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<\/p>\nOne Nation leader Pauline Hanson says her party wants to wipe out the booming tobacco black market by slashing the tax on a packet of cigarettes by nearly $30, bringing it close to the cost of illicit cigarettes.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Mark Butler conceded last year that the tobacco black market had “exploded” as smokers chased cheaper cigarettes, and caused a wave of crime including arson attacks against retailers by organised crime groups seeking to dominate the illicit trade.<\/p>\n
But the government has resisted any cuts to the tax on tobacco, which has been successively lifted over the past 15 years and now makes up more than half the cost of a pack of cigarettes.<\/p>\n
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told ABC Radio National that high taxation had fuelled the black market.<\/p>\n
“If you keep on putting up the price of cigarettes, you are going to get more mafia,” Mr Joyce said.<\/p>\n
“The only way we can deal with the criminality \u2026 is to bring back the price of legal cigarettes into the same realm as where the illegal ones are.”<\/p>\n
Senator Hanson said the tobacco tax had “failed” as she proposed the 75 per cent cut and a three-year pause on indexation.<\/p>\n
“It has handed a multi-billion-dollar market to organised crime while excise revenue collapses,” Senator Hanson wrote on social media.<\/p>\n
“Cut the tax. Smash the black market. Cut off the cash for organised crime.”<\/p>\n
Tobacco tax take collapse<\/p>\n
In December, Australia’s tobacco commissioner estimated at least half of all tobacco being consumed in Australia was now being sourced from the black market, generating criminals more than $4 billion in profit.<\/p>\n
Tax revenue from tobacco, meanwhile, has collapsed, with the commissioner estimating between $7.7 billion and $11.8 billion in revenue has been lost just in the past financial year.<\/p>\n
That revenue loss is now greater than the cost of the Albanese government’s signature election commitment to triple incentives for doctors to bulk bill.<\/p>\n
For every 10 cigarettes legally imported, border officials are seizing six attempted illicit imports, a figure that has quadrupled in less than a decade.<\/p>\n
Nationals leader Matt Canavan said he supported an excise cut, but One Nation’s proposal was a “thought bubble”.<\/p>\n
“I think the question has to go to One Nation: How much is going to cost? Have you done that work? How are you going to balance the budget?” he told News24.<\/p>\n
“You’ve got to get these sorts of things right. What we are doing is going through a very considered process as a Senate inquiry right now into this issue; I know we’re conducting a lot of costings and consultation with people about what should be done.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Matt Canavan says One Nation has not done the work to support its proposed tax cut for cigarettes. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)<\/p>\n
The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has repeatedly warned that cutting tobacco taxes would be a “dangerous, misguided and simplistic” approach to tackling illicit trade.<\/p>\n
“The illegal trade persists even in countries with much cheaper cigarettes, including in countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and Senegal where tobacco is very cheap,” AMA president Danielle McMullen said last year.<\/p>\n
“There’s absolutely no evidence to support the idea that reducing excise will impact illegal tobacco.”<\/p>\n
Treasurer not entertaining tobacco excise cut<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the tobacco giants pushed for the excise to be slashed during a Senate inquiry into the issue, labelling it a “correction” that would reduce the incentive for black market tobacco and weaken profitability for organised crime.<\/p>\n
In February, an internal brief to Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged that the massive downgrades in revenue from the tobacco excise had been “partly driven by higher excise rates” pushing more people to the black market.<\/p>\n
But the government’s focus has remained on law enforcement to stamp out the illicit trade.<\/p>\n
Last week, Assistant Customs Minister Julian Hill warned retailers dealing in illicit tobacco that the government was targeting them, as authorities raided more than 100 service stations in a nationwide crackdown.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Black market tobacco seizures have quadrupled in less than a decade. (Supplied: AAP)<\/p>\n
The treasurer said this morning that the government was not considering a cut.<\/p>\n
“The government’s focus is on the compliance side; [an excise cut] is not something we are proposing,” Mr Chalmers said.<\/p>\n
“The government’s focus is on law and order, compliance, and more than $350 million in extra resources.<\/p>\n
[There have been] some recent successes when it comes to cracking down on illicit tobacco, but we still have a lot of work to do. It is still a very substantial challenge.”<\/p>\n
Australia has led the world in reforms to reduce smoking rates, including plain packaging laws for cigarette cartons and ongoing increases in the tobacco excise since 2010 intended to encourage people to quit smoking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says her party wants to wipe out the booming tobacco black market by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,107595,13497,6260,1955,1926,6265,546,2183,22649],"class_list":["post-74244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-black-market","tag-cigarettes","tag-illegal-tobacco","tag-one-nation","tag-pauline-hanson","tag-smoking","tag-tax","tag-tobacco","tag-tobacco-excise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}