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

At the outset, the coalition does not, of course—as any Australian would not—deny that there are binge-drinking problems among some in society. And we are certainly concerned about those problems, as any responsible person would be—any adult; in particular, any parent who is concerned about their teenager going out on a Friday or Saturday night. We share those concerns and we are genuine in our efforts to try to address that particular concern that parents have at that formative stage of a young person’s life. This coalition will stand wherever we can to rectify what is a serious problem.

But the coalition is opposed to these bills, which seek to validate a substantial excise increase imposed on one category of alcohol products: ready to drink, or RTD, beverages. The government claims that it increased these taxes as a health measure—a measure aimed at cutting the rate of binge-drinking, particularly among young women. But it is, of course, as we now understand, nothing more than a tax grab; a measure drawn up in the finance ministries to boost the budget bottom line. On both health and tax counts, it is clearly a failure. The fundamental question here is: if this was a genuine health measure, why were the minister and the Department of Health and Ageing not involved in its formulation? Why did this particular measure emanate from finance ministries, and why was the health department not consulted when, in its coord comments to the ERC, it actually opposed this particular measure?

The next question that the government needs to answer is: where are the ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ Minister Roxon said would flow to preventative health measures when she appeared on the Nine Network’s Sunday program on 27 April, the day the measures were brought into effect? Instead, the government will spend a relatively meagre $53 million on the National Binge Drinking Strategy, comprising $14 million for community initiatives to confront binge drinking, $19 million to assist young drinkers, $20 million for anti-binge advertising, with each of those measures funded from existing programs. We support programs, but much more needs to be done.

No further indication has been given by the government of how much of the alcopops revenue they are prepared to allocate to preventative health measures. Perhaps the hundreds of millions of dollars were never going to materialise, because this is a prime example of how media spin is more important for this government than real outcomes. That is particularly the case in the health portfolio. This proposal was rolled out at midnight on 26 April in an orchestrated announcement from the Prime Minister’s office for the nation’s Sunday newspapers. It is part of the Prime Minister’s ‘war on binge drinking’—one of the Prime Minister’s many wars. Is it a health measure or a tax grab? The Australian reported on May 17 that the excise increase first emerged ‘in a Finance budget submission couched in terms of closing a tax “loophole”’. As Christian Kerr wrote in the Australian:

Was the alco-pops tax motivated by concerns about the health of teenage girls or the health of the budget surplus?

It is a very reasonable question to put. And the question remains today because the government has been unable to provide any firm evidence, amidst the welter of its rhetoric, that the tax has had any impact on binge drinking whatsoever. The bills before the House—make no mistake about it—are purely about the tax impact. The near 70 per cent increase in excise on RTDs from $39.36 per litre of alcohol content to $66.67 per litre—an increase of almost 70 per cent—will raise $1.6 billion across the estimates. This is less than the $2 billion when the tax hike was first mooted, and far less than the $3.1 billion estimated in the last budget. Current estimates are that the government has collected somewhere between $220 million and $345 million with this tax binge.

RTDs are now to be taxed similarly to full-strength spirits, rather than at the same rate as full-strength beer—which more appropriately reflects their alcohol content. It is a position that the Labor party denied in 2004 that they would take. And the now Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson, was reported in the Australian at that time as saying it would be ‘unfair to do so’. Minister Roxon argues in her second reading speech that it is logical to do so—so much for consistency from this government!

The minister makes much of the fact that RTD sales have slumped by, she says, 35 per cent since the excise was increased, and she then has to admit that sale of full-strength spirits have increased over the same period. The minister says that the increase in full-strength spirit consumption is small, neglecting to put figures on it, but the rise has been somewhere between 19 and 21 per cent—as I am advised—and certainly anything but small. She also neglects to mention, of course, that among young consumers, sales of beer, wine—in particular, cask wine—liqueurs and cider have also risen, some markedly. One survey, Roy Morgan for DSICA, reported the sale of cider was up 349 per cent in the June to September last year, compared to the year before.

This government was warned that this is exactly what would happen—that there would be a displacement effect and that consumers would switch from one product to another. The minister relates how companies have skirted the tax by making new RTDs based on beer or wine. But again, the government was warned that this would happen. It claims it is a sign that its tax measure is working. It is more likely, though, that the market is being met with a different product.

The minister told the parliament that all of this was significant and an achievement. But even some of the groups who support the government’s actions acknowledge that they certainly do not know whether young drinkers have simply switched to higher strength alcohol products. The minister quotes a series of figures to show just how serious the binge-drinking problem is, but the most comprehensive source of data is the National Drug Strategy Household Survey conducted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Let us look at what that authority has to say.

This is what they said to the first RTD Senate inquiry. The drinking status of the Australian population has been stable over the past two decades. There has been a modest increase in the apparent consumption of RTDs over the past five years. The preference for RTDs has increased slightly, on their evidence to the Senate inquiry, from 2001 to 2007, particularly in older age groups. The trend among under-18s is unclear. There has been virtually no change in the pattern of risky drinking over the period 2001-07, including among young Australians. The increased availability of RTDs does not appear to have directly contributed to an increase in risky alcohol consumption. The dominant drink for young males is beer, followed by RTDs. There is no clear trend in preference for RTDs among males under 18 years in the period 2001-07. Young females have an equal preference for RTDs and bottled spirits. Again, there was no clear trend in preference for RTDs among under-18-year-old females. Notably, for girls aged 16-17 years, there appeared to have been a decrease in the proportions drinking at risky or high-risk levels. In summary, they say that the increased availability of RTDs does not appear to have led, in and of itself, to an increase in risky consumption.

That is a summary of the advice given by that authority to the Senate committee. Then we go to the report of the National Preventative Health Taskforce’s Alcohol Working Group, which notes a downward trend in risky drinking by young people aged 14-19 years, over the period 2001-07. The trend was apparent for both males and females, though less pronounced for females. It noted the great increase in RTD consumption was among males. The trend in youth drinking was unclear. Victorian data on young people between 12 and 24 years of age found no clear trend in rates of risky drinking. They also made this point: increasing the price of individual products may not necessarily achieve the goal of reducing per capita consumption of alcohol. That is the advice that the taskforce gave to the Senate committee.

In the August 2008 edition of the Lancet, researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales surmised that although the Australian government’s recent decision is likely to arrest the increased sales of premixed spirits:

… it is unlikely to substantially reduce the overall rates of usual or binge consumption.

The Access Economics report on trends in alcohol related hospitalisation by young people can be summarised as follows: data collected so far did not support claims the alcopop tax had reduced risky drinking by young people; hospital admissions for young people aged between 12 and 24 years per 100,000 population for alcohol related diagnoses in May and June 2008 were higher than some months in previous years; emergency department presentations by young people aged between 12 and 24 years per 100,000 population for alcohol related causes were higher in May to August 2008 than previous years; there was an overall increase for the months after the RTD tax relative to the months before; and combined admissions and ED presentations for females were substantially higher than previous years and also higher than months pre the tax rise in 2008.

Access Economics said the time frame was too short to draw firm conclusions, but it concluded that the tax may not have reduced alcohol consumption by young people because they may have switched to other products. A switch potentially enabled them to buy more alcohol for the same budget than prior to the RTD tax.

It is also important, of course, as part of this debate to listen to consumers, in particular to what teenagers have had to say. I report some of their accounts, as broadcast on ABC 666 in Canberra on 12 February. When asked whether increasing the price of alcopops had worked and whether it had cut drinking levels, as a group they responded with a resounding, ‘No.’ As I say, some of these people need to be listened to. Some of the quotes from this broadcast are as follows, firstly:

When you put the tax up on the Alco pops, it’s not really the drink that people drink to binge drink anyway. It pushes them to drink boxed wine and straight spirits.

The second quote:

Jemima … are the kids drinking any less? ‘What I find is that they … buy … just straight spirits.’

The third quote:

I think the consensus … was … that the tax had actually fuelled the binge drinking. I know in my area it’s even got worse because people are just buying straight grog.

If the minister thinks that those comments are not common amidst a large segment of young people to whom she should be paying attention, perhaps she should visit the Facebook website where people have spoken in loud voices. On Facebook she will find a group called Aussies Against the Alcohol Tax Increase, and it has more than 70,000 members. A Galaxy survey asked whether Australians thought the tax on RTDs was effective and whether it should be scrapped. The survey produced the following results: only 12 per cent of people thought the tax was effective; 78 per cent thought it was ineffective; and 77 per cent thought it should be scrapped—that is exactly what this government should do. They should scrap this tax, which it tried to portray as a genuine health policy. The government have produced no evidence to indicate that it has done anything to improve the health of young Australians.

The important point to make in this debate is that the coalition will stand with the government on reasonable measures to address the serious problem of binge drinking, but we will not stand in this parliament and say to the Australian people that we support what is nothing more than a tax grab by a government fast running out of revenue. They have tried to dress it up as some sort of a health measure to pull the wool over the eyes of Australian families, in particular parents who are deeply concerned about the activities of their teenage children and young adults in pubs, clubs, venues, private homes and parties around the country on weekends. We want to make sure that this is a government which addresses a serious problem and not a government hooked on tax revenues because they love to spend in other ways.

My call today is for the government to abandon this measure. My call today is for the Senate to make sure that this bill is rejected and that the tax collected over the last 12 months not be remitted to the industry but that it be preserved for education and other measures. My call today is for the government to abandon this measure. It is bad policy. It is about a tax increase. It is not about helping young people with drinking problems. It is not about helping to curb teenage binge drinking. It is all about tax. They should end the tax and they should put up measures funded from that $200 million or $300 million, whatever the figure turns out to be, that they have raised over the last 12 months and put it towards education programs, towards counselling, towards rehabilitation and towards diversion programs to provide support to those community groups who support people in most need during difficult times in their lives.

We need to provide more support to law enforcement agencies to curb the growing problem of violence on the streets, which is not just related to alcohol but, importantly, related to the use of amphetamines and the mix of amphetamines and alcohol. That is the real problem that this government needs to address. This government is more concerned about the media cycle than it is about addressing the binge-drinking concerns that parents have around the country in relation to their teenage children and young adults. This is a government which is more concerned with the Sunday paper media cycle than it is with trying to address genuine health concerns.

This is a government which have, of course, spent all of the money that they inherited from the previous government. All of the money that was in the bank has now been spent by this government. Not for one moment will they be able to address the difficulties being faced in this particular area because they do not have the revenues now to spend on these measures. This government should own up to the fact that this program was never supported by Health. The coord comments never supported this measure. This was proposed by ATO, Finance and Treasury as a tax loophole that needed to be fixed—a way this government could, on their initial estimates, gain $3.1 billion in revenue. This was never about trying to address the genuine health issues in relation to binge drinking and alcohol consumption. It was all about tax right from day one.

