From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Kristin amiot. It's Thursday, March twenty seven, twenty twenty five. Peter Dutton says he'll do better than Labour's promised two percent tax cuts if the Opposition gets up at the federal election. In his budget reply speech happening on Thursday night, the opposition leader will pledge cost of living support, cheaper bills
and more funding for defense. Brisbane's new stadium will likely cost more than five billion dollars and it's threatening to blow Queensland's already ballooning Olympics budget. Premier David Chrisifooley says he's confident organizers will keep spending in check. Those exclusive stories alive right now at the Australian dot com dot au. Labour will pump more than one hundred and fifty million dollars into the Australian Federal Police Force in a bid
to crack down on the Lisit tobacco trade. The measure, announced in Tuesday night's federal budget follows years of tobacco tax hikes that have driven smoking underground. That's today's episode, but everybody else's tobacco's toasted. No, everybody else's tobacco is poisonous.
Look you straight, it's toasted.
For generations, it was a symbol of coolness. There's no smoking in this building, miss Tremel.
What are you going to do?
Charge me with smoking and rebelliousness and generally smoke just after a Why don't you come back in about ten minutes?
Ten minutes, you'll be smoking in.
Hell and even sophistication, Sady, tell me about it. In Australia, smoking was a big part of the culture. In this TV ad for Peter Jackson thirties, smiling men and women ride horses across red dirt and splash about in crystal clear water before presumably lighting up what was being touted as Australia's best value cigarette by month. The tide began to turn in the late nineteen seventies, when the Whitlam government phased out tobacco advertising and smokers wised up to
the health risks associated with cigarettes. By the mid two thousands, indoor smoking was banned in most Australian states and territories, and less than a decade later this happened.
Australia has scored a world first, following the approval last night of new laws to introduce plane packaging for cigarettes.
But since federation, Australian governments have taken a slice of revenue from tobacco sales. It's been a good little for the federal budget and an effective way to discourage people from smoking by making siggi's increasingly more expensive. The problem is it's worked a little too well.
It's so expensive it's gone to about fifty bucks to buy a pack of cigarettes, and the thing is thirty dollars of that goes right to the government in excise.
Sarah Eison is a political reporter with The Australian. She spoke with editorial director and the regular host of The Front, Claire Harvey, on Budget Night in Canberra.
And so it's made it incredibly expensive to smoke. I have relatives in Switzerland. Smoking is still pretty normal in Europe and they are never not horrifically surprised at the cost of our cigarettes in Australia.
Yeah. So, which means if you want to smoke and you don't want to pay fifty bucks a pack it you need to go and buy some cigarettes under the counter from an illegal retailer and that's created another problem, Hasn't it huge?
Really huge problem. I think it's really come to the fore in this budget this week more than any time I'd ever seen since reporting in the press gallery on health issues and otherwise, and it's shown that like seventeen billion dollars has been lost or there's a seventeen billion dollar black hole. I'd describe it as in the tax space when it comes to what that'd expect in that excise.
And it's different now because people are increasingly going to that black market, so it's at its lowest level the tax take from the cigarettes in fourteen to fifteen years.
This is a trajectory that labor governments chose to get themselves onto. Nicola Roxon, as Health Minister in the rud Gillard government, introduced plane packaging, the world's first plane packaging laws, which the tobacco industry fought very hard.
This is the first, very courageous step that our parliament has taken to introduce plane packaging. We're going to be the first country around the world to introduce it and the first of January is the start date.
The whole point of those was to make cigarettes less appealing, particularly to children. Then they've just gradually ramped up the tax, haven't they.
Totally Yeah, it definitely is something that the price just gets to a point where it's huge disincentive on top of the plane packaging. Now it's those pretty gory images that you see. All of that has just continued this push against buying legal ciggies over the counter.
One of the reasons to do that was not only it's good for Australians not to die of lung cancer, but also lung cancer created an enormous burden on the health system and so did diabetes in all the other conditions associated with smoking, like heart disease. So in fixing this one problem, though the government's now created, as you said, a fiscal hole for itself, how does it.
