Tobacco Legislation (Closure Orders) Amendment Bill 2025
I contribute to debate on the bill as the spokesperson on drug law reform and harm reduction for The Greens. I say from the outset that the way in which the Federal and State governments are addressing vaping is wanting. However, The Greens understand why the Government feels compelled to act. The bill is a response to the exploding illicit tobacco and vaping trade across New South Wales. Communities are rightfully demanding action. It seems hardly a week passes without another media story about tobacconists—seemingly on every corner; we know they are, and in fact in the middle of the streets as well—and their links to organised crime. There have been stories of violence, arson attacks and robberies, and New South Wales is not alone in this regard; it is happening across the country.
This Government wants to look like it is cracking down. Again, I understand that. The illicit tobacco trade is real, and it is having a real impact on our communities. But The Greens are concerned that the bill takes a heavy‑handed law-and-order approach and does very little to address the root causes of the problem. This crisis did not happen overnight. It has been years in the making, in part because of a soaring tobacco tax that has simply become too high. As a result, criminal networks have taken advantage of that. They are smarter than the Government on at least one thing, and that is that restricting people's access to their drug of choice and their drug of addiction will not stop many of them using that drug. It will only make them engage in riskier behaviour to obtain it.
Evidence from New Zealand and the United Kingdom has shown a well-regulated vaping market can bring down smoking rates and even help people kick their nicotine addiction for good, while Australia's aggressive prohibition approach to vaping has instead created a thriving and lucrative black market, much like what has happened with illicit drugs. However, as the Federal Government controls the tobacco excise and has put in place tight regulation of vaping products, State governments can do very little to respond to a growing problem. We understand that this Government is pulling one of the few levers it has—that is, making our rules stricter than those legislated by the Federal Government.
The bill gives NSW Health sweeping new powers to issue short-term closure orders to shops suspected of selling illicit tobacco or vapes. It allows the secretary to order a business to close for up to 90 days on the basis of suspicion alone—not on suspicion that a breach has occurred but on reasonable suspicion that a breach might occur. There is no requirement for proof and no guaranteed right for a business owner to be heard. Based on those closure orders, a landlord can then evict a business without proof of wrongdoing and even without suspicion of wrongdoing. A business could be closed and its lease cancelled on suspicion that wrongdoing might occur. The Greens think that is pretty concerning.
The bill increases penalties for the sale of tobacco products without a health warning to a whopping 14,000 penalty units, which is a more than $1.5 million fine or up to seven years in prison, or both. That is a tenfold increase for individuals but only a doubling of the maximum fine for a business. It introduces the same penalties for the possession of commercial quantities of tobacco products. The only other example of that level of fine was introduced in the Public Health (Tobacco) Amendment Bill 2024, which passed in November 2024 and came into effect on 1 July this year. That bill introduced the same maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment or 14,000 penalty units, or both, for the unauthorised sale of vapes. My colleague Dr Cohn raised concerns about that at the time.
I want to put that into perspective. For trafficking heroin or ice at a commercial scale, an individual will face a maximum fine of 3½ penalty units, or around a $400,000 fine, so 14,000 penalty units is unprecedented—until it comes to vapes and tobacco, that is. Given the well-reported links to organised crime, we have to consider that it might be unlikely that the people who are set to receive those massive fines or prison sentences are the same people who are making massive profits from the black-market sale of tobacco and vapes. Rather, we should be concerned that parts of the bill may further encourage those people to coerce individuals—potentially exploited workers—to traffic and sell the products while the people in the background continue raking in the cash.
The bill also gives powers to inspectors to compel testimony and to hand over documents without any judicial oversight such as would be required with a police warrant. Earlier this year it was reported that there were just 28 inspectors at NSW Health as at 1 July 2025. What could possibly go wrong when under-resourced staff are given coercive powers to interrogate people who may be involved with organised crime, when there is a $1.5 million fine and all those years in jail the mix? It puts those workers in potentially very dangerous situations—in a position that is looking far more like policing than public health. However, the Public Health (Tobacco) Act 2008 currently provides that the secretary can appoint a person of a class prescribed by the regulations—that is, not subject to parliamentary oversight. With such sweeping new powers, the role of an inspector should be clearly defined and set out from the outset. It should be Parliament that determines which people are given this power, not the Minister of the day.
I reiterate that the heart of this crisis has been created by government policy: a Federal tobacco excise that makes a legitimate product so expensive that it creates enormous financial incentives for illicit trade and pushes consumers into the black market. People tell me it is cheaper to continue smoking than it is to switch to vapes, and that it is far easier to find illegal cigarettes and vapes than it is to find legal vapes. If we had a properly regulated vaping market with safer products readily available, young people would not be flocking to dodgy smoke shops run by criminal syndicates. Ultimately, until we address those root causes, this crisis will continue and black markets will thrive. No number of closure orders will change that.