Thursday, 14 November 2024

Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024

Second reading

Debate resumed on motion of Melissa Horne:

That this bill be now read a second time.

And Tim McCurdy’s amendment:

That all the words after ‘That’ be omitted and replaced with the words ‘this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government conducts further consultation with affected stakeholders on when the licensing scheme should come into effect.’

Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (10:19): I am very pleased to rise to speak on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. This is a matter of urgency to transact this bill. We know that this is extremely serious subject matter, and I do not think there is any disagreement in the chamber on that premise. I will reflect, but very cautiously, about an incident that occurred in Bay Street, Port Melbourne, which I went down to see after the fact. A car had literally gone right into a shop. I do not know how they angled it, because if you know Bay Street, it is quite narrow, so they must have flat-footed it. I will say ‘allegedly’ as to how they specifically manoeuvred, went in there and set it aflame. The worst thing about it, apart from dreadful damage for the trader with that shop – although there may be other matters there so, again, I am going to be a little bit flowery in my description – is that traders to either side and also innocent people above unfortunately through no fault of their own had their lives put at risk through the incident. I should say specifically that was a hairdressing salon. Nevertheless it is alleged that that was associated with the illegal tobacco matters that we have been seeing around the state and to some extent interstate as well.

Recognising the disastrous consequences that have unfolded as a result of these dreadful incidents, there is no question that moving this licensing scheme today through this bill is really, really important. That is why I am a little perplexed about the reasoned amendment, which is essentially that this house refuses to read this bill a second time until the government conducts further consultation with affected stakeholders. Yet last sitting somehow it was urgent, but it is not urgent now – but it is urgent. It is very confusing, so I am trying to cut through that to the purpose for which we are driving this reform, noting that the Premier was very clear back in March in saying this would be brought through by the end of the year. That is exactly what we are doing. No-one has in any way tried to be anything other than transparent on the process that is to be delivered here. But seeking more consultation, however long that might take, rather than getting on with the job of establishing the licensing scheme? I would have thought that there is a real imperative to do that and to get businesses licensed.

The other thing I should say is that I do not want the line to be blurred, and it is easy to do so in little grabs on TV et cetera, which can unfortunately distort what is actually being sought to be transacted here, which is that we will be starting to stand up the licensing scheme as soon as possible to begin getting businesses licensed by mid next year. As part of the process it will take until mid-2025 to set up the licensing scheme because they need to do several important things. You cannot just say – and I do not want to make light of this – ‘licensing scheme’ and expect the magic to happen. You have to manually put that together. You have to orchestrate that in the most appropriate way with the tightest possible governance and to make sure that it actually delivers on what community expects. This involves hiring and training the staff who will assess licence applications, establishing the ICT system and online application process and developing materials to assist businesses to make applications. From early 2026 there will be inspectors on the ground making sure businesses have a licence. We want to give businesses the time to go and do the right thing and get licensed, and we need to give them at least six months to do so. There is the question of reasonableness, and I think that is certainly factored into the process that is being laid out in terms of implementing this scheme.

Assessing the potential number of licences is another challenging aspect. The number of retailers could simply be in the thousands. We know that it is a diverse sector, from sophisticated players such as Coles and Woolies to the local milk bar. This is quite a complex space, and I am not in any way trying to diminish the urgency or the fundamental tenets of what is being delivered here. I am just saying that when we are talking about delivering something as important as this is it must be done properly, it must be done right and we need to meet the businesses where they are. If I put it out there, it simply would not be fair to start issuing offences to businesses who might be doing the right thing and not selling illicit tobacco. That is the other extreme, and therefore you are going against the principal of the rule of law, so to speak, because you are already presuming that somebody is guilty before they have had the chance to do the right thing, get the licence and be appropriately assessed pursuant to the licensing program.

I do think it is important to have that on the table here when we are discussing this issue, because of the innate seriousness of it and so as not to make it something that is as simple as a media statement or – hey presto – a licensing scheme next-day delivered. That is simply not humanly possible, and I think all of those in the chamber are factoring in that fundamental tenet of the law, which is reasonableness in terms of the timeframe to roll out a system which will have the appropriate rigour, noting that we are seeking to deliver the standing up of the training and so forth and various critical elements of this licensing system asap. And we mean that when we say it.

The bill, I should say, will come in two stages. The first stage to come into effect by the end of the year will establish the licensing scheme and the regulator and allow for the appointment and training of licensing inspectors. This will allow for license applications to be made and determined in advance of the requirement for businesses to hold a licence. You can see that there is a logical sequence to that. Stage 1 will also amend existing offences and powers in the Tobacco Act 1987 and repeal e-cigarette and specialist tobacconist provisions.

The second stage will introduce the licensing offences and enforcement powers of licensing inspectors, enabling penalties to be applied to tobacco suppliers operating without a licence, and as stated from the outset, we do need to give retailers the opportunity to obtain licences before we take any enforcement action for not having one. So you can see we are looking at that reasonableness, the rule of law and the premise of what would seem to be fair and reasonable opportunity.

There were some comments that nothing has been done, nothing has happened, and we know that Taskforce Lunar will suggest – not suggest but emphatically show the opposite. We know that Victoria Police have been taking targeted action against the illicit tobacco trade through Taskforce Lunar, making arrests and seizing large quantities of illicit items. I will say there is a further tangent to this – Australian Border Force. It is part of their remit, I should say, to track and stop these items getting into the country at the border, and that is hard work. I used to represent border force workers, and I know the pride they take in seizing these kinds of items at the border – illegal items. Taskforce Lunar is delivering results with over 200 search warrants executed, 80 offenders arrested and the seizure of cash, vapes and illegal tobacco products worth $37 million as at September 2024, and this does not include the most recent raids last week, in which more than 600,000 illegal cigarettes were seized across 25 properties.

I want to acknowledge the very hard work of VicPol on this matter, because I think that also should not be lost when we are discussing this very important issue and noting that it is a combination of elements seeking to appropriately tackle the matter that is of course the licensing scheme, which is a matter of urgency. We must pass this bill – it is in the best interests of community – but also acknowledge the very hard work and ongoing work of VicPol in tackling this issue. This element is fundamental as well – the health issue. We know that tobacco, vaping and cigarettes are very bad – there is nothing good about those things – so obviously keeping a tight lid on those matters is critical for the health of our community as well.

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (10:29): I rise to make some comments on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024 – a mouthful. Many would know it as the firebombing bill, and it is to ensure that we do something about the ongoing tobacco stores that are being firebombed right across the state. We have seen over 100 tobacco stores firebombed in the last couple of years, and it is very, very unfortunate that we have waited that time – two years – to be able to debate this bill. It is something that the opposition has been calling on for a long time.

Again, the government have been sitting on their hands and doing absolutely nothing while week in, week out, you pick up the paper and what do you read? Another store has been firebombed. In fact only this week we have seen a store firebombed twice in two days. So it is really unfortunate that we have taken so long, because we have been calling for it for some time, and I commend the member for Ovens Valley for the work that he has been doing as the Shadow Minister for Consumer Affairs on this particularly. You would think that we would be very, very supportive, which we are in context, but the big issue with this bill is the fact that not only has the government taken two years to introduce a bill but they then introduced the bill within a week, not even having had any consultation, to rush it through. But surprise, surprise, the bill will not actually take place for another 18 months. The laws will not take place for 18 months, so what is going to happen in the 18 months in terms of ensuring that communities can be kept safe? It is an absolute joke that we have a government that is completely in disarray. They do nothing about firebombing, and then all of a sudden they try and rush a bill through on firebombing only to now have to wait 18 months until the legislation takes hold so we can finally tackle the firebombing that everyone in Victoria is experiencing.

Only a few weeks ago we did notices of motion in the chamber for every single one of the government’s electorates that indicated that there was a firebombing in their electorate, calling on the government to do something about it and getting them to act now. So it is appalling that we should have to wait another 18 months until this legislation takes place, and that is why the member for Ovens Valley’s reasoned amendment is to actually get on with it and get this legislation up and about. I would encourage the government to support this amendment. It is really important that we do something, because every day that we wait is another day that many of our communities, many Victorians, have to deal with safety issues in their own backyards.

We have all seen it. Many in the government have stood up here and spoken about firebombings in their electorates, and now we are going to have to tackle it. It is no use talking about it if you have still got to wait 18 months. I know in my electorate of Caulfield we had a tobacco store in Glen Huntly Road that was firebombed, and again the store is still gutted and the store is still waiting for action. We have had two other stores that have also been firebombed, so not only are there the 110-plus stores that have been firebombed in two years but you have seen other stores that have been firebombed that, again, could be connected to some of the organised crime and illegal activity that has been allowed to take place by the Allan Labor government. We have seen a gymnasium in Hawthorn Road, and again, that gymnasium which was firebombed sits on top of retail stores below it. That has been out of action for two years.

You only have to pick up the paper today to hear about the Burgertory store that was burnt down, firebombed, on the corner of Hawthorn Road and Glen Huntly Road. Again, there were two people arrested and questionable activity in terms of that behaviour. Again, we just see far too much organised crime where these stores are being used for financial gain, and it needs to be tackled. The way to do it is through a licensing scheme, and every other state has a licensing scheme except Victoria. Why are we always behind? The Allan Labor government has had 10 years to do something about ensuring we have safety, and only now do we start talking about it. So it is too little, too late from the Allan Labor government in actually getting on with it and getting this fixed.

If this is so important and you have got all the government members standing up and saying, ‘We’ve got to tackle firebombing in our electorates,’ one would argue: why are they waiting 18 months for the laws to take shape? Maybe it is because we have industrial action with our police. Maybe it is because Victoria Police are not being paid a fair deal and we do not have the ability to police a licensing scheme, because the government has not supported Victoria Police. Maybe that is the reason the government want to wait 18 months, and why aren’t they supporting our hardworking Victoria Police? Maybe it is because they have run out of money; maybe that is the case as well. Maybe it is because they have spent all the money on the Suburban Rail Loop that they do not have any money to pay the police to ensure that we not only have the legislation in place but we can protect the community from firebombings.

And you can draw the line. That is why every single time that this government does something and does not do it properly, ultimately Victorians pay the price. The government fails to act; Victorians pay the price. This is bad management. This is waste. This is mismanagement. You can see it every single time because the government cannot manage money, they cannot manage major projects, they cannot manage legislation and they cannot keep Victorians safe. This is a case of over 110 ‍firebombings in every electorate across Victoria. We have waited two years. We finally have legislation today, and the government says, ‘This is important – but wait 18 months before it takes effect.’ At the same time Victoria Police are on strike today because they are not being paid a fair deal. I think most Victorians would be shocked about that, because the hardworking Victoria Police should be paid a fair deal, and ultimately one of the big issues we have in our state is law and order, community safety. People need to be kept safe, and they do not feel that way.

I have said in my electorate – again related to all this kind of stuff, of illegal activity, of crime – we have got people that are paying for private security to drive around people’s homes, because they do not feel safe. Why should taxpayers in the highest taxed state in the nation have to put their hands in their pockets and pay for private security because we do not have enough police? Police are leaving because they are not being paid properly. Thousands of police are leaving the force because they are not being paid properly. That is why we have an industrial dispute, and that is probably why the legislation that seems to be so important that it is being rushed through by the Allan Labor government will not be enacted until 2026. Every single day when there is another firebombing are we going to hear Labor members standing up and saying, ‘This is terrible. We’ve got legislation, and we will do something about it – in 18 months time’? This government should be judged by their actions, not their words, because it is all very well for every Labor member to stand up and talk about this firebombing bill today without being able to back it up, saying the legislation will not be in place until 2026. That is why, if this government was serious, they would back the member for Ovens Valley, back his amendment and support it so we get the legislation in place straightaway.

A couple of weeks ago the member for Ovens Valley brought in a private members bill that should have been supported; it was not. Since then we have had more firebombings. I would say today that every single firebombing that happens between today and 2026 will be the fault of the Allan Labor government, because this legislation could be supported with a start date tomorrow – not by 2026, by tomorrow. Pay the police their fair share, support this legislation and have it in place tomorrow and keep the community safe. It is that simple. That is what Victorians expect, not weasel words, not legislation that has taken two years to happen and another 18 months before it actually takes shape to be enforced. That is not what we are here for. We are here to keep the community safe, and that is what people expect. In my electorate of Caulfield we have got Hawthorn Road gymnasiums and a burger shop Burgertory that burnt down, a tobacco shop in Glen Huntly Road that burnt down, just like you have got in all of the other electorates – burnt down. Let us get on with it. Pay the police. Bring in the legislation. Keep the community safe. It is very, very simple, and I commend the hardworking member for Ovens Valley. This stuff is really important. People need consequences, they need fines, and if they conduct illegal activity they should have their licences revoked. The work has not been done.

Members interjecting.

David SOUTHWICK: The government can chant, scream, carry on. No-one should have to wait 18 months for legislation to keep people safe tomorrow, and this government are not serious.