If this minister has the guts or integrity that she claims she has, she should come into this parliament and declare that to be the case—she should draw a line, start again and put together a suite of programs which will properly address binge-drinking issues in this country. This is a minister who, frankly, has no control in cabinet whatsoever. That is clearly the case. The previous health minister would certainly have been able to carry a much better argument more persuasively than this health minister at both cabinet and ERC. This is the reality that needs to be faced by this parliament. This is a health minister who cowers in cabinet. This is a health minister who has rightly been nicknamed ‘Reba Roxon’ after her mentor, Reba Meagher, in New South Wales, because this is a government that does not have a handle on health policy. This is a government that seems to be adopting the same health policy outcomes and the same health policy management that the New South Wales Labor government has done. That is bad for health policy not just today but also into the future.

If genuine concern is to be expressed by those members opposite as part of this debate, they need to recognise that this is a tax grab. It is a tax binge; it is not about helping those young Australians that deserve help. Nothing has been said by this health minister about the way they are going to address amphetamine use in particular, which is a real concern for young women. On Friday nights at clubs, it is a real concern not just for young women but for young men as well, because there is a combined intake not just of alcohol but of party drugs as well—in particular ecstasy, which is freely available. This government has not considered, as part of these measures, that very important part of this discussion.

The other important issue for the government to address is the spiking of drinks. Many people, particularly young women, are concerned at parties, nightclubs and other venues about ordering spirits that are mixed by somebody else. They have a very just concern, because the prevalence of drink spiking is a real problem in this country. It is a national disgrace, frankly, that anybody would conduct themselves in that way. Ready-to-drink spirits, which come in a can or bottle, have given parents whose children do drink responsibly a way to overcome at least that concern when their teenage child is out drinking on a Friday night. To push those young adults into a position where, at a party, they have to rely on a third party—in some cases not known to them—to premix their drinks because they cannot afford to buy an RTD is a sad reflection on this government. And it is a sad reflection when a young person who does have the capacity to drink responsibly goes out to enjoy a night with his or her friends, finds that they cannot afford an RTD, goes to a full-spirit mix and finds themselves in a position where that drink could be spiked. That is also a significant part of this issue and needs to be addressed by the government.

So there is a long way to go in this debate. But the important call today is for the Senate to recognise that the government has the ability to call an end to this tax impost. It has the real ability—with revenues already raised—to redirect that money into education programs which would see a real effort to curb some of the most dangerous drinking. It will take away the broadbrush approach of this particular policy announcement, which has an impact on people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s who go to parties or decide to consume alcohol through an RTD product, who think that they are acting responsibly. The majority of people drink responsibly, and this tax is an attack on them as well, because now many of those people have gone to cask wine—for argument’s sake—which is much cheaper and available in much greater quantities. Many people have gone to mixing their own drinks or, as I said, relying on others to mix those drinks which, in many cases—on the evidence provided to the Senate inquiry, anecdotally and through other avenues—means that those people end up consuming more alcohol. Teenagers at a party who are mixing spirits from a bottle of Bundaberg Rum or Malibu, or whatever it might be, will generally—and most people with common sense would tell them this; I am sure there would not be any argument from members opposite—consume more alcohol in that mix than they would through a premixed, bottled or canned drink.

So the coalition will continue to fight in this debate because we want to make sure that we attack the problem of binge drinking but we do not support the government doing it through a tax grab. This government has not been able to provide one shred of evidence that this is a policy that has impacted positively on young people. Despite all the calls, we have had to demand in a Senate inquiry that this information be produced. Even at Senate estimates, the department was directed to not provide the detail sought by the senators, and that is a very sad reflection on this health minister. The department should be able to release the information—if they have it—to show that this measure is working. Then we could have a properly informed debate. But, for as long as the government refuses to produce even one shred of evidence that this measure is working, how can they seriously stand here in this parliament as part of this debate and say that it is anything but a tax grab?

That is why we oppose these bills and that is why we will be opposing them in the Senate. It is incumbent on this minister to demonstrate to the House today exactly how she is going to properly address this very serious concern and how she is going to carry the arguments in public. People want to hear how the Labor government is going to live up to its election promise of continuing to fight this war. We oppose the bills and we oppose them with good reason.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. I say to the honourable member for Dickson: you and your cohort had 12 years to fix some of these problems that have been left to the government to fix, and all you could do in 2000 was lower the tax on alcopops. I also say to the honourable member for Dickson: you talk about attacking the problem of binge drinking, but you and your cohort had 12 years and I did not see any evidence that you were doing anything to attack binge drinking. Amphetamine use, ecstasy and spiking of drinks—all of the problems you raised in your contribution—none of them are new problems.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Member for Page, I ask that you refer your remarks through the chair rather than refer to ‘you’, in that context being the speaker.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, Mr Deputy Speaker. I stand corrected on that. I will speak through the chair.

Through you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the honourable member for Dickson, I put it that the opposition had 12 years and I saw no evidence—simply a reduction in the tax on alcopops. Alcopops are what we are talking about here today, and we are talking about our young people. Put simply, this public health initiative is saying clearly to distillers and producers that we, the community, do not want drinks designed to appeal to our young people. That is what alcopops are about. The opposition can put whatever spin on it they like but the fact remains that this is, first and foremost, a public health initiative—one that in general policy settings has the support of the World Health Organisation. The member for Dickson said that there was no support from the Department of Health and Ageing anywhere for this initiative. I would consider the World Health Organisation to be the pre-eminent health advisory body, and its advice is very clear. It says that increased alcohol taxation has proven effective in reducing alcohol related problems among young people. That is pretty clear. Faced with the choice between the musings of the opposition and the member for Dickson, who are the architects of the 2000 reduction of tax for alcopops, and the World Health Organisation, I know where my money would be; it would be with the World Health Organisation.

The amendments, which I refer to quite simply as ‘alcopops amendments’, ensure that beer and wine based products that attempt to mimic alcopops with regard to their taste are taxed correctly as a spirit product, which we know has a higher tax, as it should have in this case. The amendments will not impact on regular wine and beer drinks. The amending bill imports a definition which sets a combination of minimum limits on the bitterness and maximum limits on the sugar content that has to be consistent in measurement in the final beverage. This means that no flavour will be able to be added to wine and grape wine products, either natural or artificial. These definitions, as I read them, will apply from July 2009.

We know about what are called ‘malternatives’. These were introduced. The Bills Digest says:

It is also important to note that drink substitution has been rendered easier with the recent introduction to the Australian market of so-called ‘malternatives’. The new drinks, which are pitched at drinkers aged between 18 years and 30 years, are similar in alcohol content, flavour and appearance to many alcopops. However, because these drinks are beer rather than spirits-based, they attract far less excise than do their alcopop equivalents, and retail for around half their price. The maker of one of the new ‘malternatives’ is reported as having introduced the new product directly as a result of the alcopop excise increase. Corporate relations director of Diageo, the world’s largest alcohol company, has stated that ‘this is a time when [the launch of the product] makes sense …

It does not make sense because we are trying to reduce the intake of alcopops. I will also quote from the opposition leader, the member for Wentworth, addressing the National Press Club on 22 September 2008. He was talking about binge drinking. The direct quote is:

One should never underestimate the enterprising ingenuity of the Australian drinker.

The comment should really be that we should never underestimate the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia and the independent distillers association or the people who make the products, for their ingenuity in coming up with other products. That is why this amending bill is necessary—so that we do not have the market flooded with products like alcopops.

A number of related associations have supported the government’s initiative—as, indeed, have parents—within a policy framework designed to target binge drinking as well as excessive drinking or risky drinking, but what we commonly know and call binge drinking. We and the community understand that. It is aimed at lessening the drinking of alcopops. It is a public health initiative, and that is the business of government; it is about prevention and it is about promotion. This is clearly about prevention of alcopops and it is clearly about promotion in saying that these products are no good for young people. I have spoken with young people in the community and canvassed their views on this initiative. Some of them who drink it, and who like to drink it, understand that the government is correct in trying to make sure that they do not drink it.

The government is committed to reducing binge drinking, and these amendments are located squarely within that policy setting. This is one tool of a number of health initiatives within that framework. We can debate what we like about who said what and what we can and cannot do, and we can sit back and do nothing, but nothing will change and the drinking will increase. That is just not acceptable.

I say to the nay-sayers that they can continue to do nothing or they can reduce taxes on alcopops and things like that, but we have to do something. Recent comments from, in particular, my local papers and in my local community are replete with incidents of alcohol fuelled violence, primarily with young people, but not just young people. The link between alcohol and violence in our society is strong, and binge drinking adds to and exacerbates that. It is a factor, and we cannot ignore it.

In Australia we have a culture of drinking. We celebrate it and we celebrate by drinking. That leads to excessive drinking and we as adults are responsible for a lot of it. We have to try and change it because we cannot blame our young people. They grow up in a culture where alcohol is legal, alcohol is common and we drink alcohol. This is one of the ways that we can try and reduce excessive drinking. Also, within the context of binge drinking, alcohol and alcohol-fuelled violence, the costs are enormous. I have read that it costs the community anywhere from $15 billion up because of the demand on our health services due to accidents and fights, because of insurance costs, because of court costs and because of prison costs. Yet we as a society often have our head in the sand about this problem. We use selective legal sanctions and mores—but often to little avail—to curb binge drinking or excessive drinking, particularly for our young people. One of the best ways is to lead by example, and I am afraid that as a community and a society we have not led our young people too well sometimes in not drinking too much and not having a culture that celebrates alcohol and incorporates it into our everyday life.

The honourable member for Dickson forgot to say in his contribution is that in 2000 the opposition, the then government, agreed to a tax break for alcopops. That is correct. It was damaging decision. Can you imagine any health minister agreeing to such a damaging decision as this? The Labor government’s amendments, led ably by the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon, reverses the Liberals’ 2000 decision concerning the alcopops tax break. I have to say again: what health minister in his right mind could support such a proposal? It baffles me that that one got through, that it went through to the keeper, and I am quite gobsmacked that they did it. Of course the opposition have to come in here today and oppose it, because we are reversing their bad policy or what I call their lazy policy decision making in 2000.

