{"id":36394,"date":"2025-12-06T19:41:49","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T08:41:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/?p=36394"},"modified":"2025-12-06T19:41:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T08:41:49","slug":"when-common-sense-meets-canberra-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/2025\/12\/06\/when-common-sense-meets-canberra-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"When Common Sense Meets Canberra Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today’s Adelaide Advertiser<\/em> has published a cracking opinion piece by Caleb Bond, laying out something so glaring that only a Labor minister could miss it. Bond\u2019s column spells out a simple economic fact. When governments hike taxes beyond reason, they don\u2019t magically create virtue. They drive ordinary people straight into black markets. High taxes kill economies. High taxes breed corruption. Every economist worth their salt knows it, One Nation has said it for years, and now the evidence is quite literally burning down tobacconists across the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, according to Bond’s view, Environment Minister Murray Watt still can\u2019t see the connection. Or worse, refuses to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bond recounted an exchange at this week\u2019s Senate Estimates discussing illicit tobacco. One Nation\u2019s Senator Malcolm Roberts asked the minister the most basic economic question imaginable: isn\u2019t the government\u2019s sky-high tobacco tax the reason law-abiding Aussies are pushed toward illegal cigarettes that cost a third of the legal price?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Roberts asked a fair, obvious question. Minister Watt, with a straight face, said \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only \u201cNo,\u201d but he said \u201cthere\u2019s absolutely no evidence\u201d for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, despite the Australian Border Force and industry data showing the illicit tobacco market already accounts for around 50 percent of cigarette sales, with projections hitting 80 percent next year. If that doesn\u2019t scream cause and effect, nothing will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our streets are now dotted with dodgy tobacconists. Crime gangs are firebombing shops. Innocent people have been killed. Insurance premiums are exploding for shops and homes near tobacconists. All while Labor insists none of this has anything to do with the punishing taxes they keep piling onto smokers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bond put it plainly. The idea that ordinary Australians buying ten or fifteen-dollar illegal smokes instead of fifty-dollar legal packs has nothing to do with tax is so ridiculous that, as he joked, even a seven-year-old wouldn\u2019t fall for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labor\u2019s position isn\u2019t just wrong. It\u2019s silly. It\u2019s wilfully blind. And it\u2019s dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One Nation is the only party in that room telling the truth. Excessive taxation flips an economy on its head. It drives markets underground. It rewards criminals, punishes honest people and destroys small business. It\u2019s basic economics, and the Adelaide Advertiser<\/em> has now spelled it out for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real question is why the Albanese Government keeps pretending not to understand what the rest of the country can see so clearly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Caleb Bond writes, if Minister Watt has an explanation for this explosion in illegal tobacco that doesn\u2019t involve tax, we\u2019d all love to hear it. Because right now, the only thing more dangerous than Australia\u2019s illicit tobacco market is a government too stubborn to admit it created the problem in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Adelaide Advertiser has published a cracking opinion piece by Caleb Bond, laying out something so glaring that only a Labor minister could miss it. Bond\u2019s column spells out a simple economic fact. When governments hike taxes beyond reason, they don\u2019t magically create virtue. They drive ordinary people straight into black markets. High taxes kill economies. High … Continue reading “When Common Sense Meets Canberra Fantasy”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36395,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36394\/revisions\/36395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}