Iwan WALTERS (Greenvale) (10:39): I also rise to speak on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. Before I get to the substantive part of my contribution, I have got to take exception with some of the contribution of the member for Caulfield, who used the phrase ‘weasel words’. I think it is important to call out some of the weasel words of those opposite and the mischief that is being made with clause 2 of this bill, which does make clear that the bill will come into effect as soon as possible, in effect. There is a stock-standard phrase that is in there that those of us who served on the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) are very familiar with: the concept of a drop-dead date. But the truth of the matter is that the provisions of this bill will begin as soon as the bill is passed. We will be hiring and building a regulator. The licensing scheme will be in place by mid-2025.

It is interesting that those opposite, who are so keen to invoke the words of Menzies in The Forgotten People, should be suggesting there should be a breach of natural justice whereby those shopkeepers have no opportunity to become licensed in the first place. There is a reason why there is a need for some time to stand this scheme up – it is because those shopkeepers, those retailers, need the opportunity, as a consequence of natural justice, to become licensed. You cannot enforce a licensing scheme until there has been an opportunity for retailers to become licensed. Goodness gracious, the member for Caulfield also invoked the member for Ovens Valley’s so-called bill, which had less detail than a press release – less detail than minutes written down by Dr Heath in the other place. It was not worthy of the name ‘a bill’.

The simple fact is that this is a very substantive piece of proposed legislation that reflects an enormous amount of work by Minister Horne but also by ministers from across the government – the Minister for Police and the Attorney-General – because it is a really important thing to get right because of its importance within our communities. I want to thank the minister and indeed all of those ministers for their work across government and for being responsive to the advocacy of many Labor MPs, many members on this side, and the concerns of the communities that we represent. I have shared my concerns with the ministers on a number of occasions, because this is an issue that really matters in my community. It matters in all of our communities, and it is imperative that we pass this bill to keep our communities safe.

The simple truth is that the amendments being put forward by those opposite will only serve to delay the passage and the implementation of this bill. The intent of course is to gazette it as soon as possible and to build that licensing authority so that we can begin to make this system a properly licensed one and make our communities safer by regulating tobacco sales and by punishing law-breakers with the toughest penalties in Australia.

Organised crime and its drivers are very complex. A licensing scheme is an important part of the puzzle that will seek to intercede in the egregious actions of a very small minority in our community who are inflicting harm and damage on our community. We have seen too many shops which have been firebombed, where children – young people – have been paid by organised criminal actors who are engaged in a turf war, an organised crime war, to destroy the businesses and livelihoods of hardworking families in our community. There is also the appalling collateral damage that many businesses either side of or above or indeed below those targeted businesses are suffering. It is not good enough.

It is solely and singularly the fault of those criminal actors who have been operating in a context whereby we have had a ratcheting excise scheme in terms of its application on tobacco, whereby the price of legitimate cigarettes has become much more expensive in recent years. There is a sound public health rationale for that, and I think there is a clear evidence base that suggests that the more expensive cigarettes have become, the lower the incidence of smoking in our community. But we are now in a situation where, as a consequence of federal government action, a legitimate packet of cigarettes is materially expensive for people on an average income. At the same time the differential between a legitimate packet of cigarettes and an illicit packet of cigarettes has blown out very significantly. That creates an incentive for organised criminals to engage in this behaviour – to engage in mass smuggling.

The simple truth is that we need the federal government to take action to fulfil their responsibilities, because on the one hand they have created a price signal, if you like, a market incentive, for this kind of conduct to take place by having very significantly expensive unit costs for cigarettes. Again, there is a very sound public health rationale for that. But if the situation is allowed to occur whereby the market is being flooded as a consequence of smuggling from overseas in containers and through other mechanisms, whereby the market is being flooded with illicit cigarettes, that will create real challenges for our law enforcement agencies in Victoria, who are working tirelessly through a number of discrete operations, including Taskforce Lunar, to deal with the consequences of that reality of wholesale smuggling taking place.

As I say, the impact of this criminality, though, on the community has been real. It has been devastating to see the impact that it has had upon family businesses. Some tobacco shops which have been attacked may have been fronts for organised crime and for the sale of illicit cigarettes, but too many have been the innocent victims of organised criminals and violent gangsters and standover men who do not care about community or the broader impact of their egregious criminality upon community. Let us make no mistake: this is the fault of those who are engaged in illegal action, those who do not care about our community, those who do not care about community safety and those who do not care about the livelihoods of hardworking family businesses across Victoria. That is why a licensing scheme is so important – because it will protect those hardworking family businesses who are operating legitimately. It is why it is so important that this government has brought legislation and why it is important that it receives swift passage – because a licensing scheme is an important part of the puzzle. The federal government has its role to play in terms of –

James Newbury interjected.

Iwan WALTERS: The member for Brighton has come in, late as ever, and cannot resist the urge to make interjections and is perpetuating that hoary old myth that this will come into effect in 2026, whereas the simple truth is that the bill –

James Newbury interjected.

Iwan WALTERS: The member for Brighton clearly is not familiar with the work of SARC, the effect of drop-dead dates and the effect of clauses like clause 2 in this bill. The bill will be gazetted as soon as it is passed in this place. The regulator and the licensing authority will be stood up as soon as it is passed in this place. So I suggest that those opposite cease seeking to block the passage of the bill, cease seeking to delay its passage through amendments and get on board and get this thing through so that we can build that regulator and so that we can bring more certainty and more confidence to our communities through a licensing scheme that will complement the very important work of Taskforce Lunar, which is delivering results, which is mopping up some of the mess that has been left behind by successive federal governments through a lax border regime, and which has had over 200 search warrants executed and 80 offenders arrested and has had mass seizures of cash, vapes and illegal tobacco products worth $37 million as at September 2024. I know there has been work by Taskforce Lunar in the months since that has increased that figure very significantly.

It is also a reflection of the very significant investment that this government has made in Victoria Police – the largest police force in any jurisdiction in this country – a record $4.5 billion investment in Victoria Police that is enabling Victoria Police to establish dedicated taskforces like Taskforce Lunar to target the illicit tobacco trade. It is so important that they have the powers and the tools to do that. This bill will augment the existing powers. It will give them additional powers to inspect premises. It will enable them to share information. It will close some of the loopholes that mean that there is a blind spot in the context of the sale of tobacco. We need to make sure that we are doing whatever we can as a state Parliament to keep our communities safe. This licensing scheme is an important part of that.

I also take this opportunity to call upon the federal government to ensure that illicit cigarettes are not flooding into the country and that proper consideration is given to the impact of the excise regime and to ensure that the work of Victoria Police is not stymied, that we have fewer illicit cigarettes on the street and that our communities are safer. That is what this bill will do. I commend it to the house, and I urge the house to give it a swift passage.

Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (10:49): I rise to speak on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024, as it is an issue that is not only incredibly important to me but incredibly important to my community. It is an issue that has been raised with me time and time again in my electorate of Warrandyte, and I know that it is affecting not just us in our community but also communities across Victoria. There is a commitment in the electorate of Warrandyte to protect the character of our neighbourhood, and this is especially evident when it comes to the protection of their area from the scourge of the illicit tobacco trade.

As we hurtle towards the end of the year, may I suggest that perhaps it may be time for the government and the Premier to go on vacation, because it seems like they have run out of their own ideas and can only copy ours. Unfortunately their imitation is a poor one at best. It has been about 14 months that I have been in the Parliament since being elected, and I have seen it firsthand. The coalition’s private members bill from the member for Ovens Valley is what we are speaking about today, but I saw it first where the coalition introduced a private members bill through the Shadow Minister for Police, the member for Berwick, to prohibit the use of machetes, on 28 November 2023. I had just been elected, and it was something that my community was raising with me time and time again. Knife crime and crime in my community is at an all-time high. Aggravated burglaries are up 48 per cent in the electorate of Warrandyte – 73 per cent in Doncaster East alone. We were hearing about this all the time through the office, and as a consequence of this happening in all of our offices, the private members bill that was introduced sought to prohibit the sale and the purchase of machetes, which makes sense. It is common sense. That was November last year. The government shut that down and voted against that at a time when knife crime was at an all-time high and crime in general had exploded a thousand per cent in the past 10 years. Then the government, after shutting that one down, decided to introduce a weaker law to limit the sale of machetes to under-18s, as if that would make a difference, because knife crime is still rife all across Victoria. That was on 7 February this year, months later.

I saw it again with the coalition’s push to axe the health tax on GPs and for health services, and then the government introduced a watered-down version of it. I saw it where the government big-noted themselves on the off-the-plan stamp duty exemption when they were the ones to reimpose the tax in 2017 in the first place. We voted against it. We spoke against it. We defended keeping the stamp duty exemption. The coalition vehemently defended keeping the exemption from stamp duty for off-the-plan homes, yet the government was the one to scrap it. Now they are abolishing it, they say, when they were the ones to introduce it. Well, here we are again. How is it that after a decade in –

Iwan Walters: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, on relevance, the provisions of this bill do not touch upon stamp duty.

Tim McCurdy: On the point of order, Deputy Speaker, the member is being very relevant to the bill, and it encapsulates all those issues that she is talking about.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It has been a wideranging debate on this bill. The member for Warrandyte to continue on the bill.

Nicole WERNER: I am simply providing context for the bill, providing context for what we are debating about today. All I have to say is: how is it that after a decade in government Labor is struggling to bring any new ideas to this place and can only offer watered-down imitations of the coalition’s legislation, including with this bill at hand that we are talking about?

We saw it again last sitting week when the Liberals and Nationals, through the member for Ovens Valley, sought to introduce a private members bill that proposed a licensing scheme with penalties of up to $1 million for illegal tobacco traders, an initiative that would have brought swift action and real consequences to those flouting the law. Why was this? It was because the scourge of illegal tobacco stores is a known reality to so many Victorians, including in my community, as I have mentioned, with police estimating that more than half of Victoria’s estimated 800 to 1000 tobacconists sell illegal products.

In my electorate of Warrandyte this has been a real concern. People in my community have seen these illicit tobacco stores pop up and crop up across the electorate – some alleged ones even as close as 100 ‍metres from local primary schools. It is no wonder that people in my community are concerned. So we on this side of the house pushed ahead with the legislation, because we are the last jurisdiction in this country to not have a licensing scheme or regime pertaining to illegal tobacco. Trailing behind, as per usual, to act on crime in Victoria is – surprise, surprise – the Allan Labor government. We pushed ahead because it was recommended two years ago – two years ago – that we have a licensing scheme to stamp out this criminal trade and because the Allan Labor government failed to act, allowing criminality to thrive with relative impunity, and Victorians are suffering as a consequence of it. There have been over 100 firebombing attacks across our state in this time, including two in the last two weeks since we introduced our private member’s bill, which they could have supported if they cared about Victorians. They voted down our bill to finally take action to stamp out the illegal tobacco trade. The Allan Labor government blocked it. How is that, from that side of the house? They blocked it and left our communities exposed, left businesses vulnerable and gave a free pass to criminals, who continue to profit from lawlessness. They blocked action when they could have saved lives, stopped firebombings and brought some much-needed order to this growing crisis of criminality in our state.

Come on now, putting political posturing ahead of protecting Victorians – that is not okay. This delay and inaction not only have put Victorians at risk but have also been a direct consequence of Labor’s failures and their refusal to act when action was needed. While they play politics it is the people of Victoria who suffer. It is the business owners who have to live in fear of their stores being set alight. It is parents, it is teachers, it is my local community writing to me, day in and day out, concerned about this illicit tobacco trade that has cropped up in our suburbs. It is the innocent families who have to deal with the fallout of a government who could not be bothered to listen to the experts or take decisive action two years later – two years after the recommendation.

It has been two years. That is how long it has been since the government received the reform recommendations – two years in which we have seen tobacco outlets firebombed, criminals running rampant and businesses left vulnerable. And what have we seen in this time? This response comes after a staggering 110 tobacco shops have been destroyed in arson attacks across the state. Just this week, here we are again being handed another promise, another plan, with the Premier laying out details of this so-called licensing scheme. While it is welcomed, because it is about time, let us be real here: this bill should have been passed months ago. Here we are, eight months since the Premier made the initial promise to take action in this space – eight months later. It has been a long eight months. And what do we get after eight months? Another delay from the Allan Labor government, a 19-month delay no less. Over two years since the government received recommendations from experts, from law enforcement, from people on the front lines, here we are still fighting for basic action – action that could have stopped 108 firebombings and the two more that happened just last week. That is more businesses, more families and more communities under threat while the government sat here twiddling their thumbs.

The delays have had real and devastating consequences. The government’s inaction has put lives at risk. Let me ask: how many more firebombings will it take? How many more businesses will be burnt to the ground? How many more innocent Victorians will be caught in the crossfire because of this government’s failure to act? As we continue to wait another 19 months from now, there will be 19 ‍months of criminal activity, 19 months of vulnerable businesses and 19 months of firebombings and chaos. The people who own tobacco outlets in Victoria do not have 19 months. My community does not have 19 months. The communities affected by this lawlessness do not have another 19 months to wait. How many more businesses will be destroyed by criminal activity before this scheme is even close to being implemented? How many more people will suffer? If you just listened to 3AW recently, people were asking ‘Why has it taken so long? Why has the government, which promised action, sat idly by while this crime wave continues to grow?’ I will tell you why: it is because the government does not take this issue seriously. They do not feel the pain of small businesses. They do not see the families that are affected. They do not understand the real-world consequences of their inaction. The government needs to stop hiding behind excuses. We need to bring forward this bill.

Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (10:59): They do say that it is a characteristic of great speakers that they have the ability to vary their tone. I am not sure we had a great deal of variation in the contribution from the member for Warrandyte. On a matter of substance, it continues to be remarkable to me to give a speech that is predominantly concerned with purported delays while supporting a reasoned amendment that would further delay the bill that we have in front of us. I noted and appreciated the member for Greenvale’s comments in response to the member for Caulfield’s comments. It is unfortunate that the member for Warrandyte possibly was not listening and repeated those comments about clause 2, and I will just refer her back to the member for Greenvale’s rebuttals.

I rise to also support the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024, which as we know amends the Tobacco Act 1987 with respect to both traditional tobacco products and vapes. This bill is very relevant to my part of the world, especially at the Reservoir end. We have a local Facebook group called Reservoir 3073, and the other day someone posted there saying:

If you were in charge of Reservoir and could do whatever you wanted to improve the area what would it be?

A lot of people raised some familiar issues around the Reservoir Leisure Centre, the Berlin Wall effect we have, where it is hard to cross the train line, the route 11 tram extension and so forth. There was a commentator, James Batten, who I do not know, who said Reservoir needed:

More massage parlours and … vape shops! 30 isn’t enough!

It did get some laughs on Facebook, that comment, because there is a little bit of truth to it. I will set aside massage parlours, which are not relevant to today’s bill, but there are a lot of vape shops and tobacco shops in Reservoir. I have not tried counting them; it is certainly double digits.

It is worth briefly touching on how those stores came about and some of the community concerns about them. It is partially, if we go back, a bit of a story of car ownership. Obviously way back in the day, in the middle of the 20th century, cars were more expensive and most families only had one car, if they had one at all. Their grocery shopping was often done on foot, and they would head along to local bakers and butchers and dairies and so forth. Of course once households got a second car everyone began doing their weekly shopping most of the time at supermarkets. One interesting thing that often happens is society changes but the cadastral system, the layout of our roads and land lots, do not change very much. Certainly we saw in Reservoir that a lot of those little suburban shopping strips were all laid out in the middle of the 20th century and within a few decades everyone was driving to the supermarket and driving past their local suburban strip.

The upshot of that is that rents are now quite low in those suburban shopping strips. And there is certainly a very viable business, which we do see everywhere, where you can open a convenience store and your rent is low. Then the goods you sell are those more impulsive buys, things that are not part of the weekly grocery shop: confectionery, drinks, tobacco, vapes and all the things that we are used to seeing in those stores. As we know, they are higher margin goods, and even though some of those stores do very low volumes, they nonetheless can make things work, because as I said, they do not pay especially high rents. As it happens, a lot of those goods that I have just mentioned do sell at higher rates in lower socio-economic areas. We certainly have parts of Reservoir where car ownership rates are low and people are walking to these convenience stores because it is more difficult for them to get to the supermarket or bigger activity centres.

All of that is just to explain that it is certainly true that there are a lot of these stores in Reservoir, and I suspect that the fact that major supermarkets do not carry vapes is one reason for the growth in these stores, because they do carry them. I suspect also that the illegal tobacco sales in our part of the world, which is obviously also not something done by the major supermarkets – you cannot purchase illegal tobacco at Aldi or Woolworths – is another reason for the fact that we have seen a considerable growth in these convenience stores. We all know that with the excise and what it is these days, I think almost $1.30 a cigarette and still going up further, a pack of cigarettes might sell for $45 legally. People are selling them for $20 illegally. As a result people are looking to sell tobacco without paying the excise, and in doing so having not only a negative health effect for the users; it is also very unfair to those who are doing the right thing and selling tobacco at the right price.

Finally, if I can add one other thing to the picture of these convenience stores, some of them in our area are also selling, alongside the vapes and the tobacco, nitrous oxide canisters, known colloquially as nangs. In theory those canisters are used for making whipped cream, but it is very surprising when you get there and there are the tobacco products, there are the vapes and then there are the nangs next to them. All of those things when we put them together – and it is an important point I want to make, beyond the points that have been made about firebombing and organised crime – mean there are other very genuine, very important community concerns about these convenience stores. They are selling items that are of health concern, selling them in ways that are potentially illegal, selling them potentially to young people under the age of 18 – and some of these convenience stores are located directly across from primary schools and other schools – and of course they have also attracted the violent and illegal activity that has been detailed by other speakers. There was a store in Summerhill that was rammed by a car, and the tobacco store that is on St Georges Road at Miller Street appears to have been recently vandalised as well.

So we support this bill because it will give us mechanisms to address all of those concerns. I think this is very important in pushing back on the very monotone contribution that we heard from the member for Warrandyte. There are multiple important issues that are addressed by this bill. Part 2 will give us a licensing scheme that will require people to meet certain tests to sell tobacco. I think that alone will deter some of the unlawful behaviour. Part 3 deals with offences and enforcement, including the introduction of inspectors, which I think will be very well received given the strong suspicions of unlawful behaviour at some of these retail venues. It also, as we know, improves our capacity to prosecute illegal tobacco sales. Part 4 repeals various provisions in order to allow for the Commonwealth’s new scheme in relation to vapes to come into effect. I think it is worth being very clear that a real benefit of this bill is that our inspectors will be able to enforce the Commonwealth’s new vaping regulations. As we know, vapes are now illegal to sell, but as we also know, there is an enforcement issue there. You can certainly walk into stores and buy vapes in Reservoir at the moment, and we look forward to this scheme allowing us to more strongly enforce what is ultimately that federal regulation.

I touched on nitrous oxide abuse and nangs. They are not covered here by the bill in front of us, but it is certainly a merit of a licensing scheme generally that it would allow us to put other conditions on that licence, including the sorts of things that you can sell alongside tobacco goods. It would also, as I have just touched on, provide an inspection scheme to enforce those rules should we wish to introduce them. This bill in many respects is a comprehensive bill for addressing what I must stress again is a range of community concerns about what is happening in these tobacco, vape and confectionery stores. As I say, we have heard a focus from the opposition that is exclusively on firebombing, and frankly that suggests to me that they do not get out in their communities enough to know that where there is one of these stores opposite a primary school there are other concerns, obvious concerns, about the selling of tobacco illegally, the selling of it to young people, the selling of vapes to young people and so forth.

I commend the hard work done by the minister, by the Department of Justice and Community Safety and by her team, to bring a bill to this place today that, as I say, is comprehensive in addressing both the violent activity that has been discussed at length but also the concerns around health and the health of young people that certainly have been raised with me on a regular basis ever since I was elected. I am very pleased to be able to go back to those constituents and say that today in this place we are going a further step to making sure that young people are not vaping and they are not buying tobacco in any form, whether it be illegal or not, and indeed to give ourselves a platform to further regulate these stores if we need to.

I will conclude by thanking, as I said, the minister and her team and maybe, if I can as well, Philip Mallis, who writes a very good blog. I sometimes think there are some very good public policy bloggers out there who help all of us with our work, and I know his blog post ‘The shopping strips of Reservoir’ is a great one for people with an interest in these things. So I just want to thank not only the minister for this excellent bill but also those who contribute to public policy more broadly.

Peter WALSH (Murray Plains) (11:09): I rise to make a contribution on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. Starting off, I am intrigued and surprised that the member for Preston would say that we should not be worried about firebombings of illegal tobacco shops. Having had one of those in my community in Cohuna being firebombed, I know the angst it causes in the community, the damage it causes and the stress it is still causing in that community because the shop has been reopened only a couple of doors down. They are just waiting for the next time that shop is firebombed. To say there are no concerns about firebombing and the Liberals and Nationals should not be raising those issues I think is an insult to communities, and I take it as an insult to the community of Cohuna. The heat that that fire burnt at – I absolutely take my hat off to the Cohuna fire brigade for what they did in getting there quickly at 3 am and controlling that fire to that particular shop site. It burnt that hot that it actually cooked the bricks on the adjoining buildings in that shopping strip, which will have to be replaced.

As I said, three doors down the particular proponents of that shop have now bought another shop and set up again. It was going again within two weeks of the one that was burnt down. The whole issue of firebombing is real. Yes, there are other issues that this bill addresses, but at some stage someone that lives above a shop in a suburban strip, someone that lives adjacent to a shop or someone that unfortunately might be working late in their own shop next door is going to be hurt with the way these illegal tobacco shops are firebombed.

I actually prefer the title of the bill that the Shadow Minister for Police introduced in this place several weeks ago, who called it the Tobacco Amendment (Stamping Out Fire Bombings) Bill 2024. I think that articulated the argument a lot better than the current bill because it is about stamping out the illicit trade in tobacco and stamping out the ramifications of the turf war that is going on for those that are involved in it, where there is victimisation of tobacco shops that will not pay extortion money or there is this fight to actually burn out the opposition’s shops. 110 tobacco-related firebombings have taken place over the last two years. Better Regulation Victoria back in 2022 actually said there was a need for a licensing scheme for tobacco products in Victoria – two years ago. If the government had actually acted at that particular time, we would not have seen the number of shops that have been burnt, we would not have seen the damage that has been done in our shopping strips right across Victoria, including country Victoria, and we would not have had all the worry and the stress for those that have been victims of these firebombings but also the communities around them, who are very worried about that.

That is one of the reasons the shadow minister has moved a reasoned amendment to this legislation. Two years since there was a report – and there have been several other reports – saying there is a need for licensing of tobacco retailing in Victoria, we finally get action. We finally get a bill after the government has been embarrassed into doing it because there was a private members bill introduced into this place to actually have regulation around the selling of tobacco products here in Victoria. The government has finally been embarrassed into introducing this particular piece of legislation. But what do we read on the first page? It will be finally enacted on 1 July 2026 – literally two more years.

Members interjecting.

Peter WALSH: I know it is unruly to pick up interjections, but can I say to those that are interjecting: read the bill. Look at the ink on the paper. It says 1 July 2026. Tell me that statement is not true. That is what is said on the first page of the legislation. So you can cry wolf that, ‘Yes, we’re going to do it quicker than that. Yes, we are efficient.’ Who thinks the Victorian government bureaucracy is actually efficient in doing anything? ‘Yes, we’ll be efficient. We’ll do it sooner than that,’ but that is what the bill says. 1 July 2026 is when it will be finally enacted if it has not been done before. I have no faith in this government getting anything done on time, efficiently or correctly, because everything that happens, everything that is touched, is a fail, fail, fail, fail. That goes on all the time with things that happen in my community and that happen in the communities of other members of this place. That is the statement that is on the bill. That is the drop-dead date when it has to be done by. I do not believe the government. I do not believe the speakers on the other side that stand up and say that it will be done before then, because I will bet you London to a brick it will not be.

I say to the other communities but particularly to my community of Cohuna, I will be doing everything I can to make sure this is enacted sooner than 1 July 2026, because the communities that have been impacted and those communities that are worried that they will be impacted in the future should not have to wait another nearly two years to have this enacted. It has been two years since the report was brought in saying there needs to be a licensing scheme and nearly another two years before it is guaranteed that it will actually be in place.

The other recommendation that was made through those reports was that there should be a licensing fee of somewhere between $300 and $500. This bill says nothing about the licensing fee, otherwise it will be set by regulation in the future. If you look at the history of tax take by the Allan Labor government and look at the history of tax increases by the Labor government, I have absolutely no faith that the government will introduce a regulatory fee somewhere in that particular price range. They are gouging every single dollar they can out of Victorians, particularly gouging every single dollar out of Victorian businesses they can. They see someone that actually sets up a business and goes to the issue of employing people and providing services to the community as a milking cow for increased WorkCover, for increased land tax and for all the things that are going to be increased on them, and I can see another tax grab coming when it comes to the licensing fee for tobacco retailing and wholesaling here in Victoria. We do not want to see small businesses actually priced out of existence by this.

Yes, we all support the licensing of reselling and wholesaling of tobacco. It is absolutely essential that we do that. If you look at the issues we have had here in Victoria compared to interstate, they are because we have not had that licensing regime; we have not had the ability for police to be involved in enforcing it. It has been local government by-law officers and the Department of Health that have been left to enforce it. They do not have the powers and they do not have the manpower or the authority to make a real difference when it comes to this, so yes, we are supportive of having a licensing regime; yes, we are supportive of the police being involved; and yes, we are absolutely supportive of the huge penalties that are in existence in this particular legislation. If you are going to stamp out organised crime, if you are going to stamp out major illegal activity, there have to be significant disincentives there for people if they are caught. Yes, there is that in this particular bill, but what we do not want to see is that the corner stores and the small shops in our shopping strips in our country towns are priced out of existence by the fact that there is a huge licensing fee implemented as part of this program.

