tobacco tax. Tobacco taxes are meant to reduce consumption by making cigarettes expensive. Right now, the tax only makes legal tobacco expensive, driving consumers to cheap illicit alternatives. Perversely, excessive taxation has made smoking cheaper than it has been in decades. Canada took this path in 1994, cutting its tobacco excise in response to rampant smuggling while stepping up enforcement. Within six years, contraband seizures fell 94 per cent. Critics will say a tax cut is what big tobacco wants. But, based on market share, organised crime effectively is big tobacco in Australia right now. A legal industry is preferable to a criminal one selling the same product without health warnings or plain packaging, and allegedly using the proceeds to kill, intimidate and firebomb those who get in their way.

Second, legislate safer alternatives. Smoking remains a leading cause of preventable death, so moving people back to legal cigarettes is only a partial win. We should repel the consumer vapes and legalise lower-risk products, like nicotine pouches. In May, Sweden became the first country to reach a smoke-free threshold of under five per cent daily smoking through a legal, regulated market for vapes and pouches. New Zealand legalised and regulated vapes in 2020, and adult smoking has since fallen by more than 40 per cent, with the steepest declines among the Maori and the lower-income communities—the very groups whose rates remain stubbornly high here. Third, keep enforcing against the shrinking market. Enforcement remains absolutely critical, but we must divert a critical mass of nicotine consumers away from criminal suppliers. With fewer customers and lower profits, the same raids and seizures can finally make a difference.

Let me talk about the bottom line. This debate is not about surrendering a public health win. It's about protecting that public health win. The investments worked, and smoking rates are down, but we cannot protect that again by pretending the black market isn't there or by pretending a self-report survey captures what has moved underground. When a tax policy enriches criminals, overwhelms police, clogs courts, fills prisons and costs taxpayers billions, it's no longer simply a health policy. It becomes a public policy failure. Australia's tobacco wars are a product of the settings that inadvertently handed organised crime a multi-billion-dollar market. Arrests alone won't end them; fixing the settings will. We can protect the investment and fix what's broken. We should have the courage to do both. It's from my narrative that I've just articulated that I support and second the member of New England's amendment to the bill. Use all and every strategy and every tactic to fight organised crime and stop this black market.

When people think of their childhood, often the sense that they relate to, that brings up old memories, is smell. My dad was a metalworker. When I smell grease, I always think of my dad. But my dad was also a pack-a-day smoker, and I'm going to say that when I smell tobacco I do not think about my dad whatsoever. He was a pack-a-day smoker but I'm going to say that, with good support from Australian public health professionals, he gave up smoking. This is a part of Australia's good story of what we do when we have good policies in place. It's interesting because what we see is that the people who are running illegal tobacco trades are organised and adept and they change quickly. They are criminal syndicates that operate across borders, funding shops within our communities that have the ability to pop up and disappear and then pop up again like a bad case of teenage acne that won't go away. These are syndicates that keep on evading harsh penalties, over and over again. They do not care about Australians, they do not care about public health and they certainly don't care about Australians' lungs.

In my electorate of Swan, local businesses are doing the right thing and they should not be undercut by criminals selling illegal tobacco. That is why this government will keep on modernising our laws and it's why I rise to support the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026. This Labor government will go after these criminals with the full force of the law. We've been doing this through a step-by-step legislative uplift. This bill is the third instalment. The first instalment, the Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill 2026, lifted penalties and fines and improved our ability to intercept illegal product. The second instalment, the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Amendment Bill 2026, will give AUSTRAC the power to shut down the laundering that this trade enables. This bill creates new offences for importing, possessing and conveying illicit tobacco. Until now, federal agents had to prove that someone intended to defraud the Australian government of revenue. This was hard to prove because the big players in these networks diluted their accountability by keeping their distance from the importing, transporting and selling of illicit tobacco products. For too long, the rewards were high and the risks were low, which allowed these transnational criminal organisations to take advantage of Australian people.

The new offences introduced in this bill come with a list of observable indicators. Where any one of them is established, it satisfies a reasonable suspicion test. This can include trying to hide tobacco from detection at the border, deceptive packaging or selling prices below excise and the GST combined. This last one is simple. If a pack costs less than the tax that should be paid on it, officers have reasonable grounds to suspect it came in illegally. These indicators let the Australian Border Force and state and territory police go after the supply chain on the facts in front of them, rather than a complex burden of proof, and it reaches the shops themselves. Where officers find any one of those signs in a shop, they can take action. We are also building capacity across agencies so they can work together, sharing intelligence and centralising data so that the picture is clearer.

This bill also tightens the rules on duty-refundable tobacco. This is tobacco supplied to duty-free operators for the export or sale to travellers. Right now it sits outside customs control, which opens the door for it to be diverted onto the black market at duty-free prices. This bill restores custom controls until tobacco is exported or sold to an eligible traveller. For legitimate duty-free operators, very little changes.

