Radio interview with Minister Butler, ABC Melbourne – 12 March 2025

RAF EPSTEIN, HOST: We’re joined by the Federal Health Minister, Mark Butler. Good morning.
 
MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE, MARK BUTLER: Good morning, Raf.
 
EPSTEIN: Just before I get on to tobacco enforcement, the tariff decision 25 per cent charge on Australian steel and aluminium. Is that the actions of our greatest ally? Is that the act of a friend?
 
BUTLER: It's a deeply, disappointing decision by the US, by the Trump administration. I think it's a bad decision, bad for Australia, obviously, but also bad for the US. Both of our economies have benefited from open trade, particularly in the 20 years since we've had the free trade agreement. That means that goods have moved between our two countries without tariffs on them. They sell more stuff to us than we sell to them. But we knew this was going to be a tough fight. We've only been at it seven weeks or so since President Trump took office. Remember, it took nine months for Malcolm Turnbull to gain an exemption. I think with an administration that was less determined than they appear to be right now, to do what Tony was just talking about very articulately. This is a deeply disappointing decision. Perhaps not entirely -  
 
EPSTEIN: Is it more than disappointing? Do you think Australia can trust America right now?
 
BUTLER: It's a bad decision for our economic relationship. It's bad for exporters here obviously.  It's bad for US industry that has a lot of very good jobs including in defence, that work off the back of steel and aluminium exports from Australia. It's a relatively small share of all of the aluminium and steel that America takes into their country. We'll keep fighting on this. We knew that this might be a decision we had to deal with, but it doesn't mean we're giving up. We'll continue to press the case for the benefits of good open trade between our two economies under a free trade agreement that's existed for 20 years.
 
EPSTEIN: You mentioned Malcolm Turnbull. Has he made it worse?
 
BUTLER: I don't think it's particularly helped, but I doubt it's had a significant impact on the decision of the US administration.
 
EPSTEIN: You've got extra money for tobacco enforcement. What's that money for? What's it going to be used for?
 
BUTLER: Enforcement. A lot of it will go into Commonwealth policing agencies. We want to go harder at tracking these people down, bringing them to justice, putting them in the dock and ultimately taking their profits. That's what it's all about. We'll be bolstering the work of Commonwealth agencies like the Federal Police, but also the Criminal Intelligence Commission to trace their activities, to go after the money and to seize it. This is an infrastructure we have targeted at other criminal activity, we'll extend it to tobacco. We'll also be supporting states in their enforcement operations and their prosecutions as well. We’ll be working with partner countries in the region that are also dealing with the challenges of this trade. It's all about enforcement ultimately. This is criminal activity that undermines our public health campaign to stamp out smoking essentially. But it's also bankrolling some very, very bad criminal gangs with their criminal activities like drug trafficking and sex trafficking. I think people out in the community, whether they're retailers or otherwise, think that this is a relatively innocuous thing to do to sell these cigarettes at cheap prices, but ultimately, you're bankrolling some very bad criminals.
 
EPSTEIN: So I just wonder if you think enforcement is making a difference? Border Force is already seizing four times as many cigarettes as they were just six years ago. So it's not that people don't think enforcement is a bad idea, but is it working? I mean, we've got more illegal tobacco and more tobacco fires than we've ever had and Border Force is taking in four times as many illegal cigarettes as they were just a few years ago. Is the enforcement working?
 
BUTLER: No, in the sense it's still an activity that you see in the community. We've got to do more, which is why we're allocating $160 million additional funds. Border Force is doing a terrific job in the last six months. It's hard to get your head around these figures. Just in the last six months, they seized 1.3 billion cigarettes at the border, it's not a million, billion cigarettes. That's a 50 per cent increase in a year. What we're giving them money to, first of all, expand their staff, but also to put in place some really cutting edge X-ray technology to pick these things up a little easier. It's relatively easy to pick up vapes in containers because of their metal content. They're doing a terrific job on that. Obviously, it's harder to X-ray for cigarettes. But ultimately, this fight will be won on the streets of Australia. Melbourne's had a particularly tough time of it. The relentless nature of these criminal gangs, some battling it out for turf to get this lucrative revenue has been fought out here in Melbourne harder than anywhere else in the country, but it is spreading to the rest of the country. Bolstering state enforcement activities, bringing these people to court and starting to go after their profits is really what this new package is all about.
 
EPSTEIN: The reason a cigarette costs more than a dollar, there's more than a dollar's worth of tax on every cigarette, the reason they're so expensive is you want not as many people to smoke. I just wonder if you think that is working? In the last decade, in the 2010’s, the cigarette price doubled. The smoking rates didn't drop any more dramatically than they'd already been dropping. Is the tobacco tax actually stopping people smoking?
 
BUTLER: Ask any expert anywhere in the world and they'll say price is probably the most important factor in driving down smoking rates. It's no coincidence that Australia has some -
 
EPSTEIN: I'm not talking about no excise. I'm talking about the fact it keeps on going up.
 
BUTLER: Yeah, I know, but it's no coincidence that Australia has some of the most expensive cigarettes and some of the lowest smoking rates in the world. The percentage of the price of a cigarette that goes to tax reflects best practise globally. What the World Health Organization says it should be, which is about 70 per cent of the price of a cigarette. But if you look at a country like the US that has much cheaper cigarettes, they also have a flourishing illegal market, flourishing criminal market in cigarettes, pretty much every country has. I don't buy this argument that the only reason for this flourishing illegal market is because our cigarettes are more expensive than the Americans, or any other country you might choose to name.
 
EPSTEIN: You can't see any reason to at least freeze the excise?
 
BUTLER: The price difference is such that freezing the excise is not going to solve this problem, the price difference is too big. What do you drop the price of cigarettes to the American price, which is still much higher than the illicit price or the illegal price of cigarettes? What that will do is it will drive smoking rates up, I know that. Every piece of expert research shows that. I'm not willing to raise the white flag on what is perhaps our most important public health campaign, something that still kills more than 20,000 people in Australia each and every year, in spite of all the gains we've made on this. What we've got to do is go after the criminals and that's what this package is all about. Tracking them down, tracing their activity, putting them in the dock and seizing their profits.
 
EPSTEIN: I really appreciate your time this morning thank you.
 
BUTLER: Thanks Raf.