Full commendation to the shadow minister for bringing forward the private members bill to this place to actually force the government’s hand, after two years, to introduce this particular legislation. As I said, the ink on the paper says 1 July 2026. It does not matter what words are written around it, and others on the other side will stand up and say, ‘This is not so. This is not so. This is not so.’ No-one believes you anymore, because the government cannot get anything done on time and cannot get anything done properly, and in this case there will be communities where firebombings will happen in the future. Just because this legislation is being debated in here, that will not stop illegal activity. It will not stop the firebombings going on. The only thing that will help stop that is this legislation actually being enacted, the regulations being put in place, the police having the powers and particularly the courts issuing some of those major fines or, more importantly, putting some people in jail so that people know there are consequences for trading in illegal tobacco and there are consequences for those who, through the turf wars, are burning down shops and putting our communities at risk. I just hope that no-one is killed because of this, because of the slow inaction of this government.

Sarah CONNOLLY (Laverton) (11:19): It is a pleasure to follow the Leader of the Nationals in this debate. I feel like I have to point this out, because I am sitting here listening to him talk about how long it has taken this side of the house to go ahead and introduce this really important bill: we have been doing an incredible amount of work in relation to this bill. It is extremely complex. You guys have talked about organised crime and firebombing today, as you should, but you have missed a whole other component of how we wipe out organised crime, and that is by stopping people and preventing people from taking up smoking and vaping in the first place. You guys did not turn up to any of the public hearings that took place as part of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry – I think the member for Gippsland South attended a couple, so this is really going to go to the member for Malvern over there. The Liberal Party fail to turn up to most things to talk to communities about their concerns about kids in particular taking up vaping in the first place, which is an easy pathway to then take up smoking later in life. The best way to stamp out organised crime and this illegal tobacco that has taken hold not just here in Victoria but across the country is to stop it in the first place. But those opposite fail to talk to anyone in the community about anything that really matters to them, and that is why they can only stand here in this place and talk about organised crime.

I would also say to those opposite: if this was such an important bill to you guys, why did you only introduce a private members bill last sitting week?

Members interjecting.

Sarah CONNOLLY: Oh, it was not a bill, it was a press release. Let us call it a press release. Why did you only introduce it last sitting week? Let me tell you, because I am the one speaking here in this place on my feet. I will tell you why you introduced it: you introduced it because you knew we were going to introduce this –

Michael O’Brien: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Laverton is defying your earlier warning to speak through the Chair. I would urge you to encourage her – she has been here long enough now; she knows the forms of the house – to go through the Chair or sit down.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Hamer): I ask the member for Laverton to continue and ensure her remarks are directed through the Chair.

Sarah CONNOLLY: I do apologise, member for Malvern, for referring to the member for Malvern and the member for Murray Plains sitting across from me. I digress from what I really want to say about this bill, because I have talked to a lot of people about this bill as chair of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. We did an incredible inquiry into this topic. But I have also spoken to so many parents and families right across my electorate about this particular issue. This is an issue that people are really alive to and have been giving a great deal of thought to, and it is not just about organised crime. I want to give a really big shout-out to Sandro DeMaio, the previous CEO of VicHealth, because Sandro has done something fantastic for the Victorian community. He has been talking about the dangers of vaping and tobacco smoking for some time, and he has not just been talking about it but he has been putting together materials to educate families, to educate parents and to educate young people about not starting to vape in the first place or, if they are vaping and they are addicted to vaping, because vaping is addictive – it is an addictive, illegal substance in those vapes – how to get off them in the first place. Thank you, Sandro, for all the work that you have done in this space. You have truly improved the lives of Victorians when it comes to this.

The purpose of this bill that is being debated before the house today is to establish a new licensing scheme for tobacco retailers, and that was a commitment made by the Premier in March this year, to go ahead and introduce a bill later this year, which is exactly why those opposite put out a press statement just two weeks ago – I think it was a one-pager, if anyone bothered to read it – about what they thought should happen in this space. But we have come forward with a bill that addresses and tries to tackle a really complex issue in this community. It is really complex because not only are people importing illegally vapes and illegal tobacco but also people have become addicted to it. They are looking for it – they need it as a drug. So this is really tricky, this bill, because we are trying to stamp it out in the first place but also looking at introducing a licensing scheme that is going to help eradicate lots of those illegal tobacco – I think we were calling them milk bars – small businesses in our community that are selling these illegal substances to our young people, to our children and to those addicted to smoking and vaping. The message I have for these businesses, and there are a lot of them in the electorate of Laverton, is: time is up. You guys have to get a licence or you can get out of town, and the majority of the community want them out of town. They do not want these shops being set up close to train stations, close to schools, whatsoever. Time is up. Get a licence or get out of town.

The key recommendation of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry into vaping and tobacco controls, which was tabled earlier this year, was to set up this licensing scheme for tobacco retailers. I am really happy to see that the legislation has come before the house today. I know that I am on record many times in this place talking about how much I oppose smoking. My brother has been a smoker since he was about 13 or 14. He took up smoking vapes because he thought it would be easier to quit his cigarette smoking habit, and he found that he was then addicted to vapes. He is now back on the smokes unfortunately. It is a dreadful addiction. The previous Secretary for the Department of Health once described, before a PAEC hearing, the businesses selling this as ‘vendors of death’, and that is exactly what they are.

This bill coming before the house is really important. We know that smoking costs our economy nearly $10 billion each and every single year, and that is why, as I talked about earlier, it is just so important to help people quit smoking as much as possible. In PAEC’s inquiry that took place earlier this year we heard firsthand not just from anti-smoking advocates but from the industry as well, which was quite interesting, many of whom are trying to do the right thing. They do not want to see illegal tobacco sales taking place in this state, because let us face it, their revenue starts to reduce. They cannot compete with the retailers who are selling this stuff behind the counter. But it is not just overseas cigarettes in the colourful packs either, it is now the illegal disposable vapes, which were banned earlier this year by the federal government. These are being marketed to kids as a cool way to smoke without the nicotine, when in fact what the inquiry found is that these vapes would indeed have nicotine in them and they were being used as a gateway for kids to go ahead and smoke tobacco.

The bill does deliver the swift and decisive response to illegal tobacco trading that Victorians have been asking for. Like I said, this is a topic that has been talked about and is still being talked about in our community. I think even after this licensing scheme is up and running and enforcement is in place, they will continue to talk about it. They will continue to talk about the addiction that we find that our young people have to these vapes and illegal tobacco, and that will be something as a community and as a society, and not just as a government, that we are going to have to deal with to change the status quo. We are setting up this licensing scheme, and we are setting up the toughest penalties in the country, which those opposite continue to fail to mention – the toughest penalties in the country – to deter and punish people who are engaging in this activity. This has really big impacts not just for my electorate but right throughout Victoria and, I would also say, across Australia. That is why I wholeheartedly commend the minister for her hard work in bringing this bill to the house, and I do indeed wish it speedy passage through the Parliament.

Tim READ (Brunswick) (11:29): I also rise to speak about the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. The Greens support this bill, and so we should, given we called for it, I think, three years ago or so. But it was not just us; the Cancer Council, Quit, VicHealth and more recently the police have been calling for a tobacco licensing scheme in Victoria. I will just take you back to August 2021, when I raised this matter in an adjournment speech. I got a response about eight months later from the Minister for Health, a one-sentence response, saying:

The Commissioner for Better Regulation is currently conducting a review into Victoria’s approach to illicit tobacco regulation.

The government then, I understand, studied the review over a period of two years. Over that time tobacconists proliferated in our high street shopping centres and all around Victoria, including rural Victoria. A lot of these tobacconists have been selling bootleg cigarettes, illicit tobacco – chop-chop ‍– nicotine vapes and, as I just heard from the member for Preston, the dreaded nangs as well. In this time we have seen extraordinary levels of tobacco-related arson attacks on these shops – one or two a week and over 100 since early last year – due to the infiltration of organised crime gangs, which seem to be attacking each other and each other’s stores. As the member for Laverton has pointed out, there has been a rapid increase in nicotine vaping, particularly among teenagers. There has also been, very disturbingly, over the last year or two a sharp drop in federal excise revenue from tobacco. That has not been matched by a sharp drop in smoking, and what that says is that people are ditching legal cigarettes in enormous numbers and replacing them with illicit tobacco. All of this has been happening because Victoria has been the last state in the Commonwealth without any form of tobacco retail registration or licensing scheme. Victoria has been a wild west both from a public health and an organised crime point of view when it comes to tobacco.

While the government was studying the report from the commissioner for better regulation all of this has happened, and while that has all been interesting, what is important is the casualties of this delay. We have heard about tobacconists burning down. We might not shed a lot of tears for these tobacconists, but there has been quite a bit of collateral damage. I want to just mention the Cargocycles bike shop in Brunswick, which was firebombed twice in a week about a month ago and destroyed. This is a specialist bike shop that makes up special bikes for disabled people; it sells cargo bikes, which are very popular for families taking their kids to school. I believe they are still operating out of a website and a warehouse, but I would be keen to see them back in retail business as soon as possible.

More important casualties, though, are the disease casualties from all of this illicit tobacco and smoking that has been going on. If you think about it, the illicit tobacco is much cheaper; the illicit cigarettes are well below half the price of legal cigarettes. The increasing price of cigarettes has been a key driver in the reduction in smoking over the last 30 years in Australia, so undermining that is undermining people’s attempts to quit and Australia’s efforts to get our population to smoke less and to be more healthy. You all know and have heard of the various dangers of smoking, so I will not list them all. I will just single one out, which is blocked blood vessels in the arms and legs, and particularly the legs, known as peripheral vascular disease, and there is no sight that stays with you quite as much as seeing someone smoking outside a hospital sitting in a wheelchair, with one leg.

The importance of tobacco as a driver of hospital admissions cannot be understated. It is important to remember that we are spending in the current budget I think $27 billion in output funding for our health system and $16 billion on health infrastructure. So health is chewing up about half the state budget. Every day and every night people are being carried by overworked ambulance crews into overworked emergency departments because of tobacco-related disease. So the delay in action on introducing this licensing scheme is contributing to the burden on our health system.

It is also important to point out that the lowest income Australians are twice as likely – more than twice as likely – to smoke compared to the highest income Australians. Rural Australians are more likely to smoke than urban Australians. People who have not completed year 12 are far more likely to smoke than people who have a degree. When we think about this business and the damage it does and the people it damages, we should not have any real sympathy for the retailers and suppliers of this product, legal or illegal. The public health needs are far more important than the needs of the businesses who are selling this substance. When we think about the speed at which we are going to implement this licensing scheme, it is often considered unfair to regulate too swiftly, but when we are talking about a lethal and addictive substance, the ethical questions are: why have we waited so long, and what can we do to accelerate the regulation that is planned in this bill?

It is important to think about what this bill can do if the government uses its powers to the full. In Australia we have done everything else that we can to reduce the prevalence of smoking to around 10 ‍per cent of the population, but what is left is to reduce the availability of tobacco. You can do that by having fewer shops or retail outlets. You can do that by not situating those shops close to areas frequented by teenagers and young people, such as schools, or transport interchanges frequented by students. You can do it by regulating the opening hours of the businesses. Reducing the availability of tobacco is the next step in further driving down the prevalence of smoking, and that is why this bill is coming at such a welcome time. It also helps police and authorised enforcement officers to know the location of the outlets. Right now we do not even know how many tobacco and vape outlets there are in the state. We do not know exactly where they are, although they make their presence fairly obvious; there is a sign up telling us what they are selling.

When this bill is implemented and enforced, we would expect the number of these pop-up tobacconists to decline, but as I understand it – and I thank the minister’s office for a briefing on this – we would expect people to be applying for licences in the second half of next year and we would expect enforcement to start happening in early 2026. But in that time, illicit tobacco gangs will be making good money; the availability of these dirt-cheap cigarettes will undermine the falling prevalence of smoking and continue to damage people’s lungs and drive admissions to our overworked hospital system; and the firebombings, the arson attacks and the ram raids will continue. I think we need to encourage the government to accelerate their efforts to implement the bill and to do everything else possible to crack down on these businesses in Victoria while we wait for the enforcement of the provisions in the bill.

I just want to comment now on some aspects of the bill. It is mainly about some obvious omissions. It is possible that I may have missed or misinterpreted something, so I look forward to getting more information from the government while we wait for the bill to go to the other place. First of all, the bill does not appear to prohibit licensed wholesalers from supplying tobacco to unlicensed retailers. This would be an important measure to include in the bill if it is not already there. The other opportunity that this bill provides is an opportunity to prohibit online sales of tobacco. Increasingly, people are buying tobacco and, I might mention, vapes online. Given the public health goals that led to the original calls for this licensing scheme, it would be a useful amendment, if it is not already there, to prohibit online sales, as is done in Australia and as Australia is obliged to do under article 13 of the WHO’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

For much the same reasons the bill does not seem to prohibit tobacco sales from vending machines. The issue with vending machines is they sit there as a sort of prompt for people who are trying to quit, for people who are trying to cut down and for ex-smokers: ‘Go on, buy a packet of cigarettes.’ Vending machines undermine attempts to quit. They are also contrary to article 13 in the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and are also prohibited in South Australia along with online sales of tobacco. The bill does not appear to specifically allow the regulator to refuse a licence on the grounds of proximity to schools or to specifically reduce density limits. I understand these things may be able to be set as conditions on a licence, but they are not specific inclusions in the bill, and I think it would be good if they were. The bill does not prohibit sales of tobacco by minors. Western Australia prohibits minors from selling – that is, M-I-N-O-R-S, given that there are a lot of miners in Western Australia as well. If young people are selling tobacco, it is more likely, as evidence has shown, that young people will buy tobacco. So it would be a useful addition to prohibit sales by minors, as is done in WA.