This bill also streamlines how illicit tobacco is seized and destroyed. The Australian Border Force is detecting record amounts, yet officers lose hours of work because of paperwork on a single seizure. Cutting red tape frees them up to stop drugs and weapons and other dangerous goods at the border. It also stops criminals using claim and notification processes to delay the destruction of what's been seized.

The bill goes after people who give these networks a way in. Illicit tobacco relies on storage, warehouses, freight and depots that are run to look like legitimate businesses, so the bill adds new licence conditions for custom brokers, depots and warehouses. Licence holders must not help bring prohibited tobacco in the country, and they must take reasonable steps to stop it happening in their own operations. That means these businesses are now accountable for what moves through their operations, and they cannot afford to look the other way. It also means being more careful about who they do business with. The new offences reach companies as well as individuals, so a distributor, a warehouse operator or a freight business can face charges.

The Australian Federal Police have told us that what really hurts these syndicates is taking their cash, their houses, their cars and their assets, so the bill strengthens orders which make offenders pay back what they have made from crime. It makes clear that criminals cannot subtract the fines they pay from the profits they owe. It updates the production orders so agencies can get the information they need to follow the money, including the proceedings, across every state and territory. It clarifies how unexplained wealth is calculated so that agencies can go after wealth that criminals cannot explain.

But none of this works unless it's enforced where the shops actually are, and that is largely the job of the states and territories. The Albanese Labor government will support every one of them in the fight against the illegal tobacco trade, regardless of politics. We are focused on coordinated disruption at street level to shut down illegal markets and drive consumers back to legitimate products. That matters because ease of access and convenience are a major driver of smoking rates. We have recently seen that enforcement is working in Queensland. Since November last year Queensland Health can shut down an illegal shop for up to 90 days without even going to court. Landlords who knowingly rent these to these operators face hefty fines and up to 12 months' jail. To stop these shops from popping back up after a brief shutdown, these enforcement blitzes hit every illegal shop in the area at once. In one recent 10-day operation 148 stores were issued with three-month closure orders and nearly 12 million cigarettes were taken out of circulation.

Legal tobacco sales in Queensland rose by 55 per cent in the first month after those powers began. Interestingly, calls to Quitline more than doubled in the 10 days after the major enforcement of these operations. This data suggests that when illicit tobacco gets harder to find people move to legitimate retailers and some might even decide to quit. South Australia showed the way, and Queensland has followed its lead. Across the country state and territory governments have announced over 1,000 illegal tobacco shop closures. Enforcement is what works.

We welcome the opposition's support for this bill, but this government will not support policies that echo what tobacco lobbyists want. The coalition's plan to cut tobacco excise by 80 per cent and legalise vapes does exactly that. Take the excise first. The coalition's 80 per cent cut is an incredibly risky gamble with the health of Australians, and we have seen no modelling of what it would do to smoking rates. You cannot cut a legal price and expect an illegal one to magically disappear. Illicit tobacco can be made for less than a dollar a packet, and it pays no excise at all. It will always be cheaper, and a tax cut will not put these criminals out of business. We are not interested in joining a price discounting war with organised crime with a race to the bottom. Criminals who pay no tax and follow no rules will always be able to go lower. A legal price can never beat that. We are not the only ones who see it that way. The Australian Council on Smoking and Health has acknowledged the substantial work this government has done to strengthen the national framework. These new laws are designed to strengthen border enforcement and help agencies disrupt the criminal networks importing and distributing illicit tobacco.

Yet the coalition's answer to the problem is the tax cut. But those opposite don't stop there. They also want to legalise vapes. Disposable vapes surged in this country during COVID, with bright packaging and flavours like bubblegum, grape and cherry. They were intentionally marketed to young people, and the nicotine in them is highly addictive. We know that young people who vape are three times more likely to take up smoking. That is why the government banned the importation of disposable vapes in 2024. This side of the chamber is taking practical steps to fight illicit tobacco at every stage of the supply chain through stronger enforcement. We are working with every state and territory to scale up enforcement and shut down shops.

Australia prides itself on having access to some of the best healthcare in the world. Labor introduced Medicare, and protecting people's health is what this government will always do. Medical experts and academics have warned, as they have done for decades, that smoking is the leading cause of preventable death. It makes up 20 per cent of the cancer burden. Smoking kills 66 Australians every single day. That's around 24,000 families every year who lose someone that they love. But we've made real progress. In 1991, just over 24 per cent of Australians aged 14 and over smoked every day. In 2025, the National Drug Strategy Household Survey found it is now under six per cent. Daily vaping has stabilised at nearly four per cent. Those gains are hard won, and this government intends to protect them. But we also must support people to quit and to never take up smoking in the first place. Smoking remains legal, and this is not about telling anyone what to do. It's about making illicit tobacco harder to get and backing the people who want to quit. We saw in Queensland what happens when illicit tobacco gets harder to find. Some people move to legitimate retailers and some may decide to quit. Criminals are chasing the next generation of customers, so we want it to be harder for young people to get a hold of this product.

