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

I'm pleased to follow on from the member for Fowler and his support for this bill, the Proceeds of Crime Amendment (Proceeds and Other Matters) Bill 2017. I acknowledge his support for our police force and the officers who wear the uniform every day and go out there and keep our community safe. The support that the member for Fowler gives to that is very well recognised on both sides of this parliament. I would like to personally say thank you to him during this contribution.

The entire purpose of the proceeds of crime legislation is that we want those who are thinking about getting involved in criminal activity for a profit to rethink—you cannot obtain wealth and you cannot obtain the things that are great in a free-market society by engaging in illegal activity. We want those criminals to use their entrepreneurial skills to add real wealth to the economy and engage in legitimate business activities. If they do so, for whatever wealth that they accumulate we say, 'Good on them.' But if they think they can accumulate wealth through illegal activities—that is what this legislation is aimed to prevent and stop.

This bill has a range of special measures that we need to address. These amendments are a necessary response to developments of recent cases, where there have been found to be some weaknesses or loopholes in the legislation that need tightening. The amendments:

I'm glad this bill has support across the parliament. There are a few particular areas of criminal activity that I also think this parliament needs to look at more closely to ensure that we have the right legislative response to them. The first one is in respect of illegal tobacco. There is only a market for illegal tobacco because of government legislation putting very heavy taxes on that tobacco. For example, I was passing through Dubai airport last year on a delegation and in the duty-free section there were Benson & Hedges cigarettes on sale. Firstly, I'm not a smoker. I'm probably the most rabid antismoker you could find in this parliament. I can pick up the smell of cigarettes from 100 yards away and I find it offensive. It affects my nasal passages. When it comes to antismoking, I think I'm the most antismoking person you could find. But I was keen to see what the price of those cigarettes that I could buy duty free actually was. I worked out that a packet of Benson & Hedges—in a three-carton package—was the equivalent of $1.67 Australian. That's the retail price in a duty-free shop. Admittedly it was on special, but it was $1.67.

We are putting legislation through which is bipartisan legislation—it's supported by both major parties in this parliament—to increase the rate of taxation on cigarettes as an attempt to drive down the rate of smoking, because of the harm smoking does. But, in doing so, we are going to raise the retail price of that packet of Benson & Hedges to $40. So, when the retail price through taxation is $40, yet you can buy that same product overseas at a retail level—let alone a wholesale level—for $1.67, we have created a great incentive for criminals to become involved in the illegal tobacco racket.

We're seeing more and more seizures. I'm sure that every member of this parliament would be able to go to countless tobacconists in their electorates and, if they really wanted to, buy an illegal packet of tobacco. In Western Sydney, in particular, they seem to be popping up all over the place—selling unlawful product and almost thumbing their noses at the law.

So, if we are going to crack down on tobacco use in this country, if we are going to try to reduce the rate of smoking in this country by a price mechanism—effectively, a prohibition via price—we have to acknowledge that that will cause all the criminal activities that we have seen throughout history when prohibitions on products occur. So we need to think very carefully about this issue of illegal tobacco, how we're going to tackle it and the law enforcement activities that we're going to need in this area. One of the most important areas is the proceeds of crime. Anyone who thinks that they can obtain wealth through the importation or the sale of illegal tobacco must know that this parliament will put laws in place that will confiscate those ill-gotten gains.

The second area regarding our laws here in Australia that we need to look at and crack down on further is car theft. We have seen a slight decline in car theft across Australia in recent years—as technology improves, it can make it harder for criminals to steal cars. Unfortunately, as we always see, we have to keep one step ahead of the criminals. We have seen places in Melbourne where a modus operandi of car thieves is to break into people's houses when the people are at home, take the car keys—which people often leave at somewhere near the front entrance or in the front foyer of the house—and go and steal the car. People have actually been erecting bollards to prevent this. There is a company in Melbourne that is doing a roaring trade erecting bollards—the type of bollards that we see here at Parliament House. When people get home to their house they can put their bollards up, sending a message that if anyone breaks into their house for car keys, they won't be able to get the car out.

The other concern about the issue of car theft is that we've seen a great imbalance in the figures between the states. New South Wales has had a very significant decline in the rate of car thefts, which has been very good, but Victoria has had a very large increase in car thefts. It's almost as though a large section of the car theft industry has packed up and moved out of Sydney and gone down to set up business in Victoria. That is something this parliament needs to look at more closely. And the reason why, even though car theft is a state issue, is that there have been reports that a lot of the stolen cars are actually being exported out of Australia. There was a famous story about a month or so ago where someone had their late-model BMW stolen in Melbourne and it turned up in Dubai. There are reports that up to 40 per cent of cars stolen are exported out of the country. You could imagine that difficulty in Europe, where you have open borders making it very easy to ship cars across countries. But in Australia, the only way to get a car out of the country is to put it in a container and have it exported. So I think we need to look closely at what export regulations we have in place and at the weakness of those laws that enable car thieves to put stolen cars in containers and ship them out of country. In doing so, we need to be careful that we don't overly interfere or put too much red tape in the way of businesses or companies that are doing legitimate exports of cars and car parts.

We could reduce that rate of car theft if we could close our borders. Often so much of our law enforcement activity is done looking at goods being imported into the country. It appears that we have a blind spot with stolen goods being exported out of the country. So it's very important that this parliament looks at what we can do in this space to tighten up those export regulations for the export of stolen cars to help our state law enforcement agencies to crack down and to reduce the number of car thefts, because, if we can reduce the number of car thefts in this country, we can reduce insurance premiums. If we're doing that, we're effectively putting money back in motorists' pockets. If we could get car thefts down substantially, we'd see a substantial reduction in premiums. At this time, every household is under cost-of-living pressures. If we could do something just to reduce the insurance premium on their car, that would go a long way in helping. This is why the law enforcement committee, hopefully, will be looking at the issue of car thefts and the export of stolen cars and looking at what regulations we can make in this federal parliament to close that gap down.

If someone here in Australia thinks that they are going to obtain wealth and property—whether it's fast boats, fast cars or flash houses—through stealing cars, this legislation gives them the message to give up that illegal activity because this will see their assets confiscated. I leave my remarks there. I thank the opposition for their support of this bill. I hope that, in this area of proceeds of crime and law enforcement, this parliament can continue to work in a bipartisan manner to crack down on illegal activity. I thank the House.

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