Charlton Hart: The Premier’s cigarette spin is going up in smoke and the time for action is long overdue

There is a breathtaking sort of arrogance required to stand before the cameras, vow to “crush and destroy” a criminal underworld, and then watch, almost instantly, as that very underworld put a lit match to your rhetoric. In the early hours of Wednesday morning, while Roger Cook was probably sleeping off the fatigue of his first few days back from holidays, the Ashtar tobacconist in Huntingdale was gutted by fire. Again. Less than 24 hours earlier, Mr Cook had emerged to promise us that he was ready to get tough. Again. He told us his Government would introduce “incredibly strong” laws to stamp out the illicit tobacco trade. But in the same breath, he offered the bureaucrat’s classic get-out-of-jail-free card. The legislation, he sighed, is just so “complex”. Really? Because to the average punter watching family businesses become collateral damage when the adjoining tobacconist burns down, it doesn’t look complex. It looks like incompetence. Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? Cast your mind back to May 2020. A younger, perhaps more idealistic Roger Cook, then health minister, was crusading against the evils of smoking. He spoke passionately about demanding “full disclosure” of cigarette ingredients and ensuring we didn’t birth a “new generation of smokers”. He was the sheriff of public health, ready to regulate the industry into submission. Fast forward to 2026, and that sheriff seems to have lost his badge. Under his watch as Premier, smoking rates are climbing, and the enforcement regime on retailers hasn’t just stalled. It has collapsed. We now know that in 2025, while shops were being rammed and torched, Health Department inspectors conducted just 904 compliance checks. That is the lowest number in three years. While the mob was ramping up, the Government was winding down. This sluggishness isn’t new. In August, Mr Cook, along with Police Minister Reece Whitby and the top brass, held a “high-level meeting” to discuss tougher penalties for stores which sell illicit tobacco products. That was five months ago. Twenty weeks of nothing, while on the ground, the “low-level” reality is that criminals are running circles around a Government paralysed by its own red tape. The Premier claims his team is in the “advanced stages of drafting” this mythical legislation. Meanwhile, Queensland and South Australia didn’t seem to find the task quite so brain-meltingly difficult. They passed laws last year allowing police to shut down rogue retailers immediately. In WA, we are apparently still trying to figure out how to use the spellcheck on the draft bill. Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas, with his trademark subtlety, pleaded: “Mate, do your job.” It’s a blunt instrument of a quote, but it lands. Shadow police minister Adam Hort noted that the current laws “can’t even crush a coke can”, let alone a crime syndicate. He’s not wrong. The Premier’s plea for patience because he wants to “get it right” wears thin when the cost of “getting it wrong” is measured in burnt-out shopfronts and a public health disaster. It is not “complex” to ensure your health inspectors are actually inspecting things. Kick in doors, round up the illicit cigarettes, then return to the same business two weeks later and do it again. It’s not hard. You know what’s more complex then the legislation? Consoling the family of the baker that went to work at 4am to start their shift and didn’t come home because the smoke shop next door was torched, and they couldn’t escape in time. Or the loved ones of the security guard killed by a stray bullet which was meant to hit the front of a convenience store. The people carrying out these attacks aren’t masterminds, they’re morons. One miscalculation could end in a loss of life. Mr Cook, the tobacco wars aren’t waiting for your drafters to find the perfect adjective. You told us in 2020 you didn’t want a new generation of smokers. Well, congratulations. You’ve got a new generation of arsonists and crooks instead. Stop the meetings. Stop the drafting. Stop the excuses. Just put the fire out.