Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

You don't drink, and I've realised that I'm now as boring as you!

I'm not proud of it, but I had my first cigarette in year 6, and about 35 years later I managed to stop smoking. I stopped it by vaping. I don't condone vaping, but I definitely went to vaping to try and get off cigarettes. That was the trick, and it worked for me. I fully acknowledge that some people are vaping and going onto cigarettes. What I do know is this: smoking—there's inelasticity of demand. In the end, demand gets so low and it just doesn't stop. We know because we did the analysis of sewage. It's still there. The question is: where is it coming from now?

I believe in a market economy. I just want to quickly go through this—I was just scribbling this down a second ago. A lot of those illegal vapes, the ones that are coming in from China, which have got antifreeze and formaldehyde in them—if you want to stick something in your chops and cause yourself problems, that would be a very good place to start. Start sucking that in. But the kiddies do, and we've got to do something to stop them doing it. But this is what they're thinking, and this is what others are thinking. I've had a look at one. I don't know what it was—raspberry flavoured or blueberry flavoured. It has 3,500 drags. In a bunger there are 13. If you're going for 25 in a packet, with 325 drags and 10 packets, you get 3,250 drags. So it's 10 packets of cigarettes to one blueberry-, raspberry-, banana-or mixed-berry-flavoured vape. A packet of durries is now about $57, or let's say 50. So you've got a choice: pay $500 or $35. What do you reckon is going to happen? If you believe the market, they're going to find the $35 one.

What you do here is so virtuous—I don't know whether you lack authenticity or you're totally and utterly naive. If you're so virtuous as to stop drugs, go out and stop dope. See how you go. If you can't leave this building and pick up a bag of dope within half an hour, then I don't think you're trying. That's just the truth.

I've got a better one for you to solve! Stop ice. There it is. In the suburbs and in the city it's coke—anyone in the universe can tell you how much coke is worth. Unfortunately, we're not rich out in the country, so it's ice, which is like picking your nose and eating it. It is the scum-of-the-earth drug. I have been to the funerals of people I've known and grown up with who killed themselves on ice. Their lives just went down and down. Beautiful girls—I remember one Aboriginal girl and just couldn't believe, piece by piece, the dissembling of her life.

The people who bring that stuff into our regional towns are total and utter trash. They are human filth, and they prey on the vulnerable.

My two boys grew up in a very poor town. In fact, Woolbrook Public School is the poorest in Australia. That's where my two boys go. Have a look at it. If you don't believe me, check it out; check out Woolbrook Public School. I don't want them ever meeting the person who sells ice. I don't want them meeting the person who sells smack. I don't want them meeting the person who lives in that evil world that brings those drug in. But they're there. You can tell the police about it; you can whisper and tell the police about it. But it's the height of naivete to think that—those people are now bringing in the illegal cigarettes.

As I said, it's 57 bucks for a packet of cigarettes. For international cigarettes, it's 15 bucks. So which ones do you think they're buying? When you think you've stopped it and got it under control, that there's none at all—no you haven't, and you're not going to.

In the western suburbs of Sydney—I don't know; some of you might be from around there, but you probably aren't—once upon a time the people selling drugs would be swinging around in a Porsche, a bit of a flash car, a souped-up Monaro. I can tell you, right now they've got Bentleys and Rolls. They're killing it. They're loving this. They will be loving the fact that you're banning this. This is working very well for their business plan. People don't want competition against their dirty little business. But you're doing that.

What you have to do is regulate this market. You have to accept that people look at international cigarettes and vapes and say: 'Well, they take them. They can still drive. They're not really intoxicated. They don't go home and beat up their partner, so in the Maslow moral hierarchy of virtue I don't put these down as a huge evil. They're bad, but not a huge evil. So, my motivation to go looking for them is not really there.'

If I'm a copper and someone's broken into a house, someone has beaten up their partner, someone's trying to set fire to someone and kids are vaping, and I've got only a certain amount of time to deal with it, I'll tell you which one I'm going to be looking for. It's not going to be the kids vaping. There are more important things to be doing out there. The person bringing ice into town—go look for them.

This is a classic example of how this crazy boarding school which is Parliament House gets these issues and how people get their talking notes from the department or from the minister and get in here and give this really earnest speech—thumping their chest and then going out and probably forgetting all about it. But it's not touching the earth about exactly what is going on.

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