I want to take people back to the fact that it is the arson attacks, the extraordinary, quite remarkable epidemic of arson attacks since early last year, which seem on the face of it to have accelerated the appearance of this bill, although the original calls for a licensing scheme were on public health grounds. I want to remind people of the importance of the public health aspect of this legislation, because that is where I think the legislation could be strengthened, and even if we use the powers in the bill, it is possible to use them for public health purposes rather than just to stop the arson attacks, important though that is.

I conclude by reminding the government that everybody wants to see this scheme established and enforced as soon as possible. On that note, I will just say that I do not anticipate the Greens supporting the reasoned amendment to bring forward the commencement date, because using a reasoned amendment to speed up a bill just does not seem like the right tool for the job. However, we will consider amendments that might hasten the commencement of the bill in the other place. We will also consider amendments that speak to some of the apparent omissions from the bill that I have just raised. In particular, while we are waiting for the powers in the bill to be enforced I call on the government to encourage the police to use their existing powers to fine retailers for breaches of the federal legislation and other laws and to make life as difficult as possible for those breaching while we are waiting for this licensing scheme to be enforced.

We do need to start limiting the number of tobacco outlets in the community. There should not be anyone selling tobacco within 400 metres to 500 metres of a school or of a train station that is full of kids going to school. There should not be more than a dozen tobacco outlets in Merri-bek, for example, and we should reduce that number over time. There is no argument to support maintaining tobacco as an industry in the long term. This is something that we should be aiming to phase out, not by attacking or limiting the rights of smokers but by cracking down on the business practices and all the little niches and loopholes that they exploit wherever they can.

When the Cain Labor government led the world in starting to limit tobacco advertising, online marketing and sales did not exist, but now it does and tobacco is there. So I urge the current Labor government to emulate their predecessors and go after the tobacco marketers, crack down on them and continue to drive the prevalence of smoking in Australia down as close to zero as possible.

Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (11:44): I too rise to speak in support of the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. The fundamental role of any Victorian government is to help support and improve the health, wellbeing and of course safety of all Victorian families and all Victorian communities. However, as we are aware, the illegal tobacco trade over recent times has become rife through the growing number of unregulated tobacco shops, both impacting our health and compromising our community safety. It is causing risk and harm to the community; all the while dangerous criminals profit.

In rising to speak to this bill I acknowledge that just this week on Monday 11 November and Tuesday 12 November my community, very concerningly, experienced two suspected arson attacks at the same Coonans Road shop in Pascoe Vale South, which were allegedly and most likely connected with the illegal tobacco trade. According to a Victoria Police statement issued this week, detectives are investigating the circumstances around the incidents, which occurred in the very early hours, and whether they could be connected with other similar incidents. Very fortunately the family who reside in the attached store were not injured. Police are continuing to investigate the matter, and anyone with information is encouraged to come forward via Crime Stoppers.

In the interim my thoughts and support of course are with all the shopkeepers throughout the Coonans Road shopping precinct during this time and the surrounding neighbourhood, including the families of Pascoe Vale South Primary School and Guardian child care, and of course the Parkstone cafe, Coonan’s Hill Fish and Chips, MY M8 Barber, TRS Pilates, which was just opening up next door, Coonan’s Hill Pizza & Pasta shop, Coonans Convenience Store, the Old Faithful Cafe, Medusa hair studio and Coonans cellars. In rising to speak on this very important matter I am glad to say to my community that this very bill will go a long way in helping to keep us both healthier and also, importantly, safer across Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West. I look forward to working with all the traders to help revitalise and rebuild after this attack. By introducing the toughest laws in the country to crack down on the illegal tobacco trade through this bill we will be smoking out the illegal tobacco trade across the state, providing Victoria Police with the new powers they need to crack down on crime lords and building on those previous record investments, reforms and laws that we have provided via Victoria Police to keep our community safe.

In March the Victorian Labor government announced that we would be introducing a bill to introduce the new tobacco retailer and wholesaler licensing scheme by the end of this year, and that is exactly what we are doing now. We are getting it right, with the harshest penalties in the country. The scheme has been informed by the recommendations of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry into vaping and tobacco controls completed in August of 2024. I acknowledge my good friend the chair, the member for Laverton, for her incredible work and all the other parliamentarians on the committee.

The bill builds on the work of Victoria Police’s Taskforce Lunar, which has already seen more than 80 offenders arrested and $37 million worth of cash, vapes and illegal tobacco products seized. The bill will introduce quite a number of new reforms. Firstly, it will introduce a strict new licensing regime to establish a tobacco business licensing scheme so that tobacco can only be sold by licensed retailers. A licence is only available for fit and proper persons who pass a strict test, and you can be refused a licence based on your history and known associates. This will help protect legitimate businesses from getting undercut and from criminal syndicates and ban those who have criminal affiliations from having anything to do with the trade.

Getting the scheme right is important. What we are talking about is getting it right and implemented from the very big retailers – your Coles and your Woolies – right through to your local family milk bars and small businesses. We are introducing more powers through Victoria Police’s search powers being beefed up to make it easier and quicker for them to raid, search and seize illegal and illicit products from retailers suspected of having links to organised crime. Police will also play a very key role in ensuring the suitability of licensees under the scheme. There will also be powers to impose further licence conditions.

We are introducing dedicated inspectors. A new tobacco regulator will be established with dedicated inspectors to hit the streets alongside Victoria Police. The regulator will administer the licensing scheme and will be responsible for enforcement and the compliance with licences. This includes powers to search shops, suspend licences and of course seize illegal items. Inspectors will also support police with extra intelligence gathering in the fight against organised crime. We are introducing the toughest penalties in Australia. If you break these new laws, you will face the toughest penalties. Any person found to be selling illicit tobacco will face fines of more than $355,000 or up to 15 years in jail, while businesses will face fines of more than $1.7 million. These reforms build on the work already underway by Victoria Police to disrupt and deter crime associated with the supply of illicit tobacco as part of Taskforce Lunar. This work to date has seen more than 80 offenders arrested and $37 million worth of cash, vapes and illegal tobacco products seized. The tougher penalties will come into effect immediately when the act commences, and the rollout of the new licensing scheme will start from the middle of next year.

The bill will commence in two stages. There has been a lot of talk about the commencement, but let me reassure the house this is commencing as soon as possible. The first stage will come into effect by the end of this year, establishing the licensing scheme and the regulator and allowing for the appointment and training of licensing inspectors. This will allow for licence applications to be made and determined in advance of the requirement for businesses to hold a licence. Stage 1 will also amend the existing offences and powers in the Tobacco Act 1987 and repeal the e-cigarette and specialist tobacconists provisions. The second stage will introduce the licensing offences and enforcement powers of licensing inspectors, enabling penalties to be applied to tobacco suppliers operating without a licence. We need to give retailers the time and the opportunity to obtain their licences before we commence enforcement. We have to set up the tobacco licensing scheme, recruit the inspectors and give businesses that opportunity to begin complying.

When combined, these reforms in the bill will respond significantly to community concerns regarding illicit tobacco and the prevalence of tobacco businesses suspected of involvement in distribution. There is also of course a significant public health good that comes from regulating tobacco. According to Quit Victoria, smoking costs the economy $3.7 billion in tangible healthcare costs and an additional $5.8 billion associated with the loss of life every year. According to VicHealth, tobacco is also estimated to kill 4000 Victorians and about 20,000 people around Australia every year, making it the leading cause of preventable deaths in Australia. In Victoria we spend more than $600 million a year on smoking-related health care.

With the time I have remaining, along with the statewide benefits in the bill I would like to also acknowledge some of the correspondence I have received from local residents, including in May from a local dad, Cameron, who wrote to me reporting that in North Coburg and Newlands, opposite a local primary school, there is a small convenience store that has opened up:

It’s clearly a front for selling vapes to underage students with a high volume of students frequenting it … their actual stock list is incredibly bare and thin.

Myself and several concerned local community members have reported this to the council … with the new vaping restrictions coming into place –

federally –

I know you will be keen –

that is, yours truly –

to follow this up and ensure sufficient action has been taken at council level …

I did definitely escalate that issue, Cameron, and I am pleased to say also through the measures contained in the bill today we are taking really strong enforcement action going forward. Just yesterday I received an email from James of Pascoe Vale South, who said to me:

You will be well aware of what occurred on Coonan’s Road in the early hours of Monday morning, namely the firebombing of the Coonan’s Road Convenience Store. It is an event that has shaken and hurt the local community … I had been to that store prior to the attack and noticed that they were selling blackmarket tobacco.

I’m hugely relieved that nobody was injured … It’s tragic that the surrounding businesses have also been damaged (including the new Pilates studio) …

I recognise that this is a complex issue and requires coordination from all levels of government and even private businesses including insurers and landlords.

I am not sure of the solution, but may I ask that you at least pass on to the Premier and the Cabinet … the concerns your community is feeling right now.

Well, James, I am pleased to say I am directly raising your concerns not only to the Premier and the cabinet ministers but to the Parliament as we pass this bill, which will take strong action going forward to crack down on the illicit tobacco industry. But it is also St Oliver student James, who wrote to me in June of 2023, who will be pleased that this bill is passing. He said to me:

I’m writing to … raise awareness about vapes (tobacco) being sold illegally in … schools. Many businesses let many people buy them without ID which is not ok … anybody caught selling vapes without ID verification should get their business shut down, receive a $10,000 fine and even a month in prison.

Well, James, I am very pleased to say that this bill will fine businesses in breach up to $1.7 million accompanied by the toughest penalties in Australia of up to 15 years in prison. Thomas from St Oliver also previously wrote to me saying:

Young teenagers and even older primary students have been getting a hold of vapes (& tobacco) and something needs to be done about this issue … Some ways to stop this can include council workers patrolling the streets near schools.

Well, Thomas, I am very pleased to also report that this bill will establish a new Victorian tobacco regulator with dedicated inspectors to hit the streets alongside Victoria Police. Finally, Isabelle from St Oliver Plunkett also wrote to me to say that one vape is equivalent to 50 cigarettes, with vapes proven to be more harmful than cigarettes. Well, Isabelle, I am pleased to say that the crackdown on illegal tobacco and vaping via this bill will help our community be healthier and safer through better regulation and oversight of such products.

With the time I have remaining I just want to call out the opposition on their pathetic response to this absolutely essential piece of legislation. We had the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings we heard about earlier where hardly any of the opposition members bothered to turn up. Bev McArthur carried the show for the opposition when it came to the PAEC hearings. And the member for Ovens Valley – what a fraud that his motion is in terms of –

Michael O’Brien: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member should be required to withdraw a slur in those terms.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Paul Hamer): The member’s time has expired, but I do remind the member not to make imputations about other members.

Chris CREWTHER (Mornington) (11:56): I rise to speak on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. This is a bill that finally addresses a longstanding issue in Victoria, as organised crime gangs have battled for control of the illicit tobacco trade and carried out over 110 firebombing attacks over the past two years. I know just recently in Frankston, right next to my electorate, there was a big fire in a tobacco store in Young Street, with a vehicle smashing into the store before it was set alight. Thankfully nobody was inside at the time. On the same night a tobacco shop also suspiciously went up in flames in Thornbury. Victorians are scared. These kinds of attacks really hit at the heart of a community, our small business owners and more.

This has all come about in the context of Victoria being the only state or territory without any kind of registration or licensing scheme in place, which has completely hampered police in their efforts to crack down on these arson attacks and firebombings. As the member for Warrandyte pointed out, police estimate that more than half of Victoria’s estimated 800 to 1000 tobacconists sell illegal products. Today this government is finally regulating the market more tightly, albeit a lot later than it should have, after we introduced a bill to tackle this last sitting week that was blocked by this Labor government. This reminds me of the Paul Denyer situation. The coalition introduced a bill to stop Frankston serial killer Paul Denyer ever getting parole. It was also blocked by Labor; shamefully, this government rejected it at the time. But a few months later Labor introduced their own bill doing the same thing. At least we can see that the actions of the coalition are pressuring this Labor government to finally take action when they otherwise may not have. Indeed they have had 10 years in a row in government to take action on this and many other issues.

Going back to the substance of this bill, it introduces a robust licensing system that includes a fit and proper person test, a provision we have long called for to prevent individuals with ties to organised crime from participating in the illegal tobacco trade. This is key to curbing the influence of crime syndicates. The penalties proposed are also a positive step, with severe penalties to show that Victoria is serious about tackling this dangerous and illegal trade. But what is clear is that this government totally lack originality, and it seems, as we near the end of the year, they can only offer up watered-down Temu versions of our ideas. This is a reactive government lacking in ideas that is not proactive.