If I think about my 20s, when I used to go out nightclubbing, it was a time when smoking was acceptable in nightclubs. There was lots of alcohol, lots of tobacco smoking, and when you went home and you smelled your hair and your clothes, they would smell like an ashtray. They smelled absolutely disgusting. What's funny is that, when that policy changed, everyone just got to go home and feel a little bit brighter and cleaner and less disgusting. Australia always is at the forefront of thinking about the way we protect our fellow Australians, whether it relates to plain packaging—we were the first country in the world to do that—or to the banning of smoking in nightclubs. In making sure that we protect Australians, this is another feather in our cap, because, let's face it, the tobacco industry does not have Australians in its heart, soul or mind. What they really want is your money, and the price you pay for that is your lungs.

It's the Albanese Labor government that will keep on modernising our laws and reviewing how they work in practice, making make sure that we protect Australians not just for today but for tomorrow as well. I commend the bill.

I rise to speak on the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026. The coalition will not oppose this legislation. We support sensible measures that give Commonwealth law enforcement and border agencies stronger tools to combat the illicit tobacco trade. Many in this chamber would know that this is an issue that I have campaigned and spoken on many times, so I do welcome the action that is being taken. However, nobody should mistake this bill for a comprehensive solution to a crisis that has been allowed to grow under this government. Quite frankly, we are really just tinkering at the edges. The bill strengthens the offence framework covering the unlawful importation, possession, movement and sale of illicit tobacco. It also improves the ability of authorities to establish whether tobacco is illicit, strengthens provisions targeting criminal proceeds and tightens oversight of customs depots and licensed warehouses. These are sensible measures. They have the potential to make it harder for criminal operators to exploit weaknesses in our enforcement framework and profit from the illegal tobacco trade.

But the question before this parliament is whether the government understands the scale of the problem and is prepared to address its underlying causes. The government's own Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner estimates that illicit tobacco accounted for between 50 and 60 per cent of tobacco sold in Australia in 2024-2025, with an estimated market value of between $4.1 billion and $6.9 billion. Estimated excise and duty evasion reached between $7.7 billion and $11.8 billion. That's a lot of schools and hospitals. These are extraordinary figures. They represent billions of dollars in economic activity outside the lawful market and billions in potential government revenue that is not being collected. This is not simply a question of lost revenue or people buying cheaper cigarettes under the counter. The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission has described illicit tobacco as one of the most significant organised crime commodities in Australia. This is not confined to our capital cities. It is being felt right across Australia, particularly in regional Western Australia.

In Durack, the electorate that I represent, legitimate small businesses are paying the price. I was told by a local business in Durack that, over a six-month period, it suffered a $200,000 loss in sales each week. That is an enormous hit for any small business to absorb. The impact goes well beyond the sales figures. It affects staffing, customer foot traffic and the long-term viability of the business itself. These are businesses that employ local people, support families and contribute to the communities in which they operate. When their revenue is threatened, the consequences are felt throughout the local economy.

Lawful retailers have followed the rules. They have absorbed excise increases, updated their compliance practices and adhered to successive legislative changes. Yet they are being forced to compete against illicit operators selling cigarettes for a fraction of the price of legal products. A legal packet of 20 cigarettes can cost more than $40, with around $31 of that $40 attributable to tobacco excise. Meanwhile, illicit cigarettes can be sold for as little as $10 to $15 a packet.

Consider what this means for a legitimate retailer. They have to pay their staff, cover their operating costs, comply with regulations and account for the taxes imposed on the products they sell. Their illegal competitors can undercut them dramatically by avoiding these obligations. Clearly, this is not a level playing field. It is legitimate small businesses that are paying the price while organised criminals exploit the enormous gap between the legal and illegal markets. These mainly small businesses should not be left to fight this battle alone. The government has a responsibility to ensure that its policies do not leave law-abiding retailers exposed to criminal operators who have no intention of playing by the rules.

How has the Albanese government responded? It has introduced new offences, increased penalties and announced additional enforcement funding. Around $365 million in additional enforcement funding has been provided since 2023-24. Yet the illicit market has continued to expand. The government's failure has been its refusal to adequately confront the policy settings that have helped this black market become so profitable.

In the May 2023 budget, Labor imposed additional five per cent tobacco excise increases in each of the three successive years on top of existing twice-yearly indexation. Those increases took effect in September 2023, September 2024 and September 2025. At the time, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Health Minister Mark Butler forecast that the higher excise rates would raise an additional $3.3 billion over the forward estimates. Instead, the government has faced substantial tobacco revenue losses as tobacco consumers have shifted towards the illicit market. This raises a fundamental question about the effectiveness of the government's approach. If repeated excise increases help widen the price gap between legal and illegal products and criminal operators can exploit that gap to make extraordinary profits, then simply increasing penalties will not be enough.

Enforcement is, of course, essential. Those who import, distribute and sell illegal tobacco must face consequences. But enforcement alone simply cannot resolve a problem when the financial incentives driving the trade remain in place.