The opposition has also said that there is no evidence that the excise on alcopops is working, and I will turn to that in my contribution. There is clear evidence that it is working. I would like to say firstly that the binge-drinking problem is a real problem. We can debate it and talk about the quantum of it and manifestations of it in various communities, but the fact is that it is real. We know it. We see it. We live in communities. We are part of communities. We are not blind. We can see it all. Closing the alcopops loophole is supported by community leaders, police and health experts. In any given week approximately one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds—that is very young—are binge drinking or drinking at risky levels. The number of young women aged 18 to 24 being admitted to hospitals because of alcohol has doubled in eight years. That is a big health problem and a big societal problem.

In a year more than three-quarters of a million Australians are physically abused by persons under the influence of alcohol. The annual social cost of alcohol misuse in Australia is estimated to be about $15 billion. Last year the New South Wales Commissioner of Police, Andrew Scipione, estimated that:

… something like about 70 per cent of every police engagement with a member of the community in the streets of NSW has alcohol as a factor.

Not all of that is related to alcopops, of course, but we are talking about alcohol. We are talking about one particular product that is very problematic. Alcopops deceive young people. They are targeted at young people. We have all seen the advertising campaigns. We know that advertising works, and alcopops are dressed up to be sexy, attractive, exciting: the world is your oyster; get on the alcopops and everything will be well. But alcopops clearly target young people and underage drinkers and, if we have a look at the facts that I have iterated—that one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds is binge drinking or drinking at risky levels—we can see that they are the group being targeted by the industry and by advertising.

Between 2000 and 2004 the percentage of female drinkers aged 15 to 17 who had consumed alcopops at their last drinking occasion increased from 14 per cent to 62 per cent. That was between 2000 and 2004, and 2000 was when the Liberal-National coalition government gave the tax break to alcopops. Consumption increased from 14 to 62 per cent. Some of that would be through advertising as well, but the fact is alcopops were made a lot cheaper and therefore far more attractive. Remember the WHO said that taxing does work to reduce drinking in young people. For females drinking at risky and high-risk levels in 2004, 78 per cent had drunk alcopops on their last drinking occasion. That figure had increased threefold after 2000. You only have to look around your local communities or go to the local pub to see that alcopops are very popular, particularly with young girls.

The Rudd government has taken the logical approach by taxing all spirits, bottled or premixed, at the same rate. As a result, consumption of alcohol has dropped. Researchers agree that the measure works. An independent expert report by Collins and Lapsley, commissioned not by the Rudd government but by the Howard government, found:

… alcohol excise taxes are capable of being designed explicitly to target the types of alcohol known to be the subject of abuse (for example, high strength beer and alcopops) …

That was a report commissioned by the Howard government, yet they still gave a tax break on alcopops. The report went on:

For example, studies show that young people are more influenced by the price of alcohol so that increasing the tax rate on alcoholic drinks which are specifically targeted at the youth market is likely to be effective.

As a result, there would appear to be strong justification for the April 2008 increase in the tax of 70 per cent on premixed drinks and alcopops. The ATO figures, drawn from the first nine months of this measure, show that alcopops sales have dropped by 35 per cent, compared to the previous year. In fact, alcopops sales have slumped, bringing overall spirit sales with them, despite a smaller increase in full-strength spirit sales. Overall spirit sales have fallen by almost eight per cent. That was something that the honourable member for Dickson did not add when he talked about sales of spirits.

I will turn to what some of the experts say. The CEO of the Australian Drug Foundation, Mr Rogerson, said:

This tax fixes a problem started with the introduction of the GST and shows that the Government is serious about tackling alcohol problems in our community.

The CEO of the Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia, Mr Templeman, said:

… this initiative clearly recognised the problems created by the excessive consumption of RDTs which were attractive to the youth market.

Mike Daube, President of the Public Health Association of Australia, also a member of the National Preventative Health Taskforce, said:

There is now dramatic evidence showing that young women are out-drinking their male counterparts—and unfortunately many of them drink to get drunk …

We know that price is the most effective single measure in reducing alcohol consumption, especially by young people. This increase will make a real dent in one of our biggest current social problems.

These views are in contrast to that of the alcopops industry, which is motivated by profit. I am not condemning that. That is what industry does, that is what the market does, but don’t have it joining the debate, talking as though it is concerned about our health, acting like the Florence Nightingale of the distillers industry, because clearly it is not.

A whole lot of products were delivered to our office at the end of last year. I am sure they came from the distillers. All of a sudden, various drinks arrived in our office. They were sending various drinks around. I am really not too sure what it was designed to do. It rather puzzled me. They delivered a bottle of passion wine and other things. I am really not sure what it was about. It was probably a waste of their money. In terms of a campaigning strategy, it was an absolute loser. I am not sure where all the drinks went to, but they seem to have disappeared.

The industry continue to try to confuse this issue, and it is not working. They argue about annual seasonal variations, which occur year in, year out, and they show trends that simply do not show that. This initiative shows that the Rudd Labor government is clearly committed to reducing alcohol consumption by young people, particularly young girls. We are in the business of protecting health— (Time expired)

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. The government claims that this legislation was designed to fund a new preventative health program and tackle binge drinking among teenagers, particularly girls. The price of ready-to-drink beverages and alcopops increased by 70 per cent overnight when this measure was announced in April 2008, and I will deal with the announcement in my remarks.

Drink prices increased by between 30c and $1.30 a bottle, depending on the level of alcohol content. This was the first and not the last tax hike of the Rudd government. It was expected, when announced, to raise over $2 billion. Under the tax increase, the level of excise jumped from $39.96 per litre to $66.67 per litre. Alcopops are now taxed at the same level as spirits. This is the government’s attempt, so they claim, to address the problem of binge drinking in younger people, particularly girls. They make the point—and the previous speaker tried to make the point—that it is a new problem. I would contend that binge drinking amongst young people is not a new problem. I think it has been a problem since alcohol was packaged. It certainly was a problem when I was at school and, unfortunately, in the past, at times, I have been part of the problem—

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Resources and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You didn’t break the law and have a drink!

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Minister, I never would have undertaken any activities and broken the law—this was binge drinking after 18! It is not a new problem. Binge drinking is a very serious issue and it is a major concern, particularly for those of us who have young children, going forward. We need to educate our children on how to deal properly with alcohol use. It is also not the only problem for young people in society today. We have seen in recent times the problem with illicit drugs, particularly ecstasy at some of these dance and rave parties that have occurred or even at festivals sponsored by a very well-known Australian funded broadcaster. It is not the only issue that haunts young people and that is a challenge to young people. In fact, I would contend it is not the major issue which challenges young people. The truth is that the majority of people in our society use alcohol properly. They do not drink to excess and they do not become a statistic of violence or some of the other problems that occur with overindulging in alcohol.

The other truth is that the alcohol industry is a major employer in Australia. Whether it be through the wine industry in my electorate of Mayo in the state of South Australia or through the distilled industries, it is a major employer. So those on the other side should be careful not to take too much of a wowser approach to alcohol, because we are dealing with people’s jobs and people’s lives.

But what is the real purpose of this bill? The real purpose of this bill is a tax grab. It came from the finance department, it was built in the finance department and it will be implemented by the finance department. It is a tax grab. That is simply what it is. It is spin over substance. It was a measure drawn up to boost the budget bottom line. If it was a genuine attempt to address a health issue, why were the Minister for Ageing or the Department of Health and Ageing not involved in its formulation? We have seen another example of this kind of thing today. Last night the Prime Minister, under the cloak of darkness and under pressure from this SAS Defence pay bungle in which our great fighting men have been ripped off, announced another attempt at addressing executive remuneration. Of course, there is nothing serious in it; it is just another way to get the front-page story and to prevent any serious analysis of a major problem that his defence minister has.

This sort of thing was part of the strategy with the alcopops tax. It was sold to the Sunday newspapers on 26 April last year. There was an orchestrated announcement by the Prime Minister’s office. It was part of one of the wars. We all remember the shadow Treasurer in this parliament just before Christmas going through all of the wars that we are fighting. This of course was one of the early wars: the war on binge drinking. The Prime Minister briefed the Sunday papers and it got a great run, which is exactly what the hollow men in the Prime Officer’s office were out to do. They were out to get the good press about an issue and say, ‘We are going to fight this scourge of binge drinking amongst our young people and we have got this brilliant new way to do so, which is a tax.’

But like many—in fact, probably all—of the wars that the Prime Minister has announced, it was not actually designed to attack binge drinking. It was designed to attack the real problem of the budget bottom line. We know that this government cannot manage the budget bottom line. We had a situation where they inherited a $20-odd billion surplus and now we are $40-odd billion in deficit and looking at being about $200 billion in deficit in a short time. What they needed was a new tax to build the budget bottom line, and the hollow men said, ‘We need something we can sell as a war on a popular public policy issue.’ What they stumbled across in doing so was the war on binge drinking. So it is not a policy designed to address a health problem. It is a dog whistle. It is designed to make Australian parents think, ‘Oh, that’s great, isn’t it, that the Prime Minister is addressing an issue that my kids face every day. These poor teenage girls are overindulging in these RTDs and alcopops and we must stop it.’ But, of course, that is not what it was about; it was about lifting the tax revenue of the country.

The current estimates are that the government has collected somewhere between $220 million and $345 million with this tax binge. Part of the reason for the great leak on 26 April was that it would be part of this massive strategy of preventative health measures for our young people, so that they would understand better how to deal with alcohol, and to prevent the problem of binge drinking occurring. We had Minister Roxon on the Sunday program on 27 April—a coincidental performance, of course, when the story appeared that morning—saying that hundreds of millions of dollars would flow to preventative health measures from this new tax. Of course, that is simply not true. What we have is $53 million from existing resources, which comprises $14 million for community initiatives to confront binge drinking—I am not sure what that is designed to do; $19 million to assist young drinkers—I presume to assist them in understanding binge drinking and not of course helping them to do it; and $20 million for anti-binge-drinking advertising.

As I made the point, this is from existing resources, not from the hundreds of millions of dollars that the minister proposed would be used for this campaign. That is further evidence that this is a spin over substance, front page over health policy, approach of the government, because what they really needed was extra tax revenue. This of course was in the pre-financial crisis days. This was in the days when the inflation genie was out of the bottle and they were spinning the line that they were reducing the budget spend to help take pressure off inflation—right at the wrong time, as it turns out, and that has cost many Australians their jobs. It was part of that campaign at that time. Equally, at the same time, they were looking at their budget bottom line and thinking, ‘We need some extra revenue.’ And this looked like a good one because the hollow men could sell this to the Sunday papers, as they did, and it got a good run. The minister went on Sunday the next day and got a good run out of that. She promised hundreds of millions of dollars for preventative health measures, which of course, on this side of the House, we support. However, that just has not happened. What has happened instead is a tax grab.

