u/saltymoto

Curious what people think, because I reckon the Australian Government has single handedly created the biggest black market in the country.

I understand the logic: make cigarettes ridiculously expensive so people quit and smoking rates fall.

And they claim smoking rates are now at historic lows but not sure if this is true or data just isn't captured accurately anymore with the rise of illegal tobacco and vaping.

Somewhere along the way, they have created a massive unintended consequence.

A legal packet can cost $50–70+, and illegal tobacco is a fraction of the price. The ABS estimates 80% of nicotine consumption is now coming from illicit sources, compared with just 12% in 2017.

So the government is simultaneously:

• collecting less tobacco excise
• spending huge amounts trying to stop illegal tobacco
• dealing with organised crime moving into the market
• dealing with the violence that comes with it — 200+ firebombings and at least three homicides linked to illicit tobacco since 2023, according to the ACIC.

And now we're doing it again with vapes.

Vapes are clearly not harmless, but they're generally considered substantially less harmful than smoking. Yet the government's incessantly negative messaging around them seems to have pushed a huge amount of the market underground as well.

At some point, you have to ask whether making the legal product so expensive actually stops people consuming it — or just makes the illegal alternative ridiculously profitable.

We've gone from taxing cigarettes to discourage smoking to creating an enormous financial incentive for criminals to supply them.

Maybe the policy has been a huge public health success (I doubt it).

Or maybe we've managed to simultaneously do nothing to reduce smoking and hand a multi-billion-dollar market to organised crime.

I'm genuinely interested in where people sit on this.

M38 married with a 1 year old kid and another on the way.

HHI around 600k p.a. gross.
After expenses we typically save about $250k p.a. including principle repayments on our home loan.

PPOR worth $3.3m, loan balance $1.48m, offset $735k. So about $2.5m equity.

50k invested in ASX and 400k in super (combined).

Our dream is to sail around the world, leaving in about 7 years. We set that timeframe so we could sail/travel for 4-5 years and be back in Australia before the eldest starts highschool.

I thought I'd post this, hoping the guru's here might have some bright ideas to help us get where we need to be financially to make this plan work.

Boat purchase will be around $1m. I figure we need $120k per year to run the boat, feed and entertain ourselves. And we'd need to have $120k in the bank when we left as buffer. I'd like to keep our PPOR so we have somewhere to come back to when we return.

Income on the seas:
We could probably rent our PPOR for $2000/wk.
We get A$20k dividend per year from family investments.
We could also work remotely - Starlink. But probs wouldn't want a time consuming job.

I've been tossing up the idea of buying an investment property, but with recent neg gearing changes i'm not sure it's worth it anymore. Now i'm leaning more to debt recycling and buying ETF's.

If we stopped paying down our house and focused solely on debt recycling & buying ETF's... we should have over $2m in our portfolio in 7 years and our house by then if rented, should be paying itself off.

It's tight............... can we get it done?

Also, what would our tax implications be if we're not tax residents of Australia but earning money there from renting out our house?

I've noticed that people seem increasingly reluctant to say "I disagree" and leave it at that.

Someone can have a completely reasonable opinion that differs from yours without either person being stupid, evil or malicious.

I actually miss conversations where two people could disagree strongly and then just move on with their day.

Is this just me getting old?