That is why the coalition has proposed a more comprehensive alternative. Our policy approach combines stronger enforcement with reform of the tax and regulatory settings that have driven customers into the black market, alongside measures to reduce smoking and nicotine harm. Firstly, the coalition has proposed an 80 per cent reduction in tobacco excise, bringing the excise component of a standard packet of 20 cigarettes from around $30 to around $6, with the rate to be reviewed after two years. The purpose is not to encourage smoking. It is to reduce the enormous price differential that has helped make Australia such a lucrative illicit tobacco market and to help shift customers away from organised crime and back towards a lawful, regulated market. Secondly, we have proposed a $200 million nationwide law enforcement blitz to support additional raids, arrests, seizures, investigations, shop closures and disruption at the border. This would strengthen the operational focus across the Australian Border Force, Australian Federal Police, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and AUSTRAC. Thirdly, we would establish a legal, regulated and taxed adult market for nicotine vapes and nicotine pouches while maintaining protections for children. Fourthly, we would invest $60 million in a national public awareness and education campaign exposing the organised crime behind illicit tobacco and vapes while reinforcing the dangers of smoking.

These proposals are intended to work together. Stronger enforcement disrupts criminal networks. Reform of excise settings seeks to reduce the price advantage enjoyed by illegal operators. Proper regulation provides a lawful framework for adult consumers, while education addresses demand and reinforces the health risks. That is the difference between simply responding to the symptoms of the problem and attempting to address the conditions that sustain it.

We will move amendments to this bill to give legislative effect, where possible, to key elements of our policy, particularly the proposed excise reduction and the changes needed to establish a regulated adult market for nicotine vapes and pouches. We must ensure that legitimate businesses are not unfairly caught up in any new arrangements. Concerns raised by customs brokers, freight representatives and other legitimate participants in the import supply chain deserve serious consideration. The objective, frankly, must be to disrupt criminal networks and prevent illicit tobacco from entering the market, not to make life unnecessarily difficult for lawful businesses. Legitimate businesses, we all know, are not the enemy. They should be partners in disrupting illicit trade, not collateral damage from the government's response.

The coalition will not stand in the way of sensible measures that give our law enforcement and border agencies better tools, but we cannot pretend that another set of enforcement amendments by themselves will resolve this crisis. For businesses across regional Western Australia, this is not an abstract policy debate. It is about sales, jobs, livelihoods and whether legitimate local businesses can remain viable while competing against criminal operators. The government must acknowledge that its approach has not worked and be prepared to address the conditions that have allowed this illegal market to flourish. The coalition offers the only comprehensive response: stronger enforcement, a major law enforcement surge, reform of tobacco excise settings, regulated alternatives for adults and a serious public education campaign. I do support this bill because enforcement agencies need effective powers to do their jobs, but, together with my coalition colleagues, I will continue to push for broader reforms that are necessary to undermine organised crime and restore a fairer operating environment for legitimate retailers. I thank the House.

I thank the Assistant Minister for Citizenship, Customs and Multicultural Affairs for working on this very important proposed legislation, the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026, and bringing it before the parliament. I note the comments of the member for Durack, and she's quite right. We do need comprehensive policy to deal with the scourge of smoking and of nicotine addiction. Where we disagree is in the price signal of high excise for cigarettes, which—and this is very important—is one of the most important measures we can use to reduce smoking rates.

It's important to recognise that smoking kills about 70 Australians every year, and they don't die in a good way—if you can ever die in a good way. They die in a bad way. Dying of lung cancer, struggling to draw every breath through an obstructed major airway, is a really nasty way to die. Dying of emphysema—struggling and gasping for every little bit of breath until you can breathe no more with your hyperexpanded chest, your muscle wasted and your pulse in the hundreds—is a really nasty way to die. Smoking is bad for your health. Nicotine addiction is bad for your health. The cardiovascular damage that it causes is irreversible and causes early death in many, many people.

The importation of illicit tobacco has unfortunately expanded rapidly and is increasingly linked to organised criminal activity, with these criminal entities operating at such a significant scale that our communities' law enforcement agencies and reputable businesses have struggled to deal with it. These criminal entities have also managed to have end-to-end control over the illicit tobacco importation process and also the illicit importation of vapes. We know that the current offences and enforcement powers under the Customs Act specific to tobacco related misconduct do not adequately deter illicit tobacco importation—as the profits are huge—or support efficient enforcement, treatment, investigation and prosecution of these offences.

As such, the federal Labor government is acting with this amendment to the Customs Act to introduce five measures to increase the deterrence of criminal conduct in respect of the unlawful importation of tobacco and support more effective enforcement options and related prosecutions. It is very important that we have this comprehensive law enforcement and prosecution of the offenders. We also note that the products that they're importing are not regulated in any way. They often contain substances that are highly carcinogenic with high levels of nicotine, pesticides and other illicit substances that we can't even identify that are damaging to people's health. We are acting to try and reduce these importations.

These measures that we're introducing will also improve the operational efficiency of the Australian Border Force and its capability to respond to the prevalence of illicit tobacco imported unlawfully and circulated within the Australian community.

