Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wide Bay for putting forward this motion and opening up the discussion about illegal cigarettes and vapes to more than what mums, dads, parents and teachers complain about. What it really comes down to is organised crime groups controlling this area. This is not new. Thirty years ago, when I was a detective, we were prosecuting people who were importing container loads of illegal cigarettes through Norfolk Island and Lord Howe Island.

The community needs to understand that this is more than just kids vaping at school or kids smoking illegal tobacco. These organised crime groups use this funding, use the money they get through the illicit tobacco trade and illicit vaping trade, to fund much more sinister tasks: sex slavery, cocaine trade and amphetamine trade—those things that make parents and mums and dads fear for their children. This is where they get their funding from. This is why it is so important that we have this conversation about proper policy to prevent the continuation of the illicit trade in both vapes and illegal cigarettes.

We can't expect our Australian Border Force, our AFP and our police to be able to police their way out of this. I'm specifically speaking about vapes now. Outlawing vapes will not work. It'll simply push that into the black market. I'll accept the coalition's policy from back in 2001, where you had to have a prescription to be able to use a vape, has failed. There are over 1.1 million users of vapes in the country now and only 10 per cent of them have a prescription. So what you are effectively seeing across Australia right now are shopkeepers who sell vapes acting illegally and people who use vapes breaking the law. If you do not have a prescription for an e-cigarette or a vape, you are effectively breaking the law. The reason that these organised crime groups are doing this is that it is low risk and high reward. There are effectively no penalties for selling illegal vapes in these pop-up shops which we have seen flow into our communities.

I have sat down with legitimate tobacconists who have told me they are losing millions of dollars a year to these illegal pop-up shops. NSW Health has control over that, not the police. NSW Health has to go along and say, 'You are actually in contravention of New South Wales health regulations.' They shut them down for six or eight hours and, within that time, they have popped up again because they have a stash and a store of illegal vapes.

What we need to do is regulate this industry. I don't like smoking. I don't like e-cigarettes. But they are here to stay. The only way we can control this is by regulating the industry exactly the same way that we have regulated the cigarette industry—plain packaging, behind the counter and restricted to people over 16. It should be exactly the same way with excise. That would take that control from the organised crime groups. We would take that away from them. Then we can use Border Force to regulate those legitimate ones coming through and continue to prosecute those people who flout the law. As part of that, we need to increase the penalties for illegal e-cigarettes. We need to say to people, 'If you are going down this road, you are part of a criminal organisation and we will not stand for it.'

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