Brendan Nelson (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, given that the government is moving to declare the consumption of four middies of beer as ‘binge drinking’, will you categorically rule out an increase in taxes on beer and wine?

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

We have no such plans. I find it pretty interesting that, on the question of binge drinking, there is an absolute divide between this side of the House and that side. We actually regard this as a major social problem for the nation. We take seriously the advice of the police commissioners of Australia, who say that we have a huge problem on the streets of our major cities on a Friday night and a Saturday night.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Dr Jensen interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Tangney is warned.

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

We take seriously the advice of those who run the hospitals in this country, who talk about the crush in their accident and emergency departments on Friday and Saturday nights as very young people come in suffering from all sorts of assaults and bashings as a result of this epidemic of intoxication. On top of that, we take seriously the advice of health professionals.

I would also draw this to the attention of the Leader of the Opposition: my understanding is that the investigation being undertaken by the National Health and Medical Research Council was one which began when the former Minister for Health and Ageing was the Minister for Health and Ageing. I would have thought, therefore, that those opposite are either serious about the independent research put forward by these health advisory bodies or they are not. If the former minister for health had serious reservations about the internal methodologies of the NHMRC on these matters, he should have said so then. Obviously, he did not. What we have here is a government determined to act on what is a major social problem for the nation, as opposed to a Liberal Party which, it seems, is now very much acting in cahoots with the major distillers of Australia.