I'd like to note that I can see the clocks are not working.

The measures are not intended to affect legitimate participants—importers of tobacco, customs brokers, depot and warehouse operators et cetera—who comply with their legal obligations. This bill is the next step in the federal Labor government's ongoing crackdown on those behind the illicit tobacco trade, whose self-interest is causing social, economic and physical harm in our society. This self-interest is fuelled by profiteering off the addiction of others, the deaths of others, and has been weaponised by gangs and criminals who want to protect their own wealth at the expense of our health.

This bill follows the passage of the Combatting Illicit Tobacco Bill, which I spoke on previously, with its raised penalties. It unlocked new law enforcement techniques and updated the proceeds of crime laws. This bill builds on that work and is part of a comprehensive package of management of illicit tobacco and vapes. It raised the stakes for the criminals to what I hope will be unacceptable levels.

As noted by the Assistant Minister, the number of Australians who are smoking is fewer than ever. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare's most recent report showed that daily smoking records show that it's now down to a record low of 5.8 per cent of Australians aged 14 and over. On top of this, vaping rates are now stabilised and have dropped a little to be under four per cent despite the best efforts of those criminals who are seeking to profit off tobacco addiction.

It's important to also note that we know the concerning relationship between vaping or smoking and seeing young people addicted to nicotine. Vaping in particular exposes young people to huge levels of nicotine over very prolonged periods, 24 hours a day. It very rapidly leads to nicotine addiction, and we know that those who become addicted to nicotine through the use of vapes are more than three times more likely to end up as chronic smokers than those who don't vape. It's also important to remember that the decline in smoking and vaping rates didn't just happen because we all collectively decided to stop using these silent killers. It took a lot of hard work over a long period of time, including reducing exposure to advertising of these poisonous products. It included campaigns like the BUGA UP campaign of the seventies that I remember well. And it included the very hard-fought battle that Nicola Roxon had to fight to get plain packaging introduced. It came about because of tough policies by Labor governments, who were prepared to take the hard battles on public health policy seriously and do what they could to reduce this dreadful social harm.

Unfortunately, smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease in our country and still represents 20 per cent of our nation's cancer burden. As I've said, almost 70 Australians die every day of a smoking related illness, and this is probably an under-reporting of the deaths from smoking. That is why this legislation is crucial. We need to bring these mortality rates down. We also need to reduce the morbidity that smoking causes, with cardiovascular disease, a variety of cancers, emphysema and chronic obstructive airway disease. We need to bring these rates down. We need to make sure people can get access to quit programs and harm-reduction programs for smoking and vaping and to make people healthier. We need to encourage them to engage in respiratory rehabilitation programs, and we do this through our public health policy.

This legislation is crucial. We need to bring down the rates of these health conditions, and we need to bring down the criminals and thugs who are harming our health for their wealth. This is also important to preserve and protect our public healthcare system, which relies on taxpayer funds to support people when they need it, especially those dealing with the health consequences of tobacco related products, such as cigarettes and vapes. The Labor Party has been the party for health in Australia for the last century. It's difficult for our public hospitals and our Medicare system to maintain the level of resources and treatments needed to manage tobacco related illness when the illicit tobacco trade avoids paying any tax at all and pays no excise that would go into the public purse to treat the health conditions that smoking causes. On top of that, we have people advocating to reduce tobacco excise, which would put smoking rates up. There's no better example than Canada, which, when it reduced its excise rates, showed a significant increase in smoking rates, at a time when most countries in the developed world had gradually decreasing rates of smoking.

This legislation would also reduce the illness rates caused by smoking in our health system. Some parties in this country are promising to reduce the tobacco excise rates, such as the coalition and One Nation, and to give tobacco a big boost and the illicit tobacco industry a big boost as well. I find both of these policy proposals shocking and disappointing. Trying to cater to both ends of this horrific industry will only have harmful effects, not only on our economy but also on our society. I don't want to see things go back to how they were when I was a student, watching people die every day from lung cancer and smoking related diseases in our public hospital system. It will have harmful effects on our economy and our society, and I can't believe that sensible people are advocating for reductions in excise.

This bill creates new offences for importing, possessing and conveying illicit tobacco, and I'm very glad of that. With the new framework, it will focus on unlawful conduct and better reflect the reality of concealed supply chains and distribution facilities. It introduces observable indicators of illicit activity. An established indicator must satisfy the reasonable suspicion element. It does not, by itself, establish guilt, but it will lead to easier prosecution of those who are distributing these poisonous products. Importantly, the reasonable suspicion test is objective and focuses on observable facts rather than requiring officers to prove every hidden detail of a criminal supply chain. It will make our law enforcement much easier, and it will help establish appropriate attacks on the criminals that are running these empires. Indicators include noncompliant retail packaging, noncompliant tobacco products including products concealed in plain packaging, tobacco concealed to avoid detection, missing import invoices or required paperwork, and tobacco sold for less than the combined value of applicable excise and GST, which surely should be a primary indicator of criminal activity. That final indicator is particularly important. The fact that tobacco is being sold below the excise and GST payable can, by itself, establish reasonable suspicion that it was unlawfully imported.

