Opinion: Of all the laughable government policies, this one is criminally insane
Overseas crime czars who now control this billion-dollar business keep laughing and thanking the government for its incompetence, writes Mike O’Connor.
There’s laughable policy – “free” electricity during the day (stupid), uncapped NDIS spending (wastefully incompetent), anything to do with the defence department – and then there’s criminally insane policy.
For an example of the last named, look no further than the well-remunerated career opportunities that have been created for aspiring young criminals by the federal government’s tax impost on cigarettes.
You have to love the public service rationale involved. Make cigarettes prohibitively expensive by taxing them, minister, and people will stop smoking, resulting in fewer tobacco-related hospitalisations while the government makes lots of money from the tax. It’s win-win, minister.
The US tried banning alcohol in 1919 and finally gave it away as a bad joke in 1933, but not before the crime czars had made millions from selling liquor and thousands of people had been murdered in gang-related executions and shootouts.
Our federal government now treads a similar path. It knows that the only people who are benefiting from the blind stupidity of its policies are smokers who now enjoy the cheapest cigarette prices in years and can afford to smoke even more by buying under-the-counter brands and the criminals who are raking in millions by selling them. It’s a win-win, minister!
The scale of the illegality is highlighted by retail figures with Woolworths recently reporting a fall of 51 per cent in tobacco sales for the first quarter, while Coles weighed in with a 57 per cent decline.
Not only is the government missing out on the corporate taxes these two companies would pay on their cigarette sales, but the tax take from the excise it charges – around $28 a packet which is a 75 per cent increase since 2019 – has fallen through the floor, with taxes collected through the excise expected to drop to $6.7bn by 2029 compared with more than $16bn 10 years ago.
What a brilliant strategy! What a masterstroke! Could Treasurer Grinnin’ Jim Chalmers do with an extra $10bn as he plays the fiscal equivalent of chainsaw juggling and prepares the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook due out next month which will show that the tax take from the tobacco excise has crashed? Very probably.
You might think that any criticism by international tobacco conglomerates of our government’s policy was self-serving for its obviously costing them millions in lost sales.
That aside, the recent observations by British American Tobacco’s chief corporate officer Kingsley Wheaton are worth considering.
He estimates that 80 per cent of the nicotine market including vapes in Australia is now controlled by the black market, criminals in other words, and said that nowhere else in the world had the tobacco trade become so deeply involved with violent organised crime.
“I’ve seen illicit trade in places like South Africa, Malaysia, Brazil and Romania,” he said.
“But none of those have seen the kind of public violence or community fear that’s playing out in Australia.” Well done, minister. Splendid news! Another first for dear old Oz.
The government’s response to this has been to establish the Illicit Tobacco National Disruption Group within Australian Border Force and spend hundreds of millions of dollars trying to eradicate a trade that just keeps booming while the firebombings, shootings and gang turf wars continue and the overseas crime czars who now control this billion-dollar business keep laughing and thanking the government for its incompetence.
It’s a fair bet that they really can’t believe their luck.
POSTSCRIPT: Many years ago I crouched in front of the family’s black-and-white telly and watched a man draw numbers out of a barrel. If he drew out my birth date I was off to the army as a national serviceman and very probably to Vietnam.
My number wasn’t drawn, but spare a thought at 11am today, Remembrance Day, for all those young men whose numbers were drawn and the hundreds who were killed in action, as well as remembering the ultimate sacrifice made by the men and women of all our armed forces who have died in defence of this great nation of ours.
Lest we forget.