What we on this side of the House wanted to see when this was announced was a genuine attempt at addressing a serious issue—not just the issue of binge drinking but the multiple issues that affect young people as they grow into adults and go through the pressures of becoming a young adult. Of course, many of them do overindulge in alcohol. But, as I said earlier, many of them also have issues with illicit drugs, which cause a great deal of harm to many young people in our community. Unlike alcohol, which you can use in a measured way—and most do—illicit drugs of course you cannot. So many of our young people get caught in the cycle of trying different illicit drugs, and it all too often damages their lives. It seems to me that if we were serious about addressing this binge drinking issue, we would also be looking at that as one of the other challenges for young people moving into adulthood. Of course, illicit drugs have to be a major part of that strategy. It is disappointing to us to see that the promise of hundreds of millions of dollars on a preventative health campaign turned into simply $50 million designed to run some ads, as it appears to have done.

Let us deal with the health issues that the government claim they are designing to address with this new tax. In the last couple of days we have seen a report released by the respected economic firm Access Economics, the firm which the Labor Party often like to quote—and which they quoted back at us with great fervour when we were in government about how respected and beyond repute they are. The Access Economics report on trends in alcohol related hospital use by young people since the introduction of the alcopop tax found that data collected so far has not supported claims the alcopop tax has reduced risky drinking by young people; hospital admissions for young people 12 to 24 years of age per 100,000 population for alcohol related diagnoses in May and June 2008 were higher than for the same months in previous years; and emergency department presentations by young people 12 to 24 years per 100,000 population for alcohol related causes were higher in May to August 2008 than in previous years. There was also an overall increase for the months after the RTD tax relative to the months before, and combined admissions and emergency department presentations for females were substantially higher than for previous years and also higher than in the months pre the tax rise in 2008.

Access Economics said that the time frame was too short to draw firm conclusions but that the tax may not have reduced alcohol consumption by young people because they may have switched to other products—and that is really the point here. It is all very well to address the issue of binge drinking and, as I said earlier, we on this side of the House support a campaign to highlight and address the issues of binge drinking. But what strikes me as passing strange is that the government has implemented a new tax which has moved people from a drink which is at least measured to bottled spirits where they measure it themselves. I am sure those on the other side of the House, like many on this side of the House, would be well aware that when young people are doing the measuring themselves things can get out of hand very quickly. That is not to say they cannot overindulge in the ready-made drinks either. However, when I was talking to a very well-known and respected hotelier in Adelaide in recent days he made the point that the sales of spirits in his bottle shop have gone through the roof. Young people come in and buy a bottle of vodka and a two-litre bottle of Coke. While the first couple of mixed drinks may be reasonable, as they run out of Coke the later drinks become a lot stronger and a lot more dangerous. I am sure all those in this House would agree that it is extraordinarily dangerous for a young person to drink a bottle of vodka.

The whole idea of the health policy aspect of this was to reduce the amount of alcohol young people were drinking, I would have thought, but in fact the outcome is that they are drinking far more dangerous levels of hard liquor than they were before. That is extraordinarily dangerous and very badly thought through by those on the other side of the House. It is not about health policy; it is about a tax grab. This is what this policy is about, and any claim that this is about reducing the number of young people binge drinking is completely false. It is completely spin over substance, which is the trademark of this Prime Minister.

The question is: is binge drinking getting worse? We changed the laws, because presumably there is an attempt to reduce the amount of binge drinking since evidence suggested that it was getting worse. But a report to the government’s National Preventative Health Task Force—technical report No. 2—which is broadly supportive of taxation action to reduce drinking, notes a downward trend in risky drinking by young people 14 to 19 years of age over the period 2001 to 2007. The trend was apparent for both males and females, though less pronounced for females. It noted that the greatest increase of RTD consumption was amongst males and that trends in youth drinking were unclear. Victorian data on young people between 12 and 24 years found no clear trend in the rates of risky drinking, and increasing the price of individual products may not necessarily achieve this goal. Of course, we know that. What will happen is that if the price of the RTD goes up young people will go to the next cheapest thing or they will pool their money and buy a bottle of spirits. If young people want to drink they will drink unless alcohol is banned completely, and we know that will not work. We know that the laws which the minister just commented on, about people not being able to drink until 18, are always ignored in our country.

The point is that this policy is not about reducing binge drinking. It is about tax. It is about increasing the revenue base of our country. If it were a serious policy about reducing problems for young people with alcohol and drugs then we would see a serious and substantial campaign to address this. In fact, we would see the money raised from this tax pumped into these campaigns, but we do not, of course. We do not see any of the money from this new tax pumped into these campaigns. We see the money from this new tax pumped into government revenue. This is where the disgrace of this policy is.

I commented that we have seen, through evidence given to me in my electorate, increased sales. We also have actual evidence presented. The minister claims that RTD sales have slumped by 35 per cent since the excise was increased, but then she had to admit that sales of full strength spirits have also increased. The minister says that the increase in full strength spirit consumption is small but neglected to put figures on it—but the rise has been somewhere between 19 and 21 per cent, which is barely small. In fact, it is nearly the complete reduction in the RTD sales.

This is the point I was making earlier: the dangers of this are that we are pushing young people into harder liquor and harder drinking habits, with serious consequences. I say to this parliament that this is the danger of this policy. It is a very ill-thought-through policy, where we have encouraged the use of hard liquor amongst young people by increasing the price of premixed drinks. The attack is on young girls.

This is the problem with this government. We see, time and time again, spin over substance. They say one thing but really mean another. It is the Hollowmen approach to public policy, where you have a tax implemented for the purposes of increasing the financial revenue of the government being sold as a health policy. It is not a health policy. If it was a health policy there would be a large emphasis on the prevention of binge drinking through a well-funded education campaign, and the money being raised by this tax would go not into general government revenue to bump up the budget bottom line but into a serious campaign to address a problem in our society. It would also be a wide-ranging campaign that would look at all the other issues which our young people face going into adulthood, including illicit drugs and drink spiking in hotels, which is a big problem for young women. It is a problem which many of us on this side of the House have had experience with. We have seen the effects of this type of problem.

The opposition are opposing this legislation in the House of Representatives and we will oppose this legislation in the Senate. I understand Independent senators are minded that way as well, but of course we will have to wait and see. We oppose this legislation because it is a tax grab; it is not a health policy. This is not a genuine attempt to address a health issue in our country. It is not an attempt to make our young people safer or more educated about the serious impact of overconsumption of alcohol. This government should scrap the tax grab and go back to the drawing board. It should go back to the drawing board and work out a genuine health policy to address this issue. The government has produced no evidence that it has done anything that will help the health of young Australians through this policy. All it has done is help its own budget bottom line, and it is a disgrace. It is a disgraceful move to sell a policy as a health policy when all it is is a tax grab. In fact, it has dangers for the health of young people in our country, and I think the government should be ashamed of this very poorly thought through and spin-over-substance policy that it has presented.

Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very proud to rise to speak in favour of the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. These amendments confirm in legislation the increased rate of taxation for alcopops from 39.36c to 66.67c per litre of alcohol content, effectively bringing the tax on alcopops back to the equivalent rate for spirits. These amendments close a loophole on excise for alcopops that has been around since 2000 that has effectively left the liquor industry with a tax break on the sale of sweet, sugared drinks that are marketed predominantly to young people.

The opposition argues that we should not close this loophole. I am going to address some of the arguments made by the two previous speakers but, first, I just want to talk about how this loophole came about. Prior to July 2000, excise was paid on the premixed spirits component and then RTDs were manufactured to meet the desired strength, flavour and other properties. But on 1 July 2000, the former government introduced the tax rate on ‘other excisable beverages not exceeding 10 per cent by volume of alcohol’. The then government also imposed excise on these products at a broadly equivalent rate to that applying to full strength beer. As a result of this change, the rate of excise on spirits used in the manufacturing of RTDs went from the spirit rate to the lower beer rate. I do not assume that this was a deliberate move on the part of the previous government to create an effective tax break on drinks marketed to young people. I think it was an unintended consequence. But it was a consequence.

I will deal with the rise in sales and the effective increased alcohol abuse later, but I am just going to return to some of the arguments put forward by the members for Mayo and Dickson. They seem to argue against the closing of the loophole for four reasons. One, they seem to question our motives. I am not sure whether our motives or the outcome of the bill should be the principal consideration, but they do question our motives. Two, they seem to want much more done about illicit drugs. I doubt that there is anybody in this House who does not want more done about illicit drugs, but I would suggest to them that you do not knock off a bill that addresses abuse of alcohol because you want things done in other areas; you try and do both, as we on this side of the House are doing. Three, there seems to be a bit of disagreement on the other side about whether we do or do not have a binge-drinking problem in Australia. For those on the opposite side who do think it is an issue, they clearly want something done but they seem to argue that the liquor industry will simply find another way—which of course they will. This is one of the ways they found because of a tax loophole that was introduced in 2000, and there is no doubt, watching the behaviour of the liquor industry in exploiting that tax loophole over the last eight years, that they will attempt to find other ways. But that is not a reason to close this bill down. It is a reason to be vigilant and to continue to watch and monitor the activities of the industry in relation to its promotion of a drug—albeit a legal one—to young people.

Four, the member for Mayo also seems to be arguing that alcopops actually protect young people from excessive drinking, that somehow providing them with a measured amount of alcohol in these extremely sugary drinks is effectively protecting young people from excessive alcohol consumption. That is an astonishing point to make. From analysis by health experts and conversations I have had with young people, it seems to be just the opposite—these drinks which are designed to disguise the taste of alcohol lead to young people who do not like the taste of alcohol actually being introduced to alcoholic beverages at a much younger age. For those of us who did go through the binge-drinking phase when we were younger—and I confess to being one of them—we would all be aware of how out of control drinking can be when the taste of alcohol is not present. I think we have probably all had cocktail nights. As we mature and get older and become more experienced, we learn to appreciate the danger of those sugary, easy-to-drink beverages and exercise a little more adult and experienced restraint.

Let us have a look at exactly what we have with these drinks that we call alcopops. Alcopops are those bright-coloured, sugary drinks that you often see these days around the front doors of liquor stores. The alcohol taste in them is disguised, they are largely targeted at young people, and they are frequently consumed by under-age drinkers. Since the loophole was introduced in 2000, the use of that loophole for tax breaks seems to have worked. The industry itself admits that its sales of alcopops have grown by 250 per cent since 2000. Between 2000 and 2004, the percentage of female drinkers aged 15 to 17 who had consumed alcopops at their last drinking occasion increased from 14 per cent to 62 per cent. For females drinking at risky and high-risk levels in 2004, 78 per cent of them drank alcopops on their last drinking occasion. That figure has increased threefold since the year 2000 when the tax loophole came into effect.

