Rigged and Reckless: Australia's Grant Process Is Locking Out Tobacco Harm Reduction!

22 July 2025

By Pippa Starr

Once again the Australian Govt and their favored NGO's are caught out rigging the system and pouring taxpayers money into what can only be described as a borderline "embezzlement/money laundering-like" racket!

Last month they were in damage control as inconvenient figures were published then republished by Roy Morgan in a bizarre string of events, now we see another example of contempt for Australian public health!

In a move that epitomises everything wrong with Australia's approach to tobacco control, the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing has quietly handed another $1.1 million to the McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer, without competition, without transparency, and without regard for evolving global evidence on harm reduction.

The grant, coded GO7683, is a “Closed Non-Competitive” process. That’s public service lingo for: "we’ve already picked the winner, no one else can apply."

And who was picked?

The very institution that has spent a decade defending their abstinence-only ideology while dismissing vaping, the most effective quit-smoking aid ever developed.

This isn't public health. It’s political theatre dressed up as international diplomacy.

A Smoke Screen of Legitimacy

The justification is wrapped in the comforting language of global cooperation: the grant supports Australia’s role as a WHO FCTC “Knowledge Hub on Legal Challenges”.

But dig a little deeper, and it’s clear this is about propping up outdated dogma, not helping smokers quit.

The McCabe Centre, part of Cancer Council Victoria, has long championed policies that sideline or demonise nicotine vaping, despite overwhelming evidence that vaping is dramatically less harmful than smoking and has helped millions quit cigarettes for good.

According to a 2023 review by leading Australian health experts, including Dr Colin Mendelsohn, “Vaping is far less harmful than smoking, and it is at least 3 times more effective as any other quitting method”. The UK NHS, Royal College of Physicians, and Cancer Research UK agree.

Yet this evidence seems irrelevant to a government obsessed with bans/prohibition and control.

The Real Public Health Crisis

Let’s be clear: smoking still kills 20,000 Australians a year. It's the leading preventable cause of death. But rather than fund innovation or scale up proven harm-reduction strategies, the government throws taxpayer money at an organisation that will continue defending the status quo, one that is failing.

The results are plain to see. Australia’s rigid prescription/chemist-only model for nicotine vaping has:

• Created a booming black market of unregulated, youth-targeted vapes;

• Pushed adult smokers away from safer alternatives;

• Increased public mistrust, with fewer than 1 in 10 adult smokers understanding that vaping is far less harmful than smoking.

  
  

Meanwhile, New Zealand have embraced vaping as a legitimate, regulated path out of tobacco addiction, and their smoking rates are dropping way faster than Australia as a result.

The Myth of “Only One Provider”

The grant’s defenders claim the McCabe Centre is the only organisation capable of fulfilling this role. That’s nonsense.

Australia is home to the best world-renowned tobacco control, behavioral science, and addiction medicine experts, yet only a handful of politically preferred "so called experts" that have little to no real life experience in this space are being heard.

No legitimate experts were given the chance to compete.

None were invited to propose alternative models, ones that might include helping smokers, rather than just the "usuals" who seem more intent on fighting the tobacco industry in courtrooms rather than practically saving lives and taxpayers money!

This isn’t about capacity and ability to provide the best evidence based outcomes.

It’s about ideology.

A Policy Echo Chamber

By locking out competition, the government creates a public health echo chamber, where only pre-approved narratives survive. Dissenting voices, particularly those advocating harm reduction, are labelled as industry shills, no matter how rigorous their evidence or how independent their funding!

This is the kind of scientific censorship that undermines public trust, corrodes policymaking, and costs lives.

Where's the Accountability?

This is just a very small part of the story of over a Billion Dollars being burned like this on this on this issue!

When $1.1 million, a billion dollars or one cent of public money is handed over without an open tender, we should all be asking:

• Why was no independent review conducted?

• Why were experts in harm reduction not consulted?

• Why is Australia using taxpayer dollars to prop up a model that is failing both smokers and youth?

It’s Past Time to Clean House

Australia's tobacco policy is being run like a closed shop/racketeering operation.

This grant process is just the latest small example of a system more interested in protecting institutional turf rather than saving lives.

If we’re serious about ending the smoking epidemic, we need transparency, competition, KPI's and evidence-led reform. That means funding a diversity of perspectives, not handing out no-bid contracts to the same old voices, echoing the same old things that keeps causing the same repeated failures.

Smokers deserve better. Taxpayers deserve better.

And public health — real public health — demands better!