Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 at this time because of the matters raised by the Minister for Health and Ageing in this closing part of the debate and her assertions that those on this side of the House in some way do not think that this is a serious problem. I think that is a terrible slur to put on those on this side of the House. I do not have any distilleries in my electorate but I do have a lot of parents. I do have a lot of teenage kids, and we do have a very serious problem with this in my electorate of Cook. If we go down to Cronulla Mall on a Friday or Saturday night, we see this problem and we see the wreckage of it on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But what the minister and the government do not seem to understand is this: you cannot parade around in this place and pretend there are silver-bullet solutions to this problem, as they have portrayed with this tax. They have come out with a tax and said, ‘If we tax alcopops, we’re going to solve binge drinking.’ One of the things that will actually come from this bill—which is a dud bill—being defeated in this place and in the Senate is that somehow, at the end of the day, some serious funds might go back into education, because, contrary to what the minister says, it was made very clear by the industry that they had no interest in these funds coming back to them, no interest at all. These funds, they have pledged—and they said this back in August—will go back into education programs. They have no interest in taking these funds.

What the minister is trying to do here is to wedge the Senate and the coalition. She wants to stand here and say to those in the other chamber and in this chamber, ‘If you don’t do this, if you do not support this measure, then the sun will not come up tomorrow on efforts to solve binge drinking, and all will be lost.’ But the truth is that she will not come into this place and table the advice upon which she is basing her claim that the money cannot go back to other measures. She cannot do that. She will not come in and stump up and back up the claim that she is threatening members and senators with—that if we do not pass this tax then somehow the money is going to go out there to promote drinking to young kids, as opposed to going to education programs. I challenge the minister and call her bluff: put this advice on the table so members in this House and senators in the other house can be absolutely crystal clear on the furphy she is putting out there in this debate. It is a furphy, it is a bluff and it is a very poor attempt at a wedge. My message, particularly to senators—but I am sure that members in this place will agree—is that we will not be bluffed. We will not be bluffed by the government on this issue. This is a very significant problem and it requires some very significant responses.

In our shire we have a thing called the fridge-to-fridge party and it is a very disturbing thing to see. Those fridge-to-fridge parties have been happening ever since this measure started. They have not changed. There has been no evidence of any change in the binge-drinking behaviour in my electorate since this ‘silver bullet’ was brought into this place. I will tell you what this fridge-to-fridge thing is, because this is what we have to address. Kids get together and go from house to house and from fridge to fridge, and they ride around on bikes with no helmets and carry on like clowns. One of these days one of these kids is going to get killed. The government is pretending that this measure is going to solve that problem, but it is not. You are pretending that you are addressing this problem and you are not addressing the problem.

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