I mentioned Denyer before, but we also had the coalition introduce a private members bill to ban machetes in November last year, only for this Labor government to reject it despite skyrocketing knife crime over the past decade, including in my electorate of Mornington. Then, months later, in February of this year, they finally made a step in the right direction, but not enough, to make machetes a controlled weapon. Now we have a Labor government playing politics again with this bill today, after the government blocked our own private members bill for a licensing scheme with penalties up to $1 million for illegal tobacco traders. It was an initiative which would have delivered real consequences, yet this government blocked it simply because it came from the coalition opposition. This is all political posturing while our communities are left vulnerable, with businesses exposed and criminals running rampant. Let it be on the record that we took the lead on this issue while this government delayed and dithered, giving criminals the green light to keep terrorising our communities.

Labor’s bill still has problems. They should have listened better to us. We have had and we have got delays, delays, delays. Victoria has waited long enough, and now we have a bill that proposes a licensing scheme that will not come into full effect until 1 July 2026. That is two more years, and it will be nearly four years since the government first received those Better Regulation Victoria recommendations.

Going back to another point made by my colleague the member for Warrandyte, she made the point that even in the last two weeks, since the government blocked our bill, we have had two more firebombing incidents in that time. These are two more incidents that could have been prevented had the government taken action only two weeks ago.

That is in part why we have introduced a reasoned amendment. The reasoned amendment asks that the government conduct further consultation with affected stakeholders on when the licensing scheme should come into effect, because for the licensing scheme to not come into full effect until 1 July 2026 is too long. Meanwhile, communities will be left vulnerable to firebombings, businesses will lack certainty, individuals will lose their livelihoods and police will continue to fight every day to keep Victorians safe. Two years is too long. I urge the Labor government to reconsider and expedite the process, aiming for a full implementation by mid-2025 at the very latest. Victorians do not need another two years of violence and destruction, particularly when we have already had more than two years of delays.

Let us look at the timeline of delays under this government. In May 2022 Better Regulation Victoria released a report to then Premier Andrews on regulating the illicit tobacco trade. In March 2023 there was an attempt by rival organised crime gangs to form a commission to control the illegal tobacco market, igniting the tobacco war. In October 2023 Victoria Police launched Taskforce Lunar following dozens of arson attacks. In March 2024 Premier Allan announced the government would adopt the regulations in the Better Regulation Report, two years after it was released. In October 2024, just last sitting week, the Liberals and Nationals introduced our own version to Parliament, with a private members bill to tackle the illicit tobacco trade. In November 2024 more than 120 arson attacks targeting tobacco shops and related businesses have taken place over the previous 18 months.

On 12 November the Allan government finally unveiled details of tobacco laws. This was rushed. I am the whip for the Liberals in the Assembly, so I get sent the government business program on a Thursday night, although it is getting even later and later, as the member for Brighton will attest to, on a Thursday night. This tobacco bill was not even in the program sent to me last Thursday night. It was only sent in an amended version of the government business program sent out on Tuesday morning. So it was rushed under pressure from us and the community. It was last-minute. It was so last-minute that we had to have an additional party room meeting on Wednesday to discuss Labor’s bill, as this bill was not ready or even proposed on the government business program at the time we had our regular party room meeting on Tuesday morning.

This issue really is the perfect storm. We have police, health, taxation and border agencies all working, with little chance to have a coordinated plan because of Labor dithering on this issue. As such, we have a collective policy failure that allows criminals to operate with impunity, putting local businesses under threat, not to mention the threat to public health. For so long Australia has been a world leader in tobacco control, not so much in Victoria but Australia-wide. Now this crime wave threatens to undo years of hard-won progress in reducing smoking rates. So many people are turning to illegal tobacco and vaping products that evade regulation. In many of these stores illegal vapes are sold alongside illicit tobacco, threatening to undo all the progress we have made to safeguard health, reduce smoking and relieve pressure on our public health system.

And who is all this being regulated by? Not this Labor government but bikie gangs, crime gangs and criminals within Victoria and in our country. We need to fast-track this legislation so that law enforcement have the tools they need to tackle these crime gangs to stop this crime issue becoming even worse in Melbourne. We need serious enforcement powers now and a well-resourced collective approach to tackle illicit tobacco. This government should get behind our reasoned amendment. They should have taken further action, but they need to ensure that this action occurs sooner and not wait until 2026.

Kathleen MATTHEWS-WARD (Broadmeadows) (12:05): I rise to speak on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024, and I begin by thanking Minister Horne, her staff and her department for their excellent work on this bill. We have seen the devastating impacts of the illegal tobacco trade, especially in the electorate of Broadmeadows. I thank Minister Carbines and Victoria Police for the work they have been doing to address this scourge in our community and for the more than 200 search warrants executed, the more than 80 arrests they have made so far and the $37 million worth of cash, vapes and illegal tobacco products that have been seized. These figures do not include the most recent raids last week, in which more than 600,000 illegal cigarettes were seized across 25 properties. I thank our hardworking police officers for the work they do every day to hold criminals to account and to keep our communities safe.

This bill will bring in the toughest penalties in the country for the illegal tobacco trade and the criminals who profit from it. It will create a strict new licensing scheme and provide more powers to crack down on illicit tobacco and organised crime, with massive consequences for breaking the law. The bill will establish a tobacco business licensing scheme so tobacco can only be sold by licensed retailers. The licences will only be available for fit and proper persons who pass a strict test. This will help protect legitimate businesses from getting undercut by criminal syndicates and ban those who have criminal affiliations from having anything to do with the trade.

Milk bars and legitimate businesses are so important for the walkability of our suburbs and the communities they serve. As kids, my brothers and I would walk or ride our BMXs to the milk bar in Ridgeway Avenue, Glenroy, to return our bottles for cash, grab a Sunnyboy or a Big M and a packet of Marlboro Special Mild for Mum. Seventy per cent of businesses in Victoria are family run, and our local milk bars remain a huge asset for our communities. I understand and appreciate that the licensing costs will be scaled to reflect the business size to ensure small family-run businesses are not disadvantaged. These laws will help protect legitimate local small businesses so our kids can also get the opportunity to walk to the milk bar for an icy pole and, thanks to our container deposit scheme, get 10 cents back for their bottles, cans and cartons. But thankfully the days are long gone when kids could legally buy a pack of smokes.

On that note, I wish to thank our wonderful VicHealth for their nearly 40 years of work in reducing the harmful effects of tobacco. It was set up under the Cain Labor government, and I am very proud to be one of the three current tripartisan representatives on the VicHealth board, along with the member for Brunswick and the member for Evelyn, under the fabulous leadership of our chair Nicola Roxon. I thank the incredible Sandro DeMaio and his brilliant team for the work and advocacy they have been doing on both smoking and vaping and for their important contributions to the recent Public Accounts and Estimates Committee inquiry on this matter. I also thank Nicola for her incredible work on tobacco and smoking cessation over her career. I also express my gratitude to the hardworking PAEC committee chair, the member for Laverton, and committee members, especially my Labor colleagues the members for Yan Yean, Point Cook and Clarinda and a member for South-East Metro, for their diligent work, for turning up to each of the hearings – unlike the Libs – and for continuing their support for our strong advocacy on these issues.

At the centre point of this report the committee recommends the establishment of a Victorian licensing scheme and an active regulatory authority, which is exactly what we are legislating for today. A new tobacco regulator will be established with dedicated inspectors to hit the streets alongside Victoria Police. The regulator will administer the licensing scheme and will be responsible for enforcement and compliance of licences. This includes the power to search shops, suspend licences and seize illegal items. Inspectors will also support police with extra intelligence gathering in the fight against organised crime. The legislation beefs up Victoria Police’s search powers to make it easier and quicker to raid, search and seize illicit products from a retailer suspected of having links to organised crime. Police will also play a clear role in ensuring the suitability of licensees under the scheme. There will also be powers to impose further licence conditions. I am very proud to say that we are introducing the toughest penalties in Australia. Any person found to be selling illicit tobacco will face fines of more than $355,000 or up to 15 years in jail, while businesses will face fines of more than $1.7 million.

The bill will also modernise and broaden the scope of what is considered to be illicit tobacco to align with the Commonwealth’s tobacco legislation and remove barriers to enforcing illicit tobacco offences. The current legislation provides for separate illicit tobacco offences depending on whether the item is smuggled or an excisable good, which can be difficult for an inspector to determine, preventing enforcement action from being taken. This distinction is removed under the new offences to simplify enforcement. This bill will help keep the community safe by regulating tobacco sales and punishing lawbreakers. The bill will also introduce inspection and enforcement powers for licensing inspectors, including the power to enter premises for compliance monitoring, and inspection and seizure powers. The regulator will be able to issue improvement notices and accept enforceable undertakings to bring about compliance with the licensing scheme.

Victoria Police will continue to be responsible for and focused on detecting and investigating serious and organised crime associated with illicit tobacco, but the bill will help to strengthen Victoria Police’s efforts to crack down on illicit tobacco, providing police officers with the ability to exercise enforcement powers under the tobacco business licensing scheme, including the power to obtain search warrants, enter premises and seize illicit items to support the detection and enforcement of serious criminal activity. The regulator will build strong operational relationships with Victoria Police, enabling the regulator to focus on day-to-day compliance, inspection and enforcement activities and Victoria Police to focus on the detection, investigation and disruption of serious and organised crime associated with the illicit tobacco market.

As well as working closely with Victoria Police, the new tobacco regulatory function will also work closely with the Department of Health to continue our commitment to address the harms caused by the illicit tobacco industry and the significant health impacts of smoking. Tobacco remains a leading cause of avoidable disease and death in Australia, contributing to serious conditions like cancer, heart disease, respiratory issues and asthma. Besides the recommendation for the establishment of a Victorian licensing scheme and an active regulatory authority, the PAEC report makes 47 findings and 27 recommendations to reduce the harms of tobacco, especially for young people.

Both tobacco and e-cigarettes contain nicotine, which is highly addictive and harmful, especially for young developing brains. The decline in tobacco use in Victoria over the last 20 years has been undermined by a rapid growth in vaping since 2018, particularly among young people, including children. While smokers are more likely to be of lower socio-economic status, e-cigarette users are not. However, vapers are more likely to be receiving mental health treatment and more likely to be LGBTIQ+, and there was higher vape usage among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander respondents. Vaping is most prevalent in north-western Melbourne, while smoking rates are higher in regional areas. Smokers are also more likely to have a disability, experience unemployment and have less formal education than non-smokers.

Victoria has excelled in smoking cessation, boasting the lowest proportion of daily smokers in Australia. However, vaping rates surged dramatically from 2018 to 2022, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, with around 500,000 users over 14, nearly equivalent to the number of smokers. Many young people mistakenly believe that vaping is less harmful than smoking, despite a lack of scientific support for this belief. E-cigarettes contain harmful substances including chemicals found in car batteries, poisons, fuel and disinfectants. They can lead to serious health issues, such as popcorn lung and e-cigarette or vaping associated lung injury, which may require ventilator treatment in a hospital intensive care unit. Studies show e-cigarette users face significantly increased risks of heart attack and heart failure compared to non-users.

The report found that the majority of parents see preventing children from vaping as a high-priority public health concern. Like many others, I am very concerned about how vaping products are marketed to young people, particularly through social media influencers and platforms like TikTok, and how vape retailers strategically position themselves near schools. The appealing packaging and flavouring resembling candy and everyday items like highlighters and make-up pens make these products attractive to children. The report found that vaping has fast become the number one behavioural issue at schools. Vapes are easily concealed because they are small, soundless and also smell like other products such as perfume or aftershave, and they are undetected by teachers. Some schools have resorted to costly vape detection systems, while one school even redesigned its uniform to prevent concealment. To combat these challenges the report recommends introducing compulsory tobacco and vaping education at the primary school level, ensuring resources align with existing drug and alcohol education programs.

I have got a lot more to say on vapes, but I am running out of time. I just really want to thank the committee for their work on the bill and the minister. I wholeheartedly support the bill.

David SOUTHWICK (Caulfield) (12:15): I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

I do so so that we can bring on motion 302, which is to move:

That this house condemns:

(a) the Allan Labor government for signing multiple multibillion-dollar Suburban Rail Loop contracts prior to submitting the project proposal required to receive Commonwealth government funding; and

(b) the Minister for Transport Infrastructure for misleading the house by denying this in question time on 12 November 2024.

There is nothing more important at the moment than debating this particular matter. We have a bill before the house at the moment that will take 18 months before it comes to fruition. This government is trying to debate the tobacco bill but will not even bring it on now and the legislation has to wait 18 ‍months. Why is that the case? I will tell you why: because the government has run out of money. Why have they run out of money? Because they are spending it all on the Suburban Rail Loop. And why do we now have the police on strike? Because the police cannot be paid, because of the Suburban Rail Loop.

