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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Illegal Tobacco Stores

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs. Will the government warn landlords whose premises have previously been raided in relation to the sale of illegal tobacco about the new penalties that they may face if raided again? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr ELLIS: Mr Brett Skinner, a legitimate tobacco salesperson from my electorate, is concerned that illegal tobacco shops seem to be operating immediately after having been closed following a raid and says that there should be more action taken to proactively shut these down.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS (Enfield—Minister for Small and Family Business, Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, Minister for Arts) (15:02): I thank the member for Narungga for his question. It is a big task that we have been tackling, particularly in the last 12 months since CBS has taken it over.

The member asked specifically about the situation with landlords. He may be aware there was legislation that was passed through this parliament that commenced actually only a couple of weeks ago. In the last couple of weeks, when we do short-term closures, I am writing to those landlords as well to make them aware not only that their tenant has been caught selling illicit tobacco or vapes but also about the new offence provisions that have come into place. Now, any landlord that knowingly leases property for the purpose of selling illicit tobacco is subject to a new offence.

We have also made some changes to the Retail and Commercial Leases Act to enable landlords to terminate their leases easier when they do find out that that is the situation. So we are balancing it out for landlords being able to terminate those leases.

We have been doing a whole lot of work in this space in the last year. We have now taken about $34 million worth of product off the streets. We have done close to 40 closures. We have prosecutions through the courts. In the last 12 months since we stood up the illicit tobacco taskforce within CBS, it has done about 500-plus inspections. We are working very closely with SA Police, and Operation Eclipse in SAPOL has been working very closely with CBS. There is obviously a very strong connection with organised crime, which is obviously a concern. We are definitely working with landlords in this, and we have publicised those changes. I have written to the Insurance Council of Australia as well, to try to set up a process where we can actually tell the insurers—

There being a disturbance in the gallery:

The SPEAKER: Security, can I ask you to remove the stranger from the Strangers Gallery, please? Thank you.

The Hon. A. MICHAELS: We know that one of the issues for landlords is ensuring that their insurance policy is still valid, and having illicit tobacco often invalidates those insurance policies. So we are trying to work through a process where we can write to the insurers as well, to let them know. That is often an additional prompt for landlords to do the right thing and get rid of these people on their premises.

All this work we have been doing in the last 12 months has been nationally recognised as leading the nation. There was a national scorecard on which we ranked with an A+. We led the nation in the changes that we have made. I am getting contact from other ministers in other states, who are asking us about our processes and what we are doing. There is a lot of work to do, but we are certainly tackling it. Fair warning to anyone who is involved in that sector.

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