Cut tobacco tax to smash the black market, Liberals suggest

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Randall Meyers has seen the impact of the black market tobacco trade on his business’ bottom line.

The manager of Drakes Murray Bridge estimates that sellers of cheap, illegal cigarettes out of local shop fronts – and even cars and caravans – have cost his supermarket about $600,000 so far this year.

The lost income for all legitimate tobacco retailers in the Murraylands would run into the millions of dollars per year.

These were retailers who paid a licence fee for the right to sell those products, he said; and who complied with all the relevant consumer protection laws, selling plain-packaged products which were hidden from public view to discourage new smokers from taking up the habit.

The extra revenue could have been spent giving staff extra hours, boosting spending in the community and improving service levels for local shoppers.

“They’re the casual kids that are trying to get a rental property,” Mr Meyers said.

“A casual girl (who normally) goes down to a cafe down in Bridge Street or McCue’s or the movies – they’re not doing that because we’re not paying as much.”

Instead, money-conscious smokers were being driven to buy unregulated, potentially unsafe products from unscrupulous black market sellers with connections to organised crime.

“These things, no-one knows exactly where they’re coming from, what’s in them, what they’re actually doing,” he said.

“We’re not going to see the health problems until another few years … then when they go to the hospitals, there’s no tax money (to pay for them).

“Non-smokers, we’re going to pick up the bill.”

Federal MP Tony Pasin visited Mr Meyers’ store this week to promote the federal opposition’s proposed solution.

The Liberals hope to win support for legislation which would cut Australia’s tobacco excise by 80 per cent, reducing the cost of a pack of 20 cigarettes by about $24.

They would also legalise and regulate vapes and nicotine pouches, and pour an extra $200 million into the federal authorities targeting the black market tobacco trade: the Australian Federal Police, Border Force, the Criminal Intelligence Commission and AUSTRAC.

Mr Pasin said retailers across the electorate of Barker had contacted him to complain about the impact of black market tobacco dealers.

At Tailem Bend, he said, cigarette sellers had been seen to park their caravans at truck stops and advertise their wares on Facebook, then disappear again.

“There’s no point just closing stores – you have to smash the business model,” Mr Pasin said.

“You have to say, ‘It’s actually not commercially viable for you to sell illegal cigarettes any more.’”

It would be better to lower the prices of regulated products than allow illegal products to circulate in the community, he argued.

In fact, he suggested that reducing the tax on cigarettes would actually increase the amount of revenue flowing to the government, and on to health services.

“A hundred per cent of nothing is zero; 20% of something is 20%,” he said.

Any legislation would need support from federal Labor to pass, as the government has a majority in the House of Representatives.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised the Liberals’ idea on national television on Wednesday morning, but declined to guarantee that his government would not consider it.

Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable deaths in Australia, killing about 24,000 Australians each year.

Two-thirds of people who smoke will eventually die of a related disease, and about 10 years earlier than average, according to the federal Department of Health, Disability and Ageing.

• Get help: Visit besmokefree.com.au or www.sahealth.sa.gov.au; call the Quitline on 13 78 48; download the MyQuitBuddy app for Apple, Android or Windows; or talk to your GP.

Murraylands’ illicit tobacco retailers cop it again

By coincidence, several retailers which had previously been penalised for selling black market tobacco products – twice – were again raided around the Murraylands during the past week.

This time the agency involved was a higher authority than the state-based Consumer and Business Services.

An Australian Border Force spokesperson told Murray Bridge News that information about the outcome of the raids would be forthcoming once an ongoing operation had been completed.