Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise and speak on and pay tribute to the member for Cowper for this very important motion. As a society we're becoming more and more aware of the challenges illicit tobacco poses for individuals and the health of our society. At the moment, it is having impacts through increased crime. I know, in my community, we recently had a tobacconist firebombed, and that store was destroyed. It's the flow-on effect to other businesses around there. I know a bit of an icon in the Seville community, Branded Burgers, is next door to that tobacco station. They still haven't opened weeks and months after that firebombing, as their store was damaged in that fire. Innocent businesses have been impacted across the state. In my community, it's had a significant impact.

But not just the stores are impacted. You need to remember that CFA volunteers in my community had to go out and risk their lives—risk danger through chemical contamination and things like this—to make sure that fire was put out and didn't spread to other buildings that were all connected through that strip of shops. I want to pay tribute to the Seville CFA and the other brigades from Wandin, Hillcrest, Gruyere and Coldstream that came to support them when that Seville fire happened. It's an example of the ripple effect if we don't get illicit tobacco, which is driven by organised crime, under control.

One thing we don't talk about too often is that the crime is very much in our face. There is a significant economic impact as well, with $4.2 billion in lost revenue to the government through illicit tobacco, because they're not paying the taxes and excise. That's significant money that could be spent on other initiatives, like health initiatives, getting the budget in better nick and spending money on schools and hospitals. That is money that should be going to worthy causes that is not, because of illicit tobacco.

There are lots of other negative impacts that we sometimes don't talk about. Talking to many retailers in my community, across the state and across the country as well, we're facing a situation where families and small-business owners are coming to a really difficult choice that they have to make. We need to acknowledge this reality for these businessowners. If you have a legitimate convenience store, retail outlet or IGA—those kinds of stores—and you sell tobacco, if an illicit store moves into your community, your sales will drop significantly overnight. I'm not a huge fan of smoking. I never have been and never will be. But it's a legal product the use of which people choose to partake in. If a business is selling it, in many cases what's happening is that a family business has taken on a loan and potentially put their house on the line. They're watching a significant driver of their revenue and of the foot traffic into their stores drop, as people buy other products that drive sales in their store. Many families are now faced with a choice: do I continue to follow the law and watch my business go under, or do I start to join in this illegal activity? We need to clamp down on the illicit tobacco industry to make sure businessowners and families aren't faced with that tragic choice.

We've got options. Something was raised with me just last week by a retailer. We all remember the plain-packaging laws that were bought in previously. There's a $10,000 fine for every packet that doesn't meet the regulation. The reality is that the packets that come in from overseas and are sold illegally don't meet those regulations. This is an opportunity for the government to work with the appropriate authorities at state and territory and council levels to start blitzing those small businesses that are breaking the law and selling packaging that doesn't meet those regulations. If you start to blitz and fine them $10,000 for every packet, word's going to go out pretty quickly and they are going to start to take those products off the shelf.

We need to act. This response has been too slow. There's this existing lever, as I have just mentioned. There is the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce that the previous government brought in in 2018. There are many more options and many more levers that could be pulled. But, again, we are seeing this government be too slow to react and too reactive. It's letting others push this agenda. The member for Cowper's driving this agenda because this government is, again, asleep at the wheel. It is the Australian people, the people in my community, who are put in danger because of that.

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