In any given week, approximately one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds are binge drinking or are drinking at risky levels—that is one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds in today’s society. Almost 20,000 girls aged between 12 and 15 drink daily or weekly. The number of young women aged between 18 and 24 being admitted to hospitals because of alcohol has doubled in eight years; and, in a year, more than three-quarters of a million Australians are physically abused by persons who are under the influence of alcohol. These are all facts that we should be concerned about, and we in this place should be finding ways to minimise the risk of binge drinking in our society and in our communities.

Alcohol is, of course, a drug. It is a legal drug, but it costs our community much more than illicit drugs. The annual social cost of alcohol misuse in Australia is estimated to be around $15 billion. Last year the New South Wales Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, estimated that something like 70 per cent of police engagements with members of the community in the streets of New South Wales had alcohol as a factor. This is an extremely important issue that we face in our community, and we should all be concerned at the rise in the misuse of alcohol among young people, particularly people between the ages of 12 and 17, and we should all be concerned about the rise in the misuse of alcohol among young girls.

I am not a health expert. I think everyone knows my background; I am actually a musician. But musicians know a bit about alcohol, because most of us work at times when everyone else is playing. I have played piano in clubs seven nights a week between 7 pm and 2 am in the morning, where every customer buys you a drink. When everyone else is playing, we are actually working, and when we are trying to play everyone else is at work. With musicians you find that by the time they get to about the age of 40 they do not drink at all. When you go out for a drink with one of your mates from the music industry, you are all on water. That is either because they are already an alcoholic or because they do not want to become one. I was raised by one, by the way. My father is a musician. He took up the clarinet when I was a baby and went full-time as a musician when he was in his late 20s. Because of that, we did not have alcohol in the house at all. It did not exist in the house when we were growing up. My father always said that the danger of alcohol is not so much the binge drinking; it is when you have a glass of wine today, or you have a beer before you go to sleep, or when you are working you have a beer, and the drink becomes part of that activity. After a year or so, you start to think that you cannot play unless you have had your scotch. Effectively it becomes essential to the activity that you do, and that daily intake is what leads so many musicians, in particular, to excesses. I guess I have been raised in a family which was very aware of the danger of making it easy—of surrounding yourself with easy-to-drink alcoholic beverages.

I find the idea that liquor companies would produce alcoholic beverages that are designed not to taste like alcohol, that are actually designed to be easy to drink and not have the taste of alcohol, quite reprehensible. I find the idea that people who do not like the taste of alcohol get into the habit of that alcohol experience without the taste of alcohol quite reprehensible. I think that we in this place are obligated to close a loophole that allows the liquor industry to do that. I absolutely believe that we are obligated to close that loophole.

The members opposite have got one thing right, from my perspective: this measure alone will not fix alcohol abuse. No single measure will fix alcohol abuse. This alone will not do it. There will be people who already are enjoying that alcoholic experience of parties who will find other ways to get alcohol, and the liquor industry will create other products in an attempt to do the same thing, and we will have to be vigilant. This alone will not fix alcohol abuse. Of course it will not. That is why we on this side of the House have developed a program to address binge drinking. We are not foolish enough to assume that the program that we put in place will solve the problem absolutely, but we do believe that our program will improve attitudes to binge drinking.

In March 2008, the Prime Minister announced the first steps in our National Binge Drinking Strategy. The strategy includes $53.5 million to address binge drinking among young people. Elements of the package include $14.4 million to invest in community-level initiatives to confront the culture of binge drinking. Grant programs have been announced and organisations in my community have already applied for funding under those areas. Those of us who mix widely in our communities will know that there are elements within our communities who are quite proud of their alcohol consumption on the previous weekend. There is considerable work for us to do as a community to change attitudes which actually take pride in drunkenness on a regular basis.

We have also committed $19.1 million to intervene earlier to assist young people and ensure that they assume personal responsibility for their binge drinking and $20 million to fund advertising that confronts young people with the costs and consequences of binge drinking. We have probably all seen the government’s ‘Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare’ campaign which has been screening recently. It is quite hard-hitting and gritty, and we hope it will have an impact on young people’s attitudes to binge drinking.

Of course, there is still more to do and, as things improve, we will no doubt be putting forward more policies to make a difference. But the measure in this amendment legislation will reduce the impact of one of the strategies of the alcohol industry that specifically targets young and inexperienced drinkers. And it is working. When we first considered closing the tax loophole, the modelling indicated that there would be a revenue flow of about $3.1 billion. That estimate has been revised down to $1.6 billion, which is attributable to consumer responses to the increased excise rate on RTDs and weaker forecasts of growth in the consumption of alcoholic beverages. When we first considered the loophole, we would have been pleased if we had achieved a reduction in the growth of alcopops. In fact, our modelling showed that we would achieve a reduction in the growth of alcopops. But we have actually received a reduction in sales. Those figures come from the Australian Taxation Office so I think they can be believed. If what the members opposite say is correct, and I do not think it is—that is, that the liquor industry disputes the figures from the tax office—I am sure there will be an interesting discussion. But I do not believe that is the case. The Australian Taxation Office figures show that there has been a reduction.

The measure is working. It is not the time to turn the clock back. It is time for this House to get behind this amendment legislation and close the loophole that was opened up in 2000, which has had the unintended consequences of making it possible for the liquor industry to exploit that loophole and develop products that are specifically targeted to young people and designed to increase the consumption of alcohol among young people. It was working; the closing of the loophole, though, has reversed this trend. It is time for this House to accept that and support this legislation.

David Hawker (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In addressing the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009, I would like to start by taking up a few points that were made by the honourable member for Parramatta. I really feel that she is very confused. When she put forward her case, she came across as someone who is very confused. She started off by saying that the legislation addresses the abuse of alcohol. I would have to say that I think that is not the point of this legislation at all; we know it is all about a tax grab. The member then tried to infer that some members of the opposition are not concerned about binge drinking. That is absolute nonsense. There is not one person in this parliament or indeed in the wider community who would not be concerned about binge drinking. As the member pointed out, from her personal experience one of the more effective measures in addressing binge drinking starts at home—that is, parental guidance. To presume that this legislation will address this is nonsense; it does not. It is nothing more, or less, than a poorly targeted tax grab.

The member for Parramatta asked why people would want to get rid of having measured amounts of alcohol. I remind the honourable member that we are seeing substitution. What is the substitution? Part of the substitution is that people are switching to spirits and mixing their own drinks. As we know, when you mix your own drinks you do not necessarily mix them at the same strength every time. Indeed, you often mix them stronger. We keep hearing about ‘extremely sugary drinks’. But what is a Bundy and Coke? It is a sugary drink. You are saying to people that it is too expensive to buy Bundy in a premixed drink, where you know what the strength is, so grab a bottle of Bundy and some cans of Coke and mix it yourself. I would suggest to the honourable member that, as young people are telling her, that is what is happening. And, of course, there is very little control on the strength of the drinks. It would not be beyond the wit of anyone to realise that in some cases they are being mixed at a stronger level. Vodka and orange is another example, and the list goes on.

So when members of the government say this is closing a loophole, I think that is absolute nonsense. It is not closing any loophole. When they say the measure is working, that is nonsense. It is working well if you want to see an increase in beer sales, it is working well if you want to see an increase in straight spirit sales, it is working well if you want to see an increase in wine sales—and all of these are, of course, where the substitution is occurring. If members of the government seriously want to do something about the problems of binge drinking then this measure is clearly failing.

I do share the concerns about excess drinking by young people, but I do not support this legislation because it is not the way to solve it. It is poorly targeted. It is inconsistent legislation. It is poor policy. Clearly, this is nothing more than a tax grab. One year on, the government have been unable to provide any evidence that it has had any impact on binge drinking. In fact, independent advice going to the government flies in the face of their rhetoric; they have been told it is not working. A report to the government, updated this month, stated that overall levels of alcohol consumption and drinking patterns have not changed markedly over the past decade. That report was from the National Preventative Health Taskforce. The coalition will support sensible measures to reduce binge drinking but clearly this is not one of them.

Obviously there is a wide range of measures that could be brought in such as education; parental guidance, as I have already mentioned; law enforcement, where available; industry involvement; and rehab measures. In fact last year in the parliament I highlighted an example of what has been happening in Warrnambool in my electorate where a trial started in the nightclubs limiting access to high-alcohol content drinks after 1 am. After the trial had been going for a few weeks it was realised that it was so successful that it has now become a permanent measure. Those are the sorts of things that can be done and will work.

Let us now look at the minister’s second reading speech. She tried to make a number of points. She said:

… this measure—

that is, the measure in these bills—

… is backed by research, backed by health experts, and backed by the evidence.

I would suggest that there is no research backing what she is trying to do. Health experts are not saying this per se is the solution and clearly the evidence is not there. So after having imposed the tax for nearly a year, the government ought to have realised that this is nothing more than a tax grab and does not do anything. In her second reading speech the minister immediately went on to the issue of binge drinking, a separate issue and one that can be addressed in a number of other ways. If the government was serious about health and binge drinking, it would not be just going all out to get some more tax on this. In her second reading speech the minister also said that alcopops sales have slumped. That is not surprising—if you increase the tax by 70 per cent you would expect that to happen. Then she says:

Despite a smaller increase in full-strength spirits sales, overall spirits sales have fallen by almost eight per cent.

That is very convenient and very selective but it does not point out what has occurred with other forms of alcohol. I mentioned beer, which is generally the preferred drink of younger men and teenage boys—who are hopefully over the age of 18. As I say, the change to mixing similar drinks to those you can buy that have a measured amount of alcohol is fairly questionable, particularly if they are mixed at home.

Of course the government have been very embarrassed by the incompetence in the inaccuracy of the estimates of the revenue they were going to raise. When it was announced, there was going to be some $3 billion raised. Just a few months later when the bill came in it was down to just over half of that at $1.6 billion. What sort of advice is this government getting? Why can’t the minister at least get somewhere close on this? It is the sign of an incompetent minister.

Let us now look at some of the professional advice around on what the impacts of this measure might be. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare is the first organisation I want to quote. When they appeared before the Senate inquiry they made a number of points. There has been some effort to try and sort of suggest there has been an increase in binge drinking. This has been part of the justification. We had the big announcement on a Sunday by the government saying, ‘We’re going to attack binge drinking.’ It was another one of those publicity stunts that we are getting used to do with this government. The Institute of Health and Welfare said:

… there has been virtually no change in the pattern of risky drinking over the period 2001-2007…

I think that blows away that myth. It went on to say:

… the dominant alcoholic drink preference for young males … has been regular strength beer…

The government’s National Preventative Health Taskforce noted a downward trend in risky drinking by young people 14 to 19 years old over the period 2001 to 2007. So the justification for these bills becomes even thinner. In The Lancet in August 2008 researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales surmised:

Although the Australian Government’s recent decision is likely to arrest the increased sales of premixed spirits—

well, that is fairly obvious—

it is unlikely to substantially reduce overall rates of usual or binge consumption.