This will be a very powerful tool for the Australian Border Force and state and territory police forces and will help enforcement against criminal activity immeasurably throughout the country. It's very important, with over 2,300 tonnes of illicit tobacco and over 13 million vaping devices seized by our incredible law enforcement agencies over the past year. This number is mightily impressive from a seizure perspective; however, it's very frightening for public health perspective, and it's really frightening for our young people. Young people are being exposed to smoking products at very low costs with easy access at the present time, and it needs to stop. This should not be on the streets of our local communities. In my own community there are many, many tobacco stores who are clearly profiting from illicit tobacco, and they need to be closed down. We are working to ensure this legislation and these activities are backed up by ongoing law enforcement funding, with the 2026-27 budget adding over $20 million over four years to combat the illegal tobacco market. I congratulate the health minister and the Attorney-General for this. It means more boots on the ground strengthening licensing, supporting joint operations with our state law enforcement activities and enabling the storage and destruction of illicit products. This bill streamlines the seizure and disposal of illicit tobacco, which is an important step in helping our law enforcement agencies process the administrative task of their duties. It follows concerns raised by authorities about the difficulty with the large amounts of material being detected.

I'm very proud to be part of a government that's introducing this legislation. I'm very proud to be part of a government that recognises that illicit tobacco and vaping products are causing irreparable harm to our community, particularly to young people. I don't want to see a time when smoking rates in Australia start to go up because of poor enforcement activities. This is a very important public health measure, and I congratulate the government ministers responsible for this and for the work that they are doing. At this stage we know that, for criminals, illicit tobacco is a low-risk high-reward activity, and we know that we need legislation to increase the risk to them and to strengthen the enforcement tools available to our police officers and our enforcement providers. We need to improve the ability of law enforcement agencies to follow the money and get rid of these terrible criminals as part of our broader public health strategy. I strongly support this legislation. It comes at a crucial time when we must not give into illegal activities. I commend the bill to the House.

I have enormous respect for the member who just spoke. I know his incredible contribution to the health and wellbeing of the community. But I don't agree on all of his content, particularly his commentary about how any person could go on and support a cut in tobacco excise. While we are all concerned about smoking rates, and we are, and while we're all concerned about the health impacts of illicit tobacco, and we are, we're also concerned about the explosion in the illicit tobacco trade, and we are. The member knows full well that there has been a trajectory in the consumption of illicit tobacco that has perfectly correlated with the introduction of two policy measures. One is plain packaging for tobacco products, taking a lawful product that's branded and making it generic so that anybody can trade for it willy-nilly, as they see fit, such as with illicit drugs. Those policies aren't really that effective in shutting down people's pathways. The second one is the expansion of excise. I remember the time we debated the introduction of plain packaging. I remember then that it didn't work and so the government whacked a giant excise on top of it to try and demonstrate that a failed policy worked. It's the difference between policy design on outcome and policy based on intent. What we've seen, year on year, has been an increase in the amount of excise applied to tobacco by both coalition governments and Labor governments.

I don't know if you've heard about this, Deputy Speaker Freelander, but—shock, horror!—if you increase the price of a product completely disproportionate to the cost of its production, there are very fat margins that can be made and—funnily enough—international crime gangs like to get involved with them and engage in illicit products. We saw this with another product, for example. It's one I've mentioned already, which is illicit drugs. I'm not sure, but I don't believe there's any legal market for that. But the absence of a tax hasn't removed people's consumption of that. I will acknowledge that's because there is no legal product available. But take something by comparison. Remember CDs? Remember DVDs? Cost of production at the point of manufacture was very low—10c, 20c or whatever it was. The cost of sale was 30 bucks. There was quite a big margin there. Do you remember, Deputy Speaker—and I'm sure you do—when people used to sell illicit movies, video games et cetera? They were created from illegal products, knowing full well that the margins were there. Who was behind it? I think it was organised crime gangs, because there was a lot of money to be made.

