Wednesday, 16 October 2024

Public Accounts and Estimates Committee

Inquiry into Vaping and Tobacco Controls

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (10:34): I rise to continue my conversation on the vaping and tobacco controls inquiry report that has been released by the parliamentary accounts and estimates committee. Where I left off was just talking about some of the revenue implications. Now, of course we as a state have done an amazing job, and those health providers and organisations have done an amazing job in driving down the prevalence of people using tobacco. But what we see, and this goes to the finances of it, is that despite the taxation and excise at a Commonwealth level increasing progressively – and particularly sharply over the last decade and continuing – the revenue itself is dropping substantially.

At the time of this committee report’s publication that was estimated to drop from $14.7 billion in 2026–27 down to $10.7 billion in 2027–28. That is not because of an estimate that the usage of tobacco will significantly decrease, which is what should be implied by a loss of revenue, particularly when the excise is going up by substantial amount; it is because the black market and the illicit market is taking greater control of the sector. That goes to, in finding 8 of the committee’s report, the estimates ranging between 6.1 per cent and 40 per cent of the market being illicit or black market. That is quite an extraordinary range that we are seeing for an industry which for a long time had not seen that level of illicit engagement. I was very glad to observe much earlier this year this government put forward that we will be putting in place a licensing regime to defend against this, and I am looking forward to the government delivering that later on this year.

Some of the recommendations go to what the committee thought were some high-quality licensing regimes in other states. Of course we have the good report by Better Regulation Victoria. It is one of our recommendations that we support the recommendations there. But also some of the learnings that we had as a committee were that we should support a high annual licence fee akin to those charged in Tasmania. That is to cover the cost of the administration and enforcement of the regime, because of course those who benefit from the industry should contribute to the payment of enforcing and administrating any controls around it.

There were recommendations on restricting the number of licences granted, including density limits for local government areas. We do see a high proportion in certain local government areas of tobacco sellers. This is obviously on a visual inspection of these communities, because we do not actually have the numbers listed anywhere, which is of course one of those important things that we need to do; we need to understand exactly how many retailers there are and where they are. The recommendation is to prohibit licences within 150 metres of schools, and that lines up with some other regulations that we have about things that we should not have and prefer not to have close to schools. It was a particularly disturbing element of the committee’s hearings when we heard that children under 10 had started vaping. That is a really challenging thing to hear as a committee. That is why we need to have some distance between schools and retailers. We did go really to a lot of data collection so that we understood the exact quantum of sales going on across the community.

I have got only a minute left, so I do want to thank before I get to the next topic in this area the committee members that were involved in this committee. Often I am in this chamber with the committee chair Sarah Connolly, the member for Laverton, who provides an extraordinary effort of work in bringing it all together. The deputy chair is in the other place, Nick McGowan. The members are Michael Galea; Lauren Kathage, the member for Yan Yean; Bev McArthur, who always offers a deal of insights that many of us would not have come to initially, but I actually appreciate the insights that she does make; the member for Gippsland South, Danny O’Brien; Aiv from the other place, for North-Eastern Metro; and my neighbour the member for Clarinda. I look forward to making a further contribution later on.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members to use correct titles.