So all the arguments being put up by government members just fall away. There is no evidence to back them. Access Economics have been commissioned to do a report looking at trends in alcohol related hospital admission by young people. What they found is that the data collected so far did not support claims the alcopop tax had reduced risky drinking by young people. They went on to say:

… hospital admissions for young people 12 to 24 for alcohol related diagnosis in May and June 2008 were higher than the same months in previous years …

That is after the tax had been increased on these drinks. The emergency department presentations by young people aged 12 to 24 were higher in May to August 2008. It is the same thing. Obviously this tax is not working. As I said, there was an overall increase for the months after the ready-to-drink tax relative to the months before. Also combined admissions and emergency department presentations for females were substantially higher than in previous years and also higher than the months pre the tax rise. So here we have the real evidence to show that this is, as we said at the beginning, nothing more than a tax grab. Access Economics did qualify that report because they said they need time to gather more data, but the trend is rather damning when you look at what the government claims to have been able to achieve and what is being done.

Next I want to look at what I think is a very interesting interview conducted with some of the Heywire winners who came to Canberra earlier this month. Many members had the opportunity to meet some very impressive young Australians who came from all around the country. In an interview for the ABC the question was put about binge drinking. The interviewer said that that minister, Nicola Roxon, was talking about the alcopops tax and saying it had worked in that it had collected less than they had budgeted. The interviewer asked:

But what do young Heywire winners think? They are just the targeted age group of 16 to 22 years of age.

The interviewer asked them:

Who here thinks that the—increasing the price of these mixed drinks has worked? Anyone?

[Group responds] No.

The interviewer then asked why. And the answer was:

Because when you put the tax up on the alcopops it’s not really the drink that people drink to binge drink anyway. It pushes them to drink boxed wine and straight spirits, which can potentially be more dangerous.

This is what young people, who actually know what is going on out there, are saying. The interviewer went on to ask this particular Heywire winner:

You are a singer in a pub in Launceston … So, do you see people curbing their drinking because of increased price?

Neve, the singer from Launceston, said:

No, not at all. Not at all.

And then there was widespread laughter. What that says is that the young people are laughing at what this government are claiming to do—which is not exactly a sign of good policy.

Further on in the interview, one of the winners of Heywire said:

I think the consensus amongst us yesterday was, while at the beginning of our conversation, that the tax had actually fuelled the binge drinking.

It has actually fuelled the binge drinking. That is what the young people are saying—it has fuelled the binge drinking. And this government claim that the reason for bringing this tax in is to reduce binge drinking. Clearly, it is not working; it is failing. That is why it is such bad legislation. The Heywire winner went on to say:

Because I know in my area it’s even got worse because people are just buying straight grog. So, if they got rid of the tax and just went back to Cruisers, they know how much they’re drinking and what they’re drinking.

Government members ought to take note of what young people are saying, because, clearly, this tax is not achieving what the government claim it is. It is nothing more than a disguised method of trying to raise revenue.

Maybe we should look at what some of the editorials in a couple of the newspapers have said—and they have been scathing of the minister. Earlier this month, on 6 February, the editorial in the Australian, headed ‘Policy on the rocks’, said:

The alcopop tax rise was a rort that wouldn’t work.

Pretty strong words. It goes on to say:

There was never anything to drink to in the 70 per cent tax increase on alcopops in the budget last year. It pushed prices up at a time when the Government was banging on about fighting inflation. It discriminated against drinks preferred by the politically powerless—young people and older workers who like pre-mixed spirits. And the way it was sold assumed we had all had a few too many and would believe anything—that the tax was a way of stopping binge drinking among the young, of encouraging teens and those in their 20s with a taste for potent sugar hits to drink less, that the $680 million in extra revenue over four years it would generate was entirely incidental.

This was a triple-distilled fib and the Government has now been caught.

Pretty strong words—and it is about time some members over there stopped carrying on with this nonsense of trying to pretend otherwise. The editorial went on to say:

The tax is now expected to generate only half the additional income originally anticipated—

because people are switching drinks. The editorial goes on to talk about what happened in New Zealand when they tried to do the same thing and found that it did not work. So we have not learnt from that. The editorial makes the point that it is nothing more than a ‘cynical stunt’. It concludes by saying:

The alcopop excise is policy snobbery—on the rocks.

Lovely words.

But let us look at another editorial. The editorial in the West Australian at the end of January is headed ‘Time for Roxon to admit that alcopops tax is not working’, and says:

The Federal Government has been caught out in its tax on alcopops. Either it did not think through the big increase in excise on pre-mixed spirit-based drinks, or it cynically chose to camouflage a common-or-garden tax slug as a health strategy.

They have probably summed it up and exposed this government policy for what it is: it is not a health measure—as has been clearly demonstrated by what young people are saying and what these editorials are saying. The editorial goes on to say:

There is evidence to suggest that the tax slug has not made a scrap of difference to the overall level of alcohol consumption amongst the group it targets and may even have caused it to increase.

It also points out:

… Health Minister Nicola Roxon says only that there is “strong evidence” to support its effectiveness, but she has failed to reveal it.

She has been caught out and exposed. I think members opposite should hang their heads in shame if they think that they are going to come into this chamber and carry on with this nonsense as to why they support this bill. It is not a health measure and it is not working.

I mentioned the Access Economics report. It talks about hospitalisation rates for alcohol related harm among 12- to 24-year-olds. Report author Lynne Pezulla was quoted as saying:

“If anything, hospitalisation rates of young people due to acute intoxication and harmful use of alcohol worsened in the months following the Government’s tax increase on ready-to-drink products.”

She went on to say how people were moving on to use rum and coke and other things. And what did the health minister do? She went back to some figures from the year 2000. Come on, Minister: the young people of 2000 have now grown up; we are talking about today. The minister is obviously desperately clutching for straws. She really has not a feather to fly with in her argument to support this tax increase. As a health minister, one should in fact question why she is even sponsoring it as a health measure.

I have no hesitation in saying that I will be voting against this legislation. I think it is poorly targeted. It is, as I say, nothing more than a tax grab. It is poor policy and there is some early evidence that shows that, rather than achieving what is claimed—to assist in reducing the amount of binge drinking amongst young people—it may well be that it is increasing the amount of binge drinking. I think the government has failed on all counts, and clearly this legislation should be opposed. If the government had any real concern about binge drinking, they would be looking to far more effective measures than trying to put legislation like this through.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure and total commitment that I rise today to speak to the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009, which we have before us in this parliament. In doing so, I would like to emphasise—and I mean emphasise—the importance of this piece of legislation from a health perspective. So often, members on the other side of this House distort research information that relates to health measures, particularly so when it comes to drugs and alcohol. I will deal in some detail with the distortion that we have heard from previous speakers. This legislation will alter the taxation definition of beer in the Excise Tariff Amendment Act 1991 and the Customs Tariff Act 1995 and wine in A New Tax System (Wine Equalisation Tax) Act 1999 to ensure that beer and wine based products that attempt to mimic alcopops in relation to their taste are taxed as a spirits product.

I heard the previous speaker, as well as other speakers in this debate from the other side, quote figures, talk about the effectiveness of this legislation and say that it was about tax—that it was not a health matter. It showed just how out of touch they are and what little knowledge they actually have about health related matters. It also showed how selective they are when they are researching information for a speech. When the opposition sat on the government benches of this parliament, their approach to dealing with the epidemic in our society of binge drinking—the misuse of alcohol by young people—was to ignore it. It was seen as not being a problem. They were prepared to conduct inquiries into illicit drug use. They were prepared to conduct inquiries into numerous other issues. But they never looked at the effect—the harmful effect, I might add—of alcohol. It is very important to note at this point that alcohol is one of the major causes of chronic illness in our society. When the opposition were in government they did absolutely nothing to address this chronic issue. They argued that any problems with drugs in Australia related to illicit drugs.

The fact is that the figures do not hold up when you are looking at the use of alcohol and drugs. The data that I have here is from the National Drug Strategy Household Survey. This information indicated that along with smoking, the misuse of alcohol was a major health problem within our society. Over 80 per cent of the population consumed alcohol in the previous 12 months, with 11 per cent of males and six per cent of females drinking daily. In terms of risky behaviour in the long term, 10 per cent of males and nine per cent of females drank alcohol in a way that set up a risky pattern. In addition, 24 per cent of males and 17 per cent of females drank at least once a month in a manner that was high risk in the short term. In other words, that means that we have young people engaged in risky alcohol drinking behaviour—binge drinking. Those young people have their introduction to alcohol through alcopops. It is just a transition between a sweet soft drink and a sugary alcopop, and research supports that.

Alcohol use is also a major cause of drug or alcohol related deaths in Australia. There were 2,000 deaths in 1998—and I am sure that is now higher—among people under 64 years of age. It accounted for 28 per cent of all drug or alcohol deaths in this age group. Tobacco use is probably the highest cause of drug related deaths, followed by alcohol. All this can be compared with the around 1,000 deaths per year in Australia that are caused by illicit drugs. When the opposition sat on the government side of this parliament, they concentrated on illicit drugs. They did not concentrate on the biggest killer of people in Australia—an epidemic that is consuming our society.

Tax office figures for the first nine months of this year show that alcopops sales have dropped by 35 per cent compared to the previous year. That was far beyond the predictions that were made when this legislation was introduced. The legislation predicted a slower fall-off in use. However, alcopops sales have slumped, bringing overall spirits sales with them. Despite a small—and I emphasise small—increase in full-strength spirits sales, overall spirits sales have fallen by eight per cent. To listen to members on the other side of this House making their contribution to this debate, one could be excused for believing that sales of alcopops have declined marginally and that, instead of those, people are now buying large quantities of full-strength spirits. That is not true; the figures do not support that. This only goes to show that you can never believe what those on the other side of this House say.

