Salesa JennySecond ReadingHon JENNY SALESA (Minister of Customs): I move That the Customs and Excise (Tobacco) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.This bill introduces new import controls to combat smuggling and unlicensed manufacture of tobacco. Questions have been raised from the other side as to why we're doing this under urgency. The original plan for this particular legislation was to have it passed under Order in Council in March but then COVID-19 happened and that was not the path that we actually could take. However one of the things that we know is that it is Customs officials at the border that help to ensure that our border is kept safe.One of the issues that was raised by the member Simon O'Connor was Why not give more resources to Customs staff so that they can do this work?" I can say that our Government did. Our Government invested $50.6 million in the Wellbeing Budget and that was essentially to have more staff at the Customs end to ensure that they are dealing with illicit drugs. But what we actually saw—and the Hon Tim Macindoe spoke about this when he gave his speech—is that there was such a huge increase of illegal cigarettes coming through and tobacco leaf coming through especially in the international mail centre that even though we increased the staffing resources at Customs it wasn't actually spent in what we originally intended for them to do which was to focus on meth and illegal drugs coming through our borders. They were instead spending so much of their time in intercepting cigarettes and tobacco leaf that was coming through. That is why it is important to actually pass this legislation under urgency.The other reason is that if we were to introduce this legislation in the normal way—introduce it and then send it through to the select committee—we might see what has happened in other jurisdictions where you give the indication and because it is mainly organised criminal groups that are using this route to smuggle cigarettes and tobacco products through they will within that time probably increase their illegal smuggling of cigarettes and that would not be of any good to any of us. Can I also say that we also want to ensure that our Customs staff do not waste their time at the border dealing with cigarettes that are being sent through in this way. Also the new seizure and destruction process that this bill introduces for tobacco and tobacco leaf will substantially reduce the costs of processing as well as storing illegal tobacco products and leaf that are coming through Customs.We know as well that in terms of our Smokefree 2025 goal of ensuring that we save people's lives a report that was commissioned in 2018 that Ernst & Young wrote one of the quotes that they said—and this was actually into tobacco excise increase—and I quote "increasing the price of tobacco continues to be the single most effective tool for reducing tobacco use." It also is worth noting that the last four excise increases for tobacco were all actually legislated for by the previous National Government.This is a really good bill. It is one that should've been introduced ages ago to actually ensure that we don't have that loophole where people are sending through cigarettes via the international mail centre. I commend this bill to the House."