Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

You may be correct on that point. The point is that by increasing the retail price of cigarettes, by increasing the rate of excise on them, you increase the potential and you increase the risk of illegal cigarettes being imported into the country. It may well be true that our detection agencies are doing a better job, but the quantity of illegal cigarettes being seized by Customs has increased substantially over the last four years. That is a fact.

The risk is that these illegal cigarettes that are coming into the country are likely to be of poorer quality and therefore more harmful for the people who are smoking them. So there is a risk that, if the people we are trying to help here to get off cigarettes transfer to illegal products, it will actually be more harmful for them. Another possible unintended consequence is that if we make the price of cigarettes higher and higher there may be a risk that children will instead smoke other substances. These are risks that we have to look at.

I support these bills. I support this parliament doing everything it can to drive down the smoking rates, and I accept that raising the price is a legitimate way of doing that; however, we must be careful. We must monitor this, we must look at it very carefully, and we must make sure that it is actually effective in the years to come in driving down the smoking rates. This legislation cannot simply be about raising revenue to pay down debt; it must truly be about driving down the smoking rate and continuing to reduce the number of Australians in this country smoking. Therefore, I support the bills and commend them to the House.

See this speech in context