Pauline Hanson proposes slashing cigarette prices by nearly $30 a pack to fight black market

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is advocating for a drastic reduction in cigarette taxes, proposing to cut the price by nearly $30 per pack. Her party's strategy aims to dismantle the burgeoning tobacco black market by making legal cigarettes significantly cheaper, bringing their cost closer to that of illicit products.

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If you keep on putting up the price of cigarettes, you are going to get more mafia.

Health Minister Mark Butler has conceded that the tobacco black market has "exploded" in recent years, leading to a surge in related crimes, including arson attacks on retailers by organized crime groups vying for control of the illegal trade. Despite this acknowledgment, the government has maintained its stance against lowering tobacco taxes, which have been progressively increased over the past 15 years, now constituting more than half the cost of a cigarette pack.

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The only way we can deal with the criminality … is to bring back the price of legal cigarettes into the same realm as where the illegal ones are.

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce echoed Hanson's sentiment, arguing that high taxation directly fuels the black market. "If you keep on putting up the price of cigarettes, you are going to get more mafia," Joyce stated, emphasizing that reducing the price of legal cigarettes is the only way to combat the associated criminality. Senator Hanson further criticized the tax policy, calling it a "failed" approach that has handed a multi-billion-dollar market to organized crime while excise revenue plummets.

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It has handed a multi-billion-dollar market to organised crime while excise revenue collapses.

Australia's tobacco commissioner estimated in December that at least half of all tobacco consumed in the country originates from the black market, generating over $4 billion in profits for criminals. Concurrently, tax revenue has collapsed, with an estimated loss of between $7.7 billion and $11.8 billion in the past financial year alone. This revenue shortfall now exceeds the cost of the government's initiative to increase bulk-billing incentives for doctors. Border officials report seizing six attempted illicit imports for every 10 legally imported cigarettes, a quadrupled rate over less than a decade.

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Cut the tax. Smash the black market. Cut off the cash for organised crime.