Patch that it tries to address the problem, and the problem at the moment is the black market. The government in this budget, while also announcing really that black hole and showing us what that looked like, also revealed one hundred and fifty million dollars in a crackdown on a llegal tobacco. So that includes fifty million dollars just for the Australian Federal Police to investigate to prosecute along with a range of other measures speak out. This budget builds
on the progress that we have made together. So it figures if it takes out the black market and people still really want to smoke, then maybe some of that black hole will be patched again.
Coming up, more from Claire Harvey's chat with political reporter Sarah Eisen.
Sarah went for a walk downstairs earlier and I was stunned to find a whole bunch of people smoking in the Parliamentary courtyard. Is there something about the stress of this building that drives people to the facts?
I think though, so the stress of the building and something of wanting to keep an old part of the press gallery alive. It is a novelty for me though, for sure, to see that as well.
This is something that once upon a time you could have thought would be framed as an ideological divide between say Labor and the Coalition. That the Coalition might argue, well, it's individual responsibility. People can choose to smoke if they want to. Labor is taking quite an unashamedly nanny's state approach to it around parliament though, Sarah, talking to politicians, do you detect that divide or do you think that's something that they're glad is diminishing.
Oh look, it's moved on a bit. I find I'm not having the discussion about analogue as you'd say cigarettes, but more so E cigarettes or vapes. And that's particularly because not only is it an individual decision, but the e cigarettes has this divide over whether you see it as just a gateway to smoking or whether you see
it as a cessation tool. And there's such a huge difference in the school of thought over vapes in particular, and that's where I've found the greatest difference in debate has been over the last few years in Parliament, both when the Coalition was in power and Greg Hunt was
Health Minister. He tried to do a few things around vapes but had an enormous pushback from liberal colleagues, and now into labor being in government and those same concerns coming forward regarding vapes, and then of course we get into the entire discussion of who's still taking funding and donations from the tobacco company's cough wink wink, the nationals. So it's still something that is discussed a lot, but I think it's a lot bigger than just who's smoking
an analogue drry. It's very complicated, the black market debate, the cessation debate, the individual responsibility debate. It's not just pro or Colm for the analog cigarette.
The big tobacco manufacturer is like Philip Morris and British American tobacco have pivoted two vapes. This is what they now make. And that's a pretty smart business move, you would think. And that's why the federal government introduced legislation requiring vapes to require a prescription.
A federal government will introduce tough new vaping legislation today. The new laws would see pharmacies become the sole trader of products in a bid to tackle the rapid rise in vaping among young people.
What are you hearing about the levels of compliance with that?
Pretty low? Pretty low. And it's interesting because the argument that this extra regulation is going to create a black market is an easy one to be deployed by tobacco companies. It's an easy one to be deployed by any lobby or opposition group. And the tobacco lobby's argument is that any form of regulation, any rules around them, it's going to create a huge, completely uncontrollable black market. At the
same time it has merit. It is actually something that's happening, and that is something that particularly in what we were discussing before when it came to the one hundred and fifty million dollars in the budget measures also went to e cigarettes because the fact is it's also not working. It is creating a black market. So sure it is the main argument used against any regulation. Is it completely fancy form faults? No, it is an issue, so that's something the government has to face as well.
Is there any incentive for politicians to not take donations from tobacco companies? We saw with the election of a record number of crossbenches the Teals at the last election, an increased focus on probity and integrity in politics. Is anyone talking about banning donations from tobacco producers.
No, but I think it's always the reputational thing, right, It's who's listening when people kick up a fuss. So that's on things like gambling. Labours obviously had a huge issue on its hands when it comes to banning gambling ads online or whatever, same as the Nationals and others will when it comes to tobacco election to election, term to term. It might EBB and Flo how much this
cuts through. But the danger is when you really don't want it to, or when you're really writing a thin line on a certain seat, it cuts through and people think it's dodgy. So I do think that's as always the greatest incentive right votes.
Sarah Eisen is a political reporter with The Australian and Claire Harvey is the editorial director and the regular host of the Front. You can read all the latest about this week's federal budget at the Australian dot com dot au