So here we are in this parliament and we've had the federal government continue to increase the tax on tobacco products year on year so the margins and the profits are getting bigger and bigger. What a shock—illegal crime gangs have come along and taken advantage of it and profiteered! Even worse than that, they've made sure that the availability of illicit tobacco is now all over the community. The Deputy Speaker referred before to how great Nicola Roxon was as health minister. She was even given a World Health Organization award for being a leader. Her legacy was the expansion of illicit tobacco in this country, the firebombing of shops, the destruction of a legal market and the collapse in revenue from legal tobacco to reward international crime gangs. Sorry, Deputy Speaker, but it's nothing to be proud of. That is a shameful history and a shameful legacy. Even on her signature policy which she got that incredible award for and for which the world told her how wonderful she was, I can tell you it's pretty hard to find a pack of plain-packaged tobacco products in Australia because, when the illegal crime gangs move in, funnily enough, they're not that worried about what the law is from the starting position. They certainly don't follow branding guidelines or warning labels. They certainly don't report their revenue to the Australian Taxation Office, let alone pay the taxation and—shock, horror!—when all of the ordinary regulatory constraints that sit around a legal product are removed, suddenly you see consumption increase. Suddenly you see changes in behaviour. So I'm sorry, Deputy Speaker. I know the Labor Party think they're on the side of angels on this. I can fully accept that people do not like the problem and they also do not like the cure. But the thing about this parliament is we get elected to take responsibility and make best judgements as much as we can about how to run our country. And I can tell you there is no scenario in any book or, I suspect, in all of the parliamentary debates that are in front of us right now or in all of the parliamentary debates in the history of the Commonwealth where any parliament has ever turned around and said, 'Do you know what? Even if we disagree with how they use that freedom, in a choice between supporting people's right to choose to pay lawful tax and buy lawful products and rewarding the international crime gangs and selling out our citizens'—as the current law and current tax laws do—'I'm going to give this one to the international crime gangs.' Well, that's not true. In the 48th Parliament, we have made history, because this government is so stubborn, so pigheaded and so obsessed with its own history that, rather than focusing on the Australian people, they have now deliberately designed laws—and are defending the deliberately designed laws—to reward organised crime.

We've seen this not just in tobacco, and we know it full well. I've written to the Prime Minister and said, 'Prime Minister, would you audit the amount of money that you took from the Australian taxpayer and gave to organised crime through the CFMEU-Labor cartel by funding Victoria's Big Build projects? Would you actually audit that so Australian taxpayers' money doesn't end up in the hands of organised crime?' Silence. We're now seeing a pattern of behaviour where the Labor Party funnels public money—and that of Australian taxpayers—to reward international crime cartels. I say that, and there's nary a peep in the House because the reality is they all know it's true. All the ministers over there know it's true. All the backbenchers over there know it's true. Everyone knows that the Labor Party finances and facilitates the reward of international crime gangs, and I cannot believe that this is not a point of pure rage not just from the Australian community but, more importantly, from people within their own government saying, 'Prime Minister, why are we rewarding international crime gangs?'

I don't know about you, member for Fadden, but if we were ever sitting on the other side of this chamber and you came up to me and said, 'Do you know that our policy is rewarding international crime gangs?' my response would be, 'No, that can't be right. We'd never allow that to happen. We would shut down any pathway whereby international crime gangs had access to Australian taxpayers' money, let alone to consumers.' One of the first things I'd be quite unapologetic in saying would be: 'No. I'm really against international crime cartels and organised crime, and we're going to shut that down.' But in the Albanese government, the answer is: How big should the cheque be? How high would the international crime gangs like us to jump in terms of the volume of excise?

This is sheer insanity. It is utter insanity. But this is currently the state of the Commonwealth of Australia and its government. I don't think most Australians looking at the parliament would think that this government has any reason or any sense about its approach to tobacco regulation. The idea that it actually wants to stop smoking rates or stop illicit trade is, frankly, laughable. We know full well the legacy of not just what we've seen has happened with illicit tobacco. The follow-through is that we're now seeing a replication of that in illicit alcohol consumption. By building out the supply chains for illicit tobacco, the federal government has also provided a pathway to reduce tax revenue. I'm not sure I'd say, 'Tick!' but it's an achievement of sorts—one of the insane variety. But now they've built the supply chains that other products where the cost of production is low and the profits are large, like alcohol, can be put onto. In Melbourne, we now have illicit tobacco in nightclubs, restaurants, cafes and pretty much anywhere. Apparently Uber drivers sell it. In nightclubs, you go in and buy, essentially, from the mafia.

I don't know what victory the government is celebrating here, but we know full well that excise revenue has collapsed. We know that it is going to follow in terms of alcohol. And the only answer from the Prime Minister and the ministers sitting on the government benches is to applaud themselves and tell themselves what a wonderful job they're doing. I'm sorry. We have entered the Twilight universe. We are Through the Looking-Glass. This is an Unreality, because I am here making the case that we should shut down the pathways for organised crime to enjoy superprofits and not pay any tax, and I get opposed by members of the Labor Party.

It's unbelievable.

As the member for Fadden says—I agree. It's actually more than unbelievable. Yes, it's unbelievable, but it's mind-blowing to think that this is a situation we're in. Because we don't do it, guess what happens? Those organised crime gangs go around and firebomb businesses and risk people's human health. People have died. People have ended up in hospital from fire burning. People have lost livelihoods. People have lost property. Insurance premiums are going through the roof. And it's all to reward organised crime.

We know full well and I do understand that the relationship between organised crime and the architecture of the modern Labor Party is embedded. It is a deep relationship where money, particularly taxpayers' money, is funnelled through the Labor Party to organised crime. I do understand that they use it as part of their corrupt patronage network, where people are paid off between the CFMEU and government contracts and decide who gets to sit in positions including in this chamber. Again, there's no objection while I'm saying these things. There's no suggestion that there's any misleading of the House. Welcome to the modern Labor Party.

