Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Which makes it more remarkable that the Leader of the Opposition said that he would support this tax measure when it was first announced. But try to find where the Liberal Party stands on any tax measure or any policy measure at the moment; what the three-ringed circus—which equals the leadership of the Liberal Party today—the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Wentworth and the member for Higgins—currently represents on the question of this measure. We have responded to the reports which we have been presented. From the Australian secondary students’ use of alcohol: the proportion of teenage girls aged between 12 and 17 who chose RTDs as their preferred drink rose from 23 per cent to 48 per cent; secondly, between 2000 and 2004, the percentage of female drinkers aged 15 to 17 reporting that they had consumed RTDs at their last drinking occasion increased from 14 per cent to 62 per cent. And, according to a 2007 survey, approximately 20,000 girls aged 12 to 15 reported that they drink daily or weekly. The key challenge here is what government can do about this.

Of course, what is interesting about the figures I have just referred to is they all postdate an important event in the year 2000. What happened in the year 2000? With the introduction of the GST, a certain party in government decided of its own volition, in response to lobbying—we do not know—that this particular group of drinks, RTDs, would in effect have preferential tax treatment. As a consequence of that, we have seen a complete explosion in the use of these RTDs by young people, and in particular by young girls. If you go around the country and if you speak to those who are responsible for accident and emergency wards in the nation’s hospitals, if you speak to the nation’s police commissioners or if you go for a walk through the city at night and see what is happening in the streets of our major metrocentres and elsewhere, you will see this is a huge problem. Because of these factors, the government have decided to act—that is, we have decided to embrace a series of measures to tackle binge drinking.

On the question of binge drinking, we have dealt with a whole range of measures: firstly, $14.4 million in community-level initiatives to confront the culture of binge drinking; secondly, $19.1 million to intervene earlier; thirdly, $20 million in advertising that confronts young people with the costs and consequences of binge drinking; on top of that, closing the alcopop tax loophole, which those opposite introduced in the year 2000; and, on top of that again, ensuring that funds can be—

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