The health minister said the Morrison government ‘trousered’ every single dollar of tobacco excise without putting new money into controls and health measures.
The Labor federal government has committed another $156.7 million to tackle the illicit market in tobacco products.
In January last year, it put $188.5 million into a major Border Force crackdown on illicit tobacco and today’s announcement will be focused on “breaking the business model of criminal networks by dismantling their business capabilities and confiscating illicitly-gained assets and monies”.
Almost $80 million of the new allocation will go to the Department of Health and Aged Care:
- $40 million to support states and territories to establish local level capability to swiftly respond to their own unique compliance and enforcement challenges and strengthen regulatory authorities’ cross-jurisdictional tactical partnerships for enforcement capacity;
- $31.6 million to strengthen compliance and enforcement functions under the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023 and under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989;
- $4 million to extend the national tobacco and e-cigarette public health campaign to target the motivations and behaviours of people who use illicit tobacco; and,
- $3.3 million for the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) to prosecute contraventions of the Public Health (Tobacco and Other Products) Act 2023 and the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 to address non-compliance.
The bulk of the new commitment will go to the Australian Federal Police, Australian Border Force, the Office of the Illicit Tobacco and E-Cigarettes Commissioner and to establish a new international collaboration.
“I’m very pleased to … double down on our efforts to stamp out this illegal market,” federal health minister Mark Butler said today.
“We’re sending a very clear message to organised criminal gangs who are operating this market. We’re going to track you down. We’re going to put you in the dock, and we’re going to confiscate your criminal profits.
“We want to bolster the efforts of state and territory governments – $40 million will go into bolstering the enforcement operations that we want state and territory governance to increase to crack down on the retailers who are selling this.
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“They might think this is a relatively harmless, innocuous trade, but it’s undermining a very important public health campaign, and they should remind themselves every time they sell a packet of these illegal cigarettes that they are giving money, bankrolling the criminal activities of some of the vilest, worst organised criminal gangs in this country.”
Mr Butler said the black market in tobacco had grown under the Morrison coalition government.
“They didn’t really do anything to lift enforcement activity at the border or on the ground. We saw this in vaping as well,” said Mr Butler.
“It’s a market that exploded under the former government’s eyes without any activity. I make the point that tobacco excise increased by 152% under the former government and they just trousered every single one of those dollars.
“They didn’t put any new dollars into tobacco control programs, which is what we’ve done, into health measures like lung cancer screening, which is what we’ve done.
“They didn’t put any additional money into enforcement at the border, through ABF or any of the enforcement agencies that I’ve said we are providing additional funding to today.
“The best time to have cracked down on this was five years ago. The second-best time is today, and that’s why we’re announcing this package.”