The idea that that corruption translates into what happens on the streets of our communities and that corruption directly threatens the safety and the wellbeing of the Australian community is, frankly, despicable, but here we are. The Labor government turns a blind eye and, like that meme character sitting on a chair surrounded by a bonfire, says, 'This is fine.' It is so mind-blowing to me, but this is where we are. Illicit tobacco, superprofits for organised crime—and the response of Labor is, 'This is fine.'

We see this all over the country. In my electorate, we've seen it. News agencies being targeted, milk bars being targeted, convenience stores in Highett, in Cheltenham, in Sandringham Village, in Beaumaris—it pretty much doesn't matter where you are; illegal crime and illegal tobacco is running rife. We hear these local stories, and I want you to hear the story of Dave. He runs a business in the community. He says:

I would really like to pass my business on to my kids, but it is getting that marginal, purely because of external environment factors out of my control, that I really don't know how much longer we can go on. Every week or so we become aware of another business that has closed, and just wonder how many more will go before our politicians listen.

Listen! Listen to the voices within the community. They're not asking for a handout. They're not asking for any particular assistance. They just want the firebombings to stop. Dave has said he has one existential issue for his business, and it's called insurance. He says:

We pay almost $100k a year as it is, and with the growing illicit alcohol trade bringing the same criminality that we have seen with tobacco, insurance will simply become either unaffordable or simply not available, as it is now for tobacconists.

Fantastic work, well done, congratulations, Prime Minister. What we've seen now is a replication in tobacco policy of what we saw during the prohibition era in the United States. It's bad policy by bad governments that refuse to swallow their pride. They turn lawful citizens into criminals. They actively subvert the law to advance their mad ideology. Some of us don't hold this view, and the sooner this government is removed and their relationship to organised crime is removed, the better Australia.

Sorry, I'm trying to talk. I've been biting my tongue for so long I can hardly talk. I call the member for Fadden.

I have to agree with you, Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander. That was a thoroughly enjoyable and persuasive performance by the member for Goldstein, the shadow treasurer. Even in your fair medical mind, I think there would have been a few points made there that were very worthy of consideration, so I'll ask you to just turn your mind to those over time before the vote is taken on this. You know, it's never too late for turning someone of your status within the Labor Party, so I look forward to seeing what side of the chamber you move to.

We are supporting this bill, the Customs and Other Legislation Amendment (Illicit Tobacco Enforcement Modernisation and Other Measures) Bill 2026, and I'll tell you why we're supporting it. It is because this Labor government needs as much help as it can get. They are so in over their heads with all of this governing stuff that they've got to do while they're sitting on that side that they actually have lost the ability to do it competently. So, when they come to us and they say, 'Look, we've got an incremental bit of something that we think might help,' we will help, because, by God, they need it. What we've seen in the illicit tobacco market at the hands of this Labor government is an absolute explosion in the business model of gangs of illegal operators, and in the end it's all Australians who are paying.

The Treasurer delivered a budget on 12 May this year, and one of the hallmarks of that particular budget was higher taxes. Since that budget was delivered, we have made the point time and time again that, when you tax something—like housing—more, you will get less of it. Deputy Speaker, I understand your point medically. It is that we want to try and put in barriers to the consumption of smoking. I get it; I really do. But the problem is this: the tobacco excise has now reached a point where, as I said, the tax is so high that you are getting less of it. The problem is that the 'less of it' is not the purchase of legal cigarettes and not the smoking. What it's doing now is pushing people into an illegal marketplace. So, yes, it's giving the outcome of 'less of' something, but what it is 'less of' is legality.

As the member for Goldstein rightly pointed out, every single smoker who goes in and buys a pack of cigarettes from an illegal operator is not in any way, shape or form contributing to the taxation base of this country. They are also absolutely missing out on the health messaging that they are supposed to be getting, because, as the member for Goldstein said, when they go and order these illegal tobacco products through Uber, through some pop-up shop, over some random counter or whatever the case may be, they are not getting the taxed, properly packaged, properly warned, controlled content product that they would prefer to consume by choice and that the government wants them to consume. That's not what's happening.

Instead, we have got not just a bin fire but a bonfire of all sorts of illegal activity going on across the country. Where has this been particularly noticeable? I come from Queensland, where we've got a very competent LNP government led by Premier David Crisafulli. They have been working their guts out to hold these illegal operators at bay. They can do some work to stop shopfront operators, and that has worked. But you see that where this disaster really takes off is in the state of Victoria. You see this double Labor thing going on. The business model is being provided by the federal Labor government and the absolute lack of attention on the ground is being provided by the state Labor government. That is providing the environment for all of these illegal gangs to operate without any checks and balances. What do we see on a daily basis on the news all across the country? Firebombing after firebombing after firebombing. We don't know what the hell is going on because these guys are running their own racket. They're trying to protect their own market. They're trying to put the legal operators out of business. They're trying to scare other operators into not going into business. This is actually the most extraordinary set of circumstances that have arisen.

Debate interrupted.