Queenland tobacco sting scheme ‘needs safeguards’
Health inspectors could soon conduct secret tobacco stings without the strict oversight that governs similar police operations, sparking corruption fears.
A nation-leading scheme allowing undercover Queensland Health inspectors to buy illicit cigarettes and vapes from the black market could be vulnerable to corruption and fabrication of evidence, the corruption watchdog and civil libertarians have warned.
Draft legislation before the Queensland parliament includes the country’s longest closure orders for illegal tobacco retailers, new powers for landlords to terminate commercial leases to the illicit tobacconists, and harsh penalties for lessors who fail to act. While the bill has largely been welcomed by health officials, anti-smoking advocates and small business groups, the proposal to give public servants covert, police-like enforcement powers has sparked concern.
Queensland Council for Civil Liberties vice-president Terry O’Gorman said the proposed legislation must be changed to include similar checks and balances that exist for police covert operations, to ensure the powers are not misused by health inspectors.
“Allowing public servants in Queensland Health to exercise police powers without the training that police receive is a recipe for serious problems,” he said.
If the law is passed, health inspectors would be able to go undercover as a customer – using a fake name – to ask suspected organised crime figures about cheaper or off-market cigarettes, and to arrange the buying and delivery of illegal goods.
Queensland Police use similar tactics to investigate drug trafficking and weapons offences, but their covert operations are governed by a strict regime including an independent committee (led by a retired Supreme Court judge and supported by the Crime and Corruption Commission chair) which must approve the undercover investigation before it can occur.
Under the proposed legal changes, the Queensland Health director-general alone would be able to green-light a covert illegal tobacco operation and also manage it. Mr O’Gorman told a parliamentary committee investigating the bill that there was a history of “egregious and serious” misuse of covert police powers in Queensland, other Australian states, and Britain, before the control regime was introduced.
“There is nothing robust at all in the (illegal tobacco) bill that will control the behaviour of those engaged in covert operations to the extent those engaged are minded to misbehave in breaking the law,” he said.
The current proposed accountability regime was “weak and will lead to controversy”, including allegations of fabricated evidence in tobacco stings, Mr O’Gorman predicted.
He said without a proper oversight mechanism, misuse of covert powers was inevitable and, at a minimum, “each stage of a covert operative’s contact with a target ... must be mandatorily electronically recorded”.
Crime and Corruption Commission executive director of legal, risk and compliance David Caughlin said while the CCC was generally supportive of the bill, the agency shared concerns about covert operations.
Mr Caughlin said the scheme should incorporate extra safeguards, including the authorisation of undercover operations by an independent body and reporting after the investigation had finished. He said the independent committee that considered police covert operations considered how to protect officers from the psychosocial risks of going undercover, and the danger of having their real identity exposed to organised criminals.
He said the same protections should be afforded to the health inspectors, and recommended a reporting requirement to tackle the risk of corruption.
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