Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had to scramble to change the law after it emerged Border Force did not have the power to use $20m allocated to it by Labor to tackle the scourge of illegal tobacco.
New documents reveal a botched process to tackle the illicit tobacco crisis, with federal agencies complaining about “meeting fatigue due to overlapping and duplicative scope” and the exclusion of the Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission from key strategic discussions.
Following these warnings, Mr Burke a month ago agreed to set up the “illicit tobacco national disruption group”, saying it was a “new era in illicit tobacco enforcement … creating a fusion capability”.
“Our message is clear: if you profit from illicit tobacco in Australia, you are operating illegally, and you will be the target of the Illicit Tobacco National Disruption Group,” he said at the time.
Delays and reports of “meeting fatigue” happened while the Australian Border Force was reporting a sharp spike in interceptions of illicit tobacco into Australia, reporting as much as an 83 per cent month-on-month increase in May.
The documents, produced by Senate orders filed by opposition home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam, paint a frantic picture of agencies rushing to tackle tobacco smuggling, with the ABF warning of “increasing reputational risk for the ABF broader commonwealth agencies”.
At the centre of the rush in the last two months was the $20.4m apportioned in the 2024-25 budget, published in May last year, to establish the “illicit tobacco fee for service program” where the ABF would pay states and territories to counter illicit tobacco.
But in September – almost a year and a half after the budget – the ABF wrote to Mr Burke, saying “currently the Australian Border Force (ABF) has no legal authority to disburse funds to the states and territories”.
“Therefore, the ABF is now facing an urgent and escalating need for legislative change to disburse the funding for this program to support the delivery of an illicit tobacco end-to-end compliance and enforcement model,” it told Mr Burke.
The ABF said four states and one territory had already asked for $13.7m. Amended regulations approved at the end of October gave the ABF the power.
When contacted for comment, Mr Burke appeared to suggest this was in the ordinary course of events.
“Australian Border Force asked for increased authority,” Mr Burke said. “I gave it to them.” That came just a month after the ABF told Mr Burke that the framework to deal with illicit tobacco smuggling was ineffective and that agencies were complaining about “meeting fatigue”.
There was no high-level forum among various bureaucratic bodies to discuss the strategic – not tactical – side of dealing with illicit tobacco and key agencies were missing from conversations, the Illicit Tobacco and E-cigarette Commissioner said.
“The illicit tobacco domain may benefit from a more co-ordinated and joined-up approach across government,” the advice read.
“There are a number of issues that have been identified: [the Australian Taxation Office] and [the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission] are not represented in the governance arrangements … membership at the tactical level for illicit tobacco and e-cigarettes is largely the same and discussion is often duplicated between forums … members are experiencing meeting fatigue due to overlapping and duplicative scope across forums.”
To address the problem, Mr Burke in October announced an “illicit tobacco national disruption group” that would “represent a new era in illicit tobacco enforcement” with “fusion capability”.
“This is a first-of-its-kind whole-of-government response, demonstrating the Albanese Labor government’s commitment to combating the trade of illicit tobacco and protecting the Australian community at all levels of the supply chain,” he said at the time.”
The Coalition slammed Mr Burke’s management of the Home Affairs Department.
“This is another shocking Labor stuff-up in Home Affairs,” Senator Duniam told The Australian.
“The Albanese government spent $20m in the budget for Border Force activity, but then unbelievably forgot to give the ABF the powers to actually use it.
“This is not enforcement. It’s absolute incompetence.
“At the very same time as dangerous organised crime groups were flooding our borders with illicit tobacco, the government was wasting everyone’s time by drowning agencies in pointless meetings.
“Australians deserve action, not useless bureaucracy and internal chaos.”
Extracted in full from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/tobacco-fight-a-bureaucratic-stuffup/news-story/f58860fabcdc4223e803194619c69245