The previous speaker, the member for Wannon, asked why this has been sponsored as a health measure. I have the answer for the member for Wannon. The Australian General Practice Network are a very authoritative body when it comes to health matters. In a letter to the Treasury in October last year they talked about the impact of tobacco and alcohol on the burden of disease on our society. They went into some detail, saying that harmful alcohol consumption was associated with 3.2 per cent of the total disease burden in 2003. It accounted for 9.7 per cent of the burden of mental illness in Australia. In 2004-05, $3.5 billion in lost productivity was related to alcohol use. In 2007 about one-third of persons aged 14 years or older put themselves at risk or high risk of alcohol related harm in the short term on at least one drinking occasion. What have the members on the other side of this parliament advocated? That we do absolutely nothing.

In the same period, 10.3 per cent of persons aged 14 years or over consumed alcohol in a way considered risky or a high risk to their health in the long term. The 2007 National Drug Strategy Household Survey reported that both daily and weekly smoking patterns were undesirable and that alcohol was a similar problem.

Australian evidence has shown that the excise taxes on products such as tobacco and alcohol curb consumption behaviours and can therefore be an effective public health intervention. Members on the other side of the House say this is a tax bill. The Australian General Practice Network say that excise taxes on products such as tobacco and alcohol curb consumption behaviours and can therefore be an effective public health intervention. That comes from one of the leading medical organisations in Australia. I think it really debunks what the member for Wannon said.

We know that members on the other side of this parliament are slaves to big business. We know that they get their marching orders on the position they should take on any piece of legislation from their friends in high places. They do not make decisions on legislation based on what is best for Australians. I find it very disturbing that speaker after speaker on the other side of the parliament has risen to state their opposition to this legislation and presented very flawed arguments based on partial evidence while ignoring evidence from public health workers, the Australian General Practice Network and information that can be obtained from looking at medical data. Those on the other side of the parliament need to decide why they are here. Are they here to serve big business or are they here to get good quality health outcomes for Australian people?

The National Preventative Health Taskforce, in a discussion paper, has proposed targets for Australia to become the healthiest country by 2020. The third target on its list is ‘reduce the prevalence of harmful drinking of alcohol for all Australians by 30 per cent’. That is what this legislation is about—reducing the prevalence of harmful consumption of alcohol. The paper deals in some detail with alcohol. It emphasises that alcohol is an intrinsic part of Australia’s culture, that 83 per cent of Australians are drinkers and that 1.4 million consume alcohol on a daily basis. I quoted 80 per cent earlier. This data is a little bit newer and shows that consumption of alcohol is increasing.

Consumption of alcohol accounts for 3.2 per cent of the total burden of disease and injury in our country, at an estimated health cost of $11 billion annually. What is the response of members on the other side of this House? Do nothing. Argue the case for the distillers. Do not do anything for the Australian people, do not put in place any strategy to address the problem and ignore advice from the Australian General Practice Network. They are ignoring the advice and evidence from overseas, where it has been found that the introduction of excise taxes is a very effective way to deal with reducing the consumption of alcohol. I might add that the National Preventative Health Taskforce discussion paper highlights a review of the taxation system to stimulate production and consumption of low-alcohol products and a removal of tax deductibility for advertising. Once again it is linking tax to the consumption of alcohol.

I come from Lake Macquarie in the Hunter. The front-page article in today’s Newcastle Herald is headlined ‘We’re punch drunk’, with the subheading ‘REVEALED: The appalling stats that confirm our city can’t hold its liquor’. The article details at some length the problems that are associated with binge drinking—problems that, to a large extent, are related to young people.

I am a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health and Ageing. This morning in that committee we had a briefing from Dr Gillian McIlwain and Professor Ross Homel, Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and Director of the Strategic Research Program in the Social and Behavioural Sciences at Griffith University. They came to talk to the committee about alcohol related violence in licensed places. This morning, prior to coming to this chamber, I was confronted with information on two fronts about the abuse of alcohol and the abuse of alcohol by young people. As a parliament, we can sit back and do nothing. We can ignore the advice of health experts and do nothing about addressing this issue. Or we can say we really want to address it; we really take it seriously.

In relation to the abuse of substances of any kind, we know that, after smoking, alcohol causes the second highest rate of health problems in our community. It is a big issue. We need to address the problem at the level at which people are being introduced to alcohol. People are introduced to alcohol through the subtle move from drinking soft drinks—sweet, sugary, non-alcoholic drinks—to drinking sweet, sugary drinks that are alcoholic. It is not an argument to say that people can monitor what they are drinking when they are drinking alcopops as opposed to spirits. Alcohol is abused by young people and cost is an important factor in that. I encourage members of this House to support this legislation, to move away from their friends in big business and to start thinking about the health of our young people and the Australian population. I encourage them to vote in favour of this legislation.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to rise today to oppose the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. Let us be clear here today about what this government is seeking the parliament’s permission to do. The government is asking the parliament to validate a tariff—a new tax, an excise, whatever you want to call it—when we know clearly that the intentions of this measure have been a total and utter failure. We know that this is a complete policy failure.

We have had member after member on the government benches tell us today that this is all about the health of the Australian community, that these bills are somehow tied integrally to the health of Australians, to the consumption levels of alcohol and to health outcomes that the government is seeking to change or alter. But what is really going on is that this government is seeking to increase the excise, the tax, collected on one category of alcohol—ready-to-drink beverages. Those opposite contend that by increasing tax on one category of alcohol they will effectively reduce alcohol consumption in our society. Of course, we know that that is an absolute and utter farce of a contention. We know that that objective will not be achieved through these measures. In fact, all of the evidence that is presented to us by anybody who exists out there in the real world—the people who drink in the pubs, the people who deal with the youths who have consumed too much alcohol on a regular basis—corresponds with what common sense tells us about these measures. It tells us that young people, when faced with a choice between a newly high-taxed, expensive alcoholic product and a cheaper alcoholic product, will simply move from consuming the newly taxed product to the cheaper product. It is simple consumer behaviour.

Once again, this provides me with an opportunity to lecture this government and Labor Party members with a simple lesson in economics and the free market, which I know they are now suddenly very opposed to. When you tax one product heavily, you will decrease the consumption of that product. I have no doubt that they have examples and evidence of the decrease in the consumption of ready-to-drink beverages. But we have seen an increase in the consumption of spirits—straight spirits. We have seen an increase in the consumption of other forms of alcohol—beer and cheap wine.

Mr Deputy Speaker, if you were the person in this country responsible for the marketing of hipflasks, how would you come up with a policy that would dramatically increase the sale of hip flasks in Australia? With the best will between us in this place we would not find a way to increase the sale of hipflasks quite dramatically but under this government we have seen a soaring in the level of hipflask sales. That distortion has been created by these measures, which seek to tax one category of alcohol with no regard for the consequences. If this is a genuine health measure, there are many questions that need to be asked. Why would we validate a measure that is not achieving health outcomes?

Many of the members opposite in their speeches recently have focused on the taste of ready-to-drink drinks as if that is somehow some sort of compelling argument for us to validate an excise measure—whether the drinks are sweet or whether the drinks are sour. They seem to be obsessed with sweet-tasting drinks. Somehow we should tax sweetness as if it is bad and allow sour drinks because that is somehow going to bring about a better outcome. This is the level of debate that we are subjected to in this place. We understand on this side that this is purely a tax grab. This is purely a way of raising revenue. It is not designed to achieve a particular health outcome and, if members opposite want to stand on the fact that this is a health measure, then they had better acknowledge that this is not going to achieve in the real world the very benchmarks that they have set up for policy success in this area.

A question must be asked in relation to these bills: what is happening to the money that is being collected—allegedly for health measures, as Minister Roxon, the Minister for Health and Ageing, has said? Hundreds of millions of dollars have been collected. Ironically, this is nowhere near what the government projected. Initially I think it was $3.1 billion across the forward estimates, then $2 billion when the tax hike was first mooted and we now know that it will raise only about $1.6 billion on the forward estimates. Between $220 million and $345 million has already been collected with this tax binge that the government has embarked upon. Has anything between $220 million and $345 million been spent on health measures? We know that nothing like that has been spent on health measures. We know that the government has not embarked on a new era of attacking binge drinking—of meaningful policy initiatives that have been designed to send binge drinking on a downward spiral. We know they have spent a small amount—$53 million—on advertising and some other minor measures.

When I speak to the bodies that deal with youths who are affected by alcohol in my electorate and in greater Sydney, where I come from, they tell me a couple of things, and it is very important that we take note of the people who are on the ground and are dealing with these issues. If the government is serious about addressing binge drinking, it will have an ally in the opposition because we also seek to address the very serious problem of binge drinking, especially amongst our youth. But when the charities and the voluntary sector ask: ‘Are you discouraged? Have you stopped drinking because of the increase in your favourite ready-to-drink mix?’ the young people they talk to—the people who are affected—say: ‘Of course we haven’t. Of course we’re now drinking either straight spirits,’ or, ‘We have moved to wine or beer.’ Interestingly, the feedback that I have received is that they simply turn the advertisements down when they are watching the television. They do not listen to them.

Clearly, though the $53 million the government has already pumped so far into this has not achieved its objective, we know that alcohol consumption levels and hospitalisations have continued to increase since these measures for alcohol related matters were introduced. We know that every benchmark the minister and the government have set for the success of this policy is an abject and utter failure except for the collection of revenue. But I should also correct myself there. They thought they would collect $3 billion in the budget—$2 billion across the forward estimates—but we now know they will collect revenue of only $1.6 billion. It has been a failure not only as a health initiative but also as a tax initiative, and we understand that this is primarily a tax initiative.

You can go further afield and examine the attitudes of young Australians as to whether the government’s measures are doing what they set out to do. You can go onto Facebook and have a look at the serious and mounting opposition that comes from the young people who use that medium. It is young people primarily who are scattered across there. There is a group on Facebook called Aussies Against the Alcopop Tax Increase. It has more than 72,000 members now. Having run some Facebook sites, which I have on very important issues in north-west Sydney—including building a metro line—and having had those established for a year or more and having 1,000 members or so, I know that getting to 72,000 members is a very significant achievement. The people who have put together this group say to me they are overwhelmed with young people who are concerned about paying more for their favourite category of alcohol. That is not an indication that people want to continue to binge drink—we know that most people, most of society, behave responsibly with alcohol; most people can do the right thing in relation to drinking—but it tells us is that young people are awake to what the government is doing here. It is not seeking to genuinely lower the rates of alcohol consumption. Imagine if the government proposed a tax on beer. Why did they not propose a tax on beer if they were looking to lower alcohol consumption in Australia? We know that ready-to-drink drinks is a niche category. We know that it is not as common as beer and we know that, if the government proposed a tax on beer, they would face a serious and substantial backlash—as they should—from the Australian community.

