However, the Coalition points to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures that show tobacco consumption increased by roughly 30 per cent between 2022 and 2025.

This is ofc a lie, as any words that spill from the dysgenic swill holes these freaks speak from often are. The ABS is speaking of nicotine consumption, including vapes, etc, not what the reader probably thinks when they hear “tobacco”. I hope this Jake Revell guy is quoting them directly and not peddling this himself.

While sales of illegal cigarettes and nicotine products have declined dramatically, wastewater analysis shows that overall nicotine consumption is surging.

Pretty sure this is a spelling mistake and they meant legal cigarettes, because it makes no sense. It’s also misleading, if my understanding is correct the waste water tests showed total cigarette use is down, but by cross referencing the sales of legal cigarettes with this data it showed illegal use was up. Also I think this is conflating cigarettes and other nicotine products when it says “surging”… but it says nicotine products have declined… Which isn’t true? Idk this sentence is a mess.

It is kinda weird how the arguments for this can sound like neocons arguing for the war on drugs.

The difference is the policy is working, with smoking continuing to trend down consistently.

If the market continues to trend downwards then illegal trade will fall as well until it’s below pre-excise levels.

If the market plateaus with the illegal market still above pre-excise levels then I’d agree they should remove the excise and call the policy a failure… Well, maybe, you might be able to argue some marginal increase is worth a massive decrease in smoking, not 4x, but maybe 1.1-1.3x.

It’s not “simply” anything. Ofc if you assume police are just lazy that makes sense, but if you acknowledge that law enforcement is operating at capacity it’s clear they don’t benefit from more reports. They will need to sacrifice more hours sifting through more reports, many of which may be lower quality or even false because of the perverse incentives. Rest assured every store in the country will quickly accrue many reports against it, and police will spend more time investigating innocent stores than guilty ones.

Fair, and I’d go one step further by saying the “neo-Nazi” market share is something Facebook doesn’t want to miss out on.

That said they’d probably ban these guys if enough people complained about it. Or maybe not seeing as Mark Zuckerberg has decided to kiss Trump’s ring…

What is?

Based. King.

The argument is the DEAO is basically a warrant anyway, it needs to be signed off on by the same authorised officers (magistrates, registrars, etc).

All a warrant does is grant the legal authority to go looking for the device. If a cop sees you filming a murder on your phone and arrests you they can already seize your device without a warrant. So a warrant wouldn’t grant any more authority than the cop already has at that time.

The article is deliberately a lot of things imo, none of them good. It’s not written by a lawyer btw, important to note that.

The point about the warrant is the only thing that matters here, and I’d argue it’s meaningless when we are talking about lawful seizure.

A warrant provides you with the legal authority to search for the device, inside a private residence for example. When a cop witnesses a crime and sees that a device is relevant to that crime they can seize it without a warrant. In that case the idea of getting a warrant is superfluous and only a thing because the DEAO law explicitly says so.

They will still need to apply for the DEAO from the same kind of judicial officer that would sign their warrants to get into it.

God damn, why is a legal firm paying journalists to write slop like this on their website? Half of it is a political rant with no relevance.

The only relevant point is this: should police require an additional warrant before applying for a DEAO?

Arguably no, not if they already have the device. The warrant is only really needed to gain access to the device and grant legal authority to search for it. If you have both of those already through lawful seizure after witnessing a crime take place the warrant doesn’t provide you any additional powers.

A DEAO still needs to be signed off on by an authorised officer of the judiciary, and the cop applying for it can be charged with perjury if they lie on the application. The evidence is also very likely to be thrown out.

The point is NSW warrants aren’t a meaningful check on power, and this loser Paul Gregoire is just jerking off by framing it as such.

Probably some slopulist led revolution to institute communism, followed by a million or so deaths, societal collapse, and a century of no true Scotsman fallacies defending it. I don’t listen to commie critiques because they are all illiterate and ahistoric hacks, and I don’t take anything they say as quaint or humorous because they are amoral campists who hide behind masks.

Children are represented by their parents who advocate for them.

Old people need to advocate for themselves.

A poll test is anti-democratic as hell, and a step towards authoritarianism.