Controversial British politician Nigel Farage says Australia’s anti-smoking laws and high taxes have led to a wave of organised crime.
Mr Farage, who leads Britain’s right-wing Reform Party, pointed to Australia as an example of what not to do while criticising leaked plans to establish non-smoking zones around pubs, clubs and football grounds in the UK.
Farage, appearing as he often does in media announcements outside his favourite pub (with a glass of beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other to smoke between answers), said Australia’s high tobacco taxes had enriched “massive criminal gangs”.
He issued the dire warning that if Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour government went ahead with leaked plans to ban people from smoking in beer gardens and outside areas of entertainment venues, it would be the “end of pubs”.
Mr Farage said he did not believe the government had adequately considered the consequences of the proposal and its impact on businesses.
“You can see that very few people drink inside (the pub), but outside. Why? Because they are allowed to smoke outside,” he said.
“I’ve been coming here for 30 years, regularly, every week. If the government says I can’t drink and smoke outside, I’m not coming back. And I’m one of hundreds of regular customers of this pub who feel the same way.”
Farage’s claim that Australia’s prohibitive tobacco excise tax fuels criminal activity has at least one other defender in Victorian Libertarian MP David Limbrick, who held a colourful rally on Wednesday to “celebrate” 100 arson attacks on tobacco shops.
Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage said Australia had shown that prohibitive tobacco taxes led to the drug being supplied more cheaply by “massive criminal gangs”.
Mr Limbrick carried a cigarette-shaped cake onto the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House and lit sparklers instead of candles.
As the flares burned, Mr. Limbrick and his staff sang “Happy Arson, Victoria, Happy Arson to You” to the tune of Happy Birthday.
As the song concluded, Mr. Limbrick shouted, “hip hip, kaboom.”
Despite the dark irony, Mr Limbrick said the stunt had a serious message, adding that it was… “It’s just pure luck that they haven’t killed someone already.”
Tobacco shops across Victoria, particularly in Melbourne, have been torched in a series of suspected arson attacks believed to be part of a turf war between criminal gangs seeking to rid themselves of competitors for their illicit tobacco.
Victorian Libertarian MP David Limbrick “celebrated” 100 arson attacks on tobacco retailers in his state as an ironic way of expressing his views on what he claimed were the effects of high taxes.
“We can stop them by attacking the root causes rather than resorting to the ‘whack-a-mole’ tactics that governments use,” Limbrick said.
“We cannot police our way out of this. We need to look at the root causes, which can be solved through the power of the economy.”
He later tweeted that “increasing excise taxes on tobacco is total protection for organized crime models.”
“One can only conclude that they are either evil and intentionally supporting organized crime or that they are simply stupid and incompetent,” he wrote.
Despite the “commemoration”, Victoria Police said only 97 arson attacks had been reported in the state.