We have had the Minister for Transport Infrastructure come into this house in question time and say that information had been provided to Infrastructure Australia before the contracts were signed. The minister misled the house. The minister had six years to get this project in order. Infrastructure Australia has been calling for these documents for two years, and the government has provided them with absolutely nothing. Now, after signing at least three contracts, this government and this minister misled the house by saying that the information had already been provided.

Ros Spence: On a point of order, Deputy Speaker, could you please let the member on his feet know that his microphone is working?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): The member to continue.

David SOUTHWICK: That is not a point of order. I may be quite passionate about this, and I will tell you why: because Victorians have been misled by the government, which is misleading them because it wastes and mismanages money, and Victorians are paying for that each and every day. It is a Suburban Rail Loop that nobody wanted. This government will stand up and say that they did, and do you know why? Because six years ago it was one project, today it is another project. This government went, only two months before the election, and changed the name from ‘Suburban Rail Loop’ to ‘Suburban Rail Loop – Airport’; change number one. Change number two: they then decided ‘We’re not going to do a loop, we’re going to do a line,’ so the name was changed to ‘Suburban Rail Line’, because it was not going to be a loop because they did not have the money to do it. Then they decided, ‘Do you know what? We’ll change it again. What we’ll do is we’ll just call it a housing project. We won’t call it a suburban loop anymore. We’ll now call it a housing project.’ The Minister for Transport Infrastructure went out on the front steps the other day, and all he spoke about was housing.

Mathew Hilakari: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, it is a narrow procedural debate. Could you bring him back to it.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): The member is being relevant to the debate.

David SOUTHWICK: As I say, this is very important. It is so important to talk about this right now, because Victorians are being misled and there is no money to pay for police and other important projects.

Juliana Addison: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the issue I am raising in my point of order is that it is very important that members do not pre-empt a future debate, and he needs to stay relevant to why the procedures of the house need to be impacted today by this motion rather than pre-empting what he would like to debate in the procedural motion. He is being irrelevant.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I have made my ruling. The member was being relevant.

David SOUTHWICK: On the point of order, if I could, the member for Wendouree has no idea what she is talking about. The member for Wendouree clearly is very concerned that her constituents in Wendouree will not benefit from the Suburban Rail Loop. That is why –

Members interjecting.

David SOUTHWICK: I have not finished my point of order, member for Wendouree.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I will take no more points of order. I made a ruling.

David SOUTHWICK: Victorians have been misled by the minister for infrastructure, who clearly is out of his depth and who has misled this Parliament, because the government has run out of money. They cannot pay Victoria Police; they are on strike. They cannot pay to ensure that we get the tobacco bill put into this Parliament, so they have got to wait for 18 months to do something that is really important in terms of law and order. Ultimately it is because this government’s pet project, the Suburban Rail Loop, does not stack up. S&P have said that if the federal government does not give the money, we could be downgraded financially. The detail has not been done, and this government has misled this house.

Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc) (12:21): Before I kick off I would like to assure the member for Caulfield that my contribution is being recorded by Hansard, so feel free to keep your phone in your pocket or to yourself for my contribution.

This is an extraordinary intervention, where a notice of motion out on the back stalls in 302 territory is being used to disrupt the proceedings of the house on a bill that those opposite said was critically important and urgent to debate in this house, so much so that the member for Ovens Valley was reflecting on his triumphant actions of discussion a couple of weeks ago and on the effort that has been made, and then we had the member for Brighton’s contributions as well. Judging by the limited number of coalition members in the chamber, I am not sure whether this has the coordination or structure of interruption and intervention that normally is sought. The member for Sandringham has raced into the chamber and I am sure will give a great summation on what notice of motion 302 is doing. Then we have the yelling and the screaming about the Suburban Rail Loop (SRL) and all that sort of carry-on, and the notion that it has been to people twice, it has been voted on. Why bring on notice of motion 302 from out in the back stalls to interrupt the session of this house and the critical debate? There has been interaction with Victoria Police. It has been subject to a lot of public discussion and engagement. Then all that rhetoric building up over the last few weeks by the coalition that said that this was a really important issue, a really important bill to be discussed, is undermined by such a cheap, silly stunt of interrupting procedure before the lunchbreak. The rantings and carry-on and the key lines that we heard just before are not really a serious policy discussion or setting that is brought forward, not in this forum or in other types of bills.

I do not think the member for Caulfield has built the case for why the debate should be interrupted now. This could easily be done in a matter of public importance or grievance discussion in an opportunity down the track. It could be an opportunity for an opposition MPI that talks about the Suburban Rail Loop. They could ventilate a number of dot points that could carry on. This notice has sat on the notice paper for an extended period of time, so its urgency – to cut across a bill that they said was so critically important to debate today, that was so timely that we needed to have it through the Parliament, and then to interrupt that – is more about stunts than the behaviours and actions in the Parliament. It is all good to get up, and if you want to have a ventilate and you are feeling like you just need to get some stuff off your liver, that is okay. Sometimes you can do that on an adjournment and sometimes you can do that in a members statement, but when you are in the serious business of governing, when you are fronting up to issues that have been significant in our community and that need to have that debate and that leadership and that contribution, an adjournment like this is just a bit silly. I am not pre-empting the member for Sandringham. I am sure he will give a far better account than some of the rantings that we saw before. I am still shaking in my ears from the yelling and the carry-on that was going on.

But what is the justification to adjourn other than just another stunt? Why then are you cutting across the contributions on this bill that you said were so critical and so important? You cannot then go and stand up and be credible and adjourn on other things. The member for Brighton has made adjournments in the last sitting weeks on critical issues coming through. This is one of those issues discussed at the time, and then on the flip side this is to be adjourned now, this bill and its importance, for a stunt about the SRL, which has been taken to the Victorian people twice.

I know it is not inconsequential that the member for Brighton did not lead this adjournment, because normally it is Manager of Opposition Business territory to get up there and interrupt, and you can see who is lining up to speak on this. Unless I am misjudging, I do not think the member for Brighton will. I think he will see this as maybe not in his wheelhouse. Maybe it is not serious stuff – adjourning based on a notice paper, hundreds of notice papers out, simply because maybe they do not have enough speakers. Maybe we have found out that there is just not the depth and there is just not the policy intent. Maybe the notes have not been sent out. We see that the Nationals carry the coalition. The Nationals carry them, literally. The Nationals, as a coalition partner, do twice if not three times the speeches each and every week with a third of the crew, and so you see them in a lot, carrying the team. I mean, their backs are getting sore carrying that team so much. So maybe they just do not have the policy there, but maybe give us a bit of justification.

Brad ROWSWELL (Sandringham) (12:26): I do rise because I support the member for Caulfield’s motion to suspend debate so that notice of motion 302, standing in the member for Caulfield’s name, should be considered as a matter of absolute and utter urgency. The fact of this matter is that on the bill currently before the house, the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024, the government have already made their call. It is not actually important. It is being debated at the minute, but its implementation will not be until July 2026, 18 months away. It cannot be that urgent. Even I know – and I will speak slowly, because I know there are a few members on the government benches who may not be able to pick up on the subtlety of this ‍– that we are currently in November 2024, so if the government are bringing a bill and they say that it is urgent and they say that we should not be interrupting debate to address the member for Caulfield’s motion, they have got rocks in their head. It is clearly a much more urgent matter for the Parliament to be considering:

That this house condemns:

(a) the Allan Labor government for signing multiple multibillion-dollar Suburban Rail Loop contracts prior to submitting the project proposal required to receive Commonwealth government funding; and

(b) the Minister for Transport Infrastructure for misleading the house by denying this in question time on 12 November 2024.

Only a couple of days ago in this place, the Minister for Transport Infrastructure said:

I am really pleased that we have received $2.2 billion in funding to date from the Commonwealth.

I will say that again. The Minister for Transport Infrastructure, two days ago during question time in this place, said:

I am really pleased that we have received $2.2 billion in funding to date from the Commonwealth.

Wow. The minister should come into this place now and explain himself, because he knows that this Labor government has not received that $2.2 billion. He knows that the Allan Labor government have signed those tunnelling contracts without a plan to pay the bill. But we know after 10 years of Labor and we know after 10 Labor budgets that that is their MO. That is exactly what they do. They, frankly, do not give a stuff when it comes to signing away the lives of not only current Victorian taxpayers but future Victorian taxpayers as well. We have got the highest debt in the nation: $188 billion. Shortly we will be paying $26 million each and every day in interest payments alone because this Labor government cannot manage money. Some current Victorian taxpayers and certainly future Victorian taxpayers will be paying the price for decisions that this Allan Labor government make. They do not care. They say they care, but they simply do not care.

I assert that the minister, on Tuesday in question time when he was asked about the Suburban Rail Loop project and when he asserted that the Allan Labor government had received $2.2 billion in Commonwealth funding, intentionally and wilfully misled the house. He knew that that $2.2 billion had not been received in a Victorian government bank account. He knew that – he is the minister, after all – but what he did was he intentionally and wilfully misled the house and misled the Victorian people. That is what this Labor government does. This is what they do. They tell stories to create a narrative which suits whatever la-la land – with donkeys, ponies, unicorns, butterflies and other fluffy colourful things – to convince themselves and to convince their people that what they are doing is the right thing to do.

But we know that the Victorian people are smarter than that. The Victorian people are much smarter than that, and they want to know if their Labor government commits to a project how it will be paid for. That is a legitimate thing for the Victorian taxpayer to know, and in this case when it comes to Labor’s Suburban Rail Loop they have got no idea. We know from this year’s budget in the first year there is that $5 billion committed to the Suburban Rail Loop, and then in the second, third and fourth years it simply says ‘TBC’. Does that mean ‘To be confirmed’, does it mean ‘To be canned’ or does it mean ‘Too bloody costly’?

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I remind members to use parliamentary language.

Brad ROWSWELL: That is a legitimate question that the Victorian people have a right to know.

Daniela DE MARTINO (Monbulk) (12:31): Once again we are brought back into the realms of another opposition stunt with a motion to adjourn debate. Unfortunately they do not do themselves any favours by trying to adjourn off a debate about tobacco legislation which they have been attesting quite vocally to the importance and the urgency of. We consider this legislation quite urgent. And I would like to state for the record that it is not coming into effect in a year and a half’s time. Stage 1 comes into effect by the end of this year. That is what makes it so urgent, because I would like to remind those opposite that we are in November.

James Newbury interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: No, the bill quite categorically states that stage 1 will take effect by the end of this year. Stage 2 will take effect by early 2026, because you have to build the house before people can move into it. You cannot put the cart before the horse. If those opposite were actually listening to the contributions by government members on this, they would have understood this to be the situation. However, they form their own narrative, so if they want to talk about la-la land, we can talk about fire and brimstone instead over there in terms of fantastical contributions.

Roma Britnell interjected.

Daniela DE MARTINO: Maybe the member for South-West Coast just missed the contribution from the member for Sandringham talking about fanciful thoughts. In terms of fantasy, maybe those opposite could actually look at the bill a little bit more carefully, listen to the contributions of government on the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill ‍2024 and understand that there is urgency to this because the first stage comes into effect within two months time. The fallacy that has been espoused today by both the member for Caulfield and the member for Sandringham in terms of the timing is actually not correct.

Furthermore – and I have stated this before – when it comes to trying to adjourn off debates, what happens? We do not go to the motion there. We will simply go to the next order of government business, which is order of the day 3, and that is the State Taxation Further Amendment Bill 2024. So contrary to this entire narrative of ‘Let’s go to this motion right down in the back stalls of the notices of motion,’ it would actually take us to the next order of the day, which would be order 3. We know this and they know this, which is what makes this another stunt.

You will note I am very much doing my best to stick within the procedural matters of this rather than any substance, just as my esteemed colleague the member for Mordialloc did so aptly. As he put it, there are so many other options and ways for the coalition, for those opposite, to be able to air their grievances and their concerns. They can do it at question time, which they did. They can raise it in a matter of public importance, in a grievance debate and even in adjournments. The wonderful member for Mordialloc over there has made it utterly clear – and I will reinforce the notion as well – that playing games in the middle of legislation that we need to pass, which affects the safety of Victorians and will have such a necessary impact out there, is appalling. Those opposite need to have a really long hard look at themselves when it comes to the way that they conduct themselves in this place, because it is unedifying at best and it is appallingly noxious at worst.

I say that we need to get back to the actual matter of the bill before us so we can continue to do the important work, which is developing legislation for the benefit of all Victorians, not for our own egos and self-aggrandisement or a desire to try and get some kind of media attention. I cannot see from where I sit here whether or not they are there, but I am guessing there is no-one there actually that is interested in this stunt. So for those opposite, maybe actually tackle the real essence of what we are here to do, which is to improve the outcomes and lives of all Victorians. That is what we have been elected to do. That is what we continue to focus on, and that is why we will not be supporting this crazy motion to adjourn the debate, which would merely take us anyway to the next order of the day. We have excellent contributions to come on this tobacco legislation, and as the member for Mordialloc suggested, perhaps those opposite do not have any. I do notice the wonderful member for Shepparton, whom I really do have a lot of time for, has entered, but up until this point in time there has not been another Nationals member in here. It was the Nationals member from Ovens Valley who was being quite loud and proud on this. I wonder how the member for Ovens Valley feels that those in the Liberal Party decided that this stunt had to occur, because I would not be very happy if I were him. I cannot speak for him, but it is telling that they are not here.

Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (12:36): If we are talking about urgency, we are talking about the urgent state of Victoria’s finances: $187.8 billion in debt we are steeped in, bigger than New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania combined, with the interest on that alone being $26 million a day. That is $1 million an hour that we are about to pay. This procedural motion is urgent, and we are adjourning a bill, if I can remind the members on that side of the house, that is so allegedly urgent to them that it has taken two years since the recommendation was handed down for them to take any action on it. It will take 18 months for it to take effect, and it has been eight months since the Premier actually made a commitment that she would take action on the illicit tobacco trade. It is two years since the recommendation was handed down. I do not think it is as urgent as they purport it to be. What is urgent is the state of our finances. What is urgent is that taxpayers money is being wasted every single day. What is urgent is that Victoria has been bankrupted by the Allan Labor government, and Victorians are paying the price. The truth is that we have to adjourn this debate urgently because this is an urgent matter. Victoria is broke. We are out of money, and we should not be signing contracts when we do not have the cash and when Labor has bankrupted the state.

Notice of motion 302 is there. What we are witnessing here is a monumental failure by the Allan Labor government to honour even the most basic responsibilities to the people of Victoria. If you were to ever read the documents from that side of the house – Infrastructure Victoria, their own entity that plans for what happens in Victoria – it is a 10-year plan. I have taken the time to read it. It is about this thick, and not once in its 10-year plan does it ever talk about, recommend or propose the Suburban Rail Loop. How is that? In their own entity’s document on planning for infrastructure in Victoria it does not once table the Suburban Rail Loop. That is Infrastructure Victoria, let alone Infrastructure Australia, where under the national land transport agreement the bare minimum expectation is that states submit a project proposal report to the Commonwealth for approval. Yet here we are, with Labor stumbling at that starting line, having announced this project six long years ago. We have now learned that the fundamental report was only just submitted, so they are only getting to ticking that box now. It does not end there. Commonwealth law is crystal clear: any project seeking over $250 million in federal funding –

Michaela Settle: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, this is a procedural debate. She seems to be debating the motion, but we are on a procedural debate.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): The member will come back to the procedural debate.

Nicole WERNER: Well, okay, as we are talking about the procedural motion, I am talking about the importance and the urgency, Acting Speaker Farnham and member for Eureka, that we must adjourn this debate, because this is an urgent matter. Notice of motion 302 reads:

That this house condemns:

(a) the Allan Labor government for signing multiple multibillion-dollar Suburban Rail Loop contracts prior to submitting the project proposal required to receive Commonwealth government funding; and

(b) the Minister for Transport Infrastructure for misleading the house by denying this in question time on 12 November 2024.

It is urgent that we adjourn this debate so that we can debate the matter at hand – that the Allan Labor government is wasting taxpayers money. Every single day, day after day, we have interest bills at $26 million – as I have said before, it is absolutely ludicrous. That is the urgency of adjourning your delayed debate so that we can get to the urgent matters at hand.

Michaela Settle: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, this is a procedural debate and the member for Warrandyte seems to want to debate the motion. It is a narrow procedural debate. If you could bring her back to the procedural debate.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I remind the member that it is a procedural debate and to come back to it.

Nicole WERNER: The procedural debate is clear – that we have to adjourn debate because it is clearly not urgent to the members on that side of the house. What is urgent is what we are contending and what we are talking about in this motion. That is the truth, and we have to adjourn debate because that is the most urgent thing at hand today. The minister cannot confirm if this business case has ever been submitted – (Time expired)

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (12:41): It is always a pleasure to follow the member for Warrandyte. The member for Warrandyte mentioned signing contracts. I do recall, on the death knell of the previous Baillieu–Napthine governments, those classic days of Geoff Shaw, of the champion of the people –

Matthew Guy: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, this is a narrow procedural debate and the Labor members opposite have made that point clear about six times, and now the member for I think it is Point Cook – I am not sure where he is from – is deciding to talk about matters in relation to 2014, and that is not part of a procedural debate in 2024.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): I remind the member that it is a procedural debate and to come back to the debate.

Mathew HILAKARI: The Miley Cyrus loving former Minister for Planning – what a sensation he was back in the day.

David Southwick: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member is ignoring your ruling. It is a narrow procedural debate. We understand that the Suburban Rail Loop will not benefit the member for Point Cook, and I would ask you to bring him back to the actual debate at hand.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): Member for Point Cook, I remind you that it is a procedural debate and to come back to the debate.

Mathew HILAKARI: Thank you for your sage advice, Acting Speaker. Of course why we should not be considering this and why we should vote against this procedural debate is because we have got an important matter to consider, which is the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024.

Michaela Settle interjected.

Mathew HILAKARI: It was super important a couple of weeks ago. It was so important that members opposite could not be bothered turning up to any of the inquiry of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. They could not be bothered hearing from Victoria Police about what we should be changing –

Members interjecting.

Mathew HILAKARI: That is right, I am mentioning Victoria Police, because they could not be bothered turning up and listening to their evidence – they just could not be stuffed. And today they cannot be bothered actually passing this through the house and debating these bills. They cannot be bothered. All stunts. They tried this stunt at the start of the week to delay, and they delayed for another half hour; they are doing another delay now for another half hour –

Sam Groth: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the member for Point Cook has mentioned Victoria Police more times than the minister has cared to in this house in the last six months.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Wayne Farnham): That is not a point of order.

Mathew HILAKARI: He was embarrassing on an international level; now it is a subnational level. It is so great to hear from him again. But these are important bills that should be debated for Victorians. It is something that those opposite do acknowledge, selectively, and they would like to bring on other bills now, like the Statute Law Repeals Bill 2024. Well, I am pleased actually to speak on that. I hope to speak on that today – if our time is not wasted further by those opposite. In fact they think that bills like the tobacco amendment bill are so important that their amendment is to delay it further, to delay it into next year. They are not really interested in improving the lives of Victorians. They are interested in their stunts, when they even bother to turn up to work. They did not bother turning up to a committee that was considering this important legislation. They say they need more time, because they did not do the hard work in the first place. When they introduced into the house two weeks ago a media release largely written in crayon, pretending to be a bill –

A member interjected.

Mathew HILAKARI: I am reflecting on the quality of the bills that are being introduced by those opposite. That is what I am reflecting on. We should not support the suspension of the debate. We should not support the procedural debate, because of course we want to get these bills passed for the improvement of Victoria.

Assembly divided on David Southwick’s motion:

Ayes (24): Brad Battin, Jade Benham, Roma Britnell, Tim Bull, Martin Cameron, Chris Crewther, Wayne Farnham, David Hodgett, Emma Kealy, Tim McCurdy, Cindy McLeish, James Newbury, Danny O’Brien, Michael O’Brien, Kim O’Keeffe, John Pesutto, Richard Riordan, Brad Rowswell, David Southwick, Bridget Vallence, Peter Walsh, Kim Wells, Nicole Werner, Jess Wilson

Noes (50): Juliana Addison, Jacinta Allan, Colin Brooks, Josh Bull, Anthony Carbines, Ben Carroll, Anthony Cianflone, Sarah Connolly, Jordan Crugnale, Lily D’Ambrosio, Daniela De Martino, Steve Dimopoulos, Eden Foster, Matt Fregon, Ella George, Luba Grigorovitch, Bronwyn Halfpenny, Katie Hall, Paul Hamer, Mathew Hilakari, Melissa Horne, Natalie Hutchins, Lauren Kathage, Sonya Kilkenny, Nathan Lambert, Gary Maas, Alison Marchant, Kathleen Matthews-Ward, Steve McGhie, Paul Mercurio, John Mullahy, Tim Pallas, Danny Pearson, Pauline Richards, Tim Richardson, Michaela Settle, Ros Spence, Nick Staikos, Natalie Suleyman, Meng Heang Tak, Jackson Taylor, Nina Taylor, Kat Theophanous, Mary-Anne Thomas, Emma Vulin, Iwan Walters, Vicki Ward, Dylan Wight, Gabrielle Williams, Belinda Wilson

Motion defeated.

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (12:52): I thought those opposite might have taken this opportunity, but I am very glad that I have the opportunity to do so. I did want to follow on from the Leader of the Nationals, and I am pleased of course to talk in favour of the Tobacco Amendment (Tobacco Retailer and Wholesaler Licensing Scheme) Bill 2024. The Leader of the Nationals was talking about the urgency but then also about the delays related to this bill, and we have just had another half an hour within this chamber of further delays from those opposite in not seeking to pass this bill once again. We had a delay at the start of the week of half an hour because they thought it was so urgent they would like to delay it more. We have had an amendment put forward to the bill that seeks to delay it half an hour more. I just wonder about the tactics of those opposite and how much they actually reflect the community’s need to see this done as a matter of urgency. I am disappointed that we are seeing this occur so many times across our sitting week and that they do not take the processes and the needs of Victorians particularly seriously. The Leader of the Nationals also talked about taxation, and I just wanted to remind him that during his last term of government – that was 2010–14 – the Nationals increased taxes 24 times and they reduced them only four times. It seems like they sometimes might be missing some of their own history in these matters.

However, I would like to talk a little bit about the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee’s report into vaping and tobacco controls, which came through in August of this year. Of course we started that process in February of this year. I thought it was a really interesting report to be involved in. But the reason for this bill being here was really crystallised in one particular moment for me, and that was on Monday 15 April when we were meeting up in Shepparton, and I acknowledge the member for Shepparton in this chamber just for this moment. Detective Superintendent Kelly from the anti-gangs division, who was oversighting the Lunar and the Viper taskforces at the time, said this in response to the 100 search warrants that they had undertaken by that point in time, because we asked was illicit tobacco found from any of these 100 search warrants that they had enacted. Superintendent Kelly’s response was ‘99’ – all but one – and that unfortunately was at an address that had burnt down as a result of arson and had not reopened, so it was effectively a 100 per cent strike rate.

It just crystallises right there why this is such an important bill that we should be attending to right now – not being delayed, not being put off, not being used by the processes of this place to avoid these matters being considered properly. Detective Superintendent Kelly did go on to say a number of other things about some of the retailers, some in their defence. He said:

… out of the 1100 tobacco shops, our intelligence suggests, unfortunately, most are selling illicit tobacco. I want to make it clear, though, that there are a number of people who are trying to run a legitimate business, people who unfortunately are caught in the current situation.

He went on to say:

The feedback we are getting is that people running legitimate businesses are victims of extortion. They are victims of the situation where they are finding it very difficult to make a profit if they do not then venture into illicit activities, unfortunately.

That was really important evidence to hear. It was important to hear what Victoria Police had to say about what the taskforces had been undertaking, and those taskforces of course were very much related to organised crime, not to attending particular retailers that were not part of the organised crime that is going on in the industry currently.

That is why this bill is so important for this place to be considering and debating, and I hope to see it passed in this place later today. The Premier did announce in March that this bill would be introduced before the end of this year, and here we are: we are debating this matter before the end of this year, and we want to see it passed before the end of this year so that we can see those recommendations from Better Regulation Victoria taken up and those recommendations of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, of which there were 27, which followed on from 115 submissions, taken into account.

During that committee we also went down to the Australian Border Force facilities, and that was another telling point in time around what is happening right across the state. We went and saw some of the illicit tobacco that was being imported into Victoria. Australian Border Force – and this is in the public domain – said that they probably catch about 30 per cent of the containers that come into the country with illicit tobacco. I should say for members of this house that these shipping containers were in no way trying to hide exactly what they were importing into the country. They were packed full of cigarettes – packet after packet after packet. What we also know is that only one in 30 of those containers need to make it into this country for there to be a profit. So if you put those numbers together, from every 30 containers that are sought to be brought into the country we are only catching nine at the border. That means there are 21 coming through, and they only need one container to come through to make a profit. There are huge profits. It is a very lucrative industry that is going on. That is why we need to regulate it.

We need to regulate it off our high streets, off our streets and off our shopping strips across Victoria. I think almost every member in this place would have had some effect in their community, not just the effect of fires on the community and retailers but also the effect of tobacco being much more widespread and available. If you are selling illicit tobacco, of course it is not hard to go one step further and sell vapes or sell illicit tobacco and vapes to minors. Of course that is an easy and logical step for a retailer to make if they are already doing some of that, so it is something that is important for all Victorians. We know that tobacco and its effects are still the biggest killer, the leading cause of unnecessary death in Victoria, killing 4000 people a year. The member for Laverton rightly pointed out the almost $10 billion – and that is from 2018 – that it cost Victorians because of the lack of ability for people to quit smoking, but we have made incredible efforts in this space. We are down to 9 per cent of people.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.

The SPEAKER: I acknowledge the former member for Buninyong in the gallery today, Geoff Howard, and the former member for Gippsland West.