Peter Dutton (Dickson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Ageing. I refer the minister to the fact that the consumption of alcohol has had the largest growth of any household item in the last quarter of the national accounts and that consumption of alcohol had actually fallen from September 2007 to January 2008. However, since the announcement of the alcopops tax, consumption has actually grown. Minister, how goes the war on binge drinking?

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow minister for the question. It is the first time he has shown any real interest in our strategy to tackle binge drinking. What the shadow minister needs to look at, if he really wants to look at the impact of our alcopops measure, is the data for the sales of spirits—when you combine both alcopops and straight spirits—which shows a reduction of 9.3 per cent. The figures for the alcopops measure are very clear. Unfortunately, the shadow minister is determined only to side with the distillers when it comes to this argument. He is not interested in targeting the very products that are marketed to young kids and that are being increasingly consumed and will be consumed at increasing rates over Christmas—something that the shadow minister should be out there urging young people to take care with, not raising these silly points.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Adams interjecting

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

The member for Lyons does not have the call. It was different to his calls for naming and warning and things like that, but he should be careful.