I think the member for Dickson’s suggestion in relation to what should be done with this revenue that has already been collected—the $220 million to $345 million—is a good one. He is suggesting that, if this government is serious, all of that revenue ought not to go back to the companies that it has been taken from. The member for Shortland is quite wrong in saying that we are directed by the distillery council. The opposition have proposed that that money be spent on more initiatives and better initiatives and, indeed, be given to the sector that needs it the most—that is, the sector that deals with people who have alcohol problems and the effects of the consumption of too much alcohol.

If that money were spent in that way, that would be a meaningful outcome of these measures. But we know that this government is not looking to spend that money in this area; it wants to create this wedge, this dynamic of, ‘Well, the money will go back to the industry; therefore the parliament must pass this measure.’ We know that is a furphy. We can put in place legislation here that can send that money to where it is needed most, and if the government is serious about health measures then that is where that money should be spent.

If this government went into our community and said, ‘We’re imposing a new excise on one category of alcohol, and the purpose of that excise is the health of people suffering from alcohol abuse,’ and that were the government’s position—that it was the truth and that that is what that money was collected for—then that is what the money should be spent on. No government ought to have the right to single out an industry sector—to single out people—and to tax them unfairly in a way that does not produce the effect intended and does not result in the money ever being spent in the way it was intended. That has been tried before many times in the past. In fact, in Boston many years ago, people reacted to the unfair taxes that were imposed on particular categories of goods. Indeed, every industry sector in Australia ought to watch this issue very carefully. They ought to look at the government and think, ‘Our industry sector could be next.’ If the government is willing to single out one sector of an industry and heavily tax it with no real outcome, where clearly its objectives are not being met, then any industry sector could be the subject of the government’s next delight in or passion for taxation.

Indeed, we are facing one of the most serious economic circumstances of our time. We have heard that consumption is vital to our recovery. We have heard that handouts of cash to everybody to continue to spend are the order of the day and that they will somehow save us. Yet this government, at the same time it is giving, is seeking to take in the form of new taxes. It is seeking to take money out of the economy by taxing alcohol, it is seeking to take $250 from every student and it is seeking to tax more than it did before. That, I think, gives the lie to the idea that somehow consumption is our way out of economic problems.

If you look at some of the data that has been collected, you will see it provides us with a snapshot of what people are thinking about these measures. A Galaxy survey was conducted, asking Australians whether they thought the tax on ready-to-drink products was effective or whether it should be scrapped. It produced the following results. Only 12 per cent of people came forward and said, ‘We think this tax is effective; we think it will do what the government says it will do.’ Seventy-eight per cent thought it was ineffective. Does this pass the common-sense test? If you went into a pub and were told: ‘Here’s your 20 categories of alcohol that you can buy over the bar; we as a government are going to increase the tax on this one by 70 per cent, but we’re going to leave the taxation treatment the same on all of these other categories; therefore the price on that one category will go through the roof but the price of every single other category of alcohol will stay low,’ what do you think people would do? The common-sense test tells us that they will go for those other forms of alcohol and stop buying the highly taxed product, and that is exactly what is happening. Furthermore, the survey revealed that 77 per cent of people thought the tax should just be scrapped. I think that is a snapshot of community attitudes.

You will not get an argument in this place about the worthiness of tackling binge drinking or have a genuine debate about how we solve the issue of people who have problems with alcohol consumption. We know what these bills are really about; we know they are simply a tax grab for the bottom line of the budget. Singling out any industry sector for a false purpose is not something that we should ever seek to do. Indeed, that is why I, in particular, and the opposition will be opposing these measures.

We would support sensible measures to reduce binge drinking. I think we ought to listen to the people who know the most about these things. Why haven’t the experts in this field been brought to Canberra to discuss these matters—to discuss what can be done with this revenue and how it can best be spent? I get feedback from the very serious charitable and voluntary organisations in my own electorate. I know that they know how to address these problems. They are already in the field addressing these issues. They are having great success in that field, because that is what they do. But we are not listening to them; we are listening to a cash-strapped government. We are listening to a group of people who seem to think it is their right to tell people what to do every day of their lives—what to drink, what to eat, how to think and how to feel.

The Minister for Health and Ageing tends to come into this chamber and act as if it is her right to single out an industry sector and tax them heavily for a purpose when it does not achieve that objective. She seems to act as though it is her right when that industry sector are providing a legal product, employing Australians and simply doing what they are allowed to do by our market system. I do not accept that it is her right to single out people for this unfair treatment. If the government is serious about addressing health issues then there are ways of being serious about addressing them, but we have not seen them from this government. What we have seen are purely revenue and taxation measures designed to increase the bottom line of the budget.

Things such as education and law enforcement have been totally overlooked by members from the government benches who have addressed this question. Instead of treating the Distilled Spirits Industry Council as though they are criminals engaging in some form of underhand activity—instead of antagonising and attacking them—why wouldn’t you seek to work with the industry on solving this problem? Of course, we know the government have not taken that approach. They have taken the attitude that the industry is against them, that they are against the industry and that the government know best, which I always have a level of scepticism about. The government need to be taking measures on law enforcement, industry involvement, community engagement and rehabilitation.

This is clearly a policy failure in what it has set out to do in terms of health, and the maligning of this industry sector is something that I think is unedifying to watch, unnecessary and, indeed, a real stain on government in this country in general. In addressing both of these bills and why we are here today, I think it is also important that we do not overlook the fact that you cannot legislate for common sense. You cannot legislate to stop people from being stupid. You cannot legislate to stop people from binge drinking. All of these things have been tried before in human history, and all of them have failed. Attempts by government to legislate human behaviour usually end up producing an opposite set of effects or an unintended set of effects. Indeed, as I outlined earlier, if you want a good example of that then the increase in the sale of hipflasks, of straight spirits and of beer and wine is the unintended consequence of this tax and revenue measure. It may have produced a decline in one category which you have taxed—because whatever you tax you create a disincentive to buy—but why tax one category of alcohol and not others? It gives the lie to the stated reason of the government behind this policy measure.

We know that you cannot put a law into place that will stop people from behaving badly, but the reality is that most Australians behave responsibly with alcohol. It is a part of our culture. There are parts of that culture which need addressing. There are serious health implications in relation to the abuse of alcohol, and they do need addressing. We are here to say to the government: if you are genuine about pursuing health initiatives then pursue health initiatives. Do not pursue revenue measures that will not achieve a health objective. (Time expired)

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the two bills before the House. The Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 seeks to alter the rate of the excise duty in relation to other excisable beverages not exceeding 10 per cent alcohol by volume, commonly referred to as alcopops or ready-to-drink beverages. The bill will confirm, though legislation, the increase that occurred from 27 April 2008 for these types of alcoholic drinks. The rate of duty, as it appears in schedule 1 of the Excise Tariff Act 1921, will be increased from $39.36 to $66.67 per litre of alcohol content.

The second bill, the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009, will ensure that imports of such beverages as described will be taxed at the same rate, known as the excise equivalent customs duty rate. This also took effect from 27 April 2008, and this bill will legislate that increase. The Australian Taxation Office and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service have been collecting excise and excise equivalent customs duty at the higher rate since 27 April 2008.

We have heard that the federal government is apparently singling out one industry and one section of the industry in taxing these alcopops. What all of the speakers on the other side have avoided—I would say intentionally—is the fact that these particular types of alcoholic beverages have been targeted to close a loophole that was created by the Howard government with the introduction of the goods and services tax. This is a responsibility that fell on their shoulders almost a decade ago—that is, to make sure that this hole did not arise—and they failed. They failed our young people. They failed to do anything to ensure that these types of damaging alcoholic beverages did not become more easily accessible to our young people.

So why are these two bills so important? We have heard about the binge drinking problem. When we talk about binge drinking, we know it has effects in two main areas. There are the health consequences that flow from binge drinking, but there are also the social consequences. These statistics are quite horrific when you think about it: in any given week approximately one 12- to 17-year-old in 10 is binge drinking or drinking at risky levels. In addition, between 1999 and 2005 the proportion of teenage girls aged 12 to 17 who chose ready-to-drink beverages as their preferred drink rose from 23 per cent to 48 per cent. That is a significant increase that has not been acknowledged by any speaker on the other side of this House during this debate.

In fact, the member for Mayo said that binge drinking has not suddenly become a problem; it has been a problem for a long time, going right back to when he was a teenager. He was making that comment to somehow excuse us from any need to do anything about it now, but the statistics speak very differently. The statistics show that since 2000 there have been significant increases in the consumption by and attraction to young people, especially young teenage girls, of these particular types of beverages. You do not just have to take the federal government’s word for this, of course. There are many organisations, both from the health area and from the social services area, that agree with the government on this. For example, the police want action on binge drinking. On 27 May 2008 the New South Wales Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, stated:

“Drinking habits have changed. What many young Australians are doing now is going out determined to get drunk, whatever the consequences.”

“There’s been a normalisation of binge drinking rather than an encouragement of sensible drinking and sadly it involves both men and women … Enough is enough and it’s time to change the culture.”

The Australian Drug Foundation, the Australian National Council on Drugs, former Liberal minister and former AMA president Dr John Herron, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia and the Public Health Association of Australia supported this initiative. The Public Health Association of Australia CEO, Michael Moore, came out in November in relation to the government’s anti-binge drinking ads and said:

I hope this campaign is not attacked by the industry using the same sort of tactics of distorting facts and statistics that have been used by some representatives of the distilled spirits industry to protect their own profits.

There are many organisations out there who support this initiative—and let us not forget an independent report commissioned by the Howard government. It was written by David Collins and Helen Lapsley and entitled The costs of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug abuse to Australian society in 2004-05. That report found that there would appear to be strong justification for the April 2008 increase in the Australian tax on premixed alcopops by 70 per cent. Alcohol excise taxes are capable of being designed explicitly to target the types of alcohol known to be the subject of abuse—for example, high-strength beer and alcopops. Studies show that young people are more influenced by the price of alcohol, so that increasing the tax rate on alcoholic drinks which are specifically targeted at the youth market is likely to be effective. This is from the independent report commissioned by the Howard government, but I do not remember hearing any of the speakers on the other side referring to that report today in this debate.

You would think that the statistics of the increase in the use of these beverages and their attraction for young people would alone see the government and the opposition being as one on this issue. In fact, you would hope that that would be the case, but of course it is not. You would hope that the government and the Distilled Spirits Industry Council would be one on this issue, but of course they are not. You would have to say that this is a case where they protest too much. The industry itself has come out and said that the tax that has been in effect since April 2008 has had no effect at all. It is not addressing binge drinking. Let us just consider the argument that the distilled spirits industry is putting up. This tax has been in for a number of months, more than adequate time for there to be proper analysis of the effects coming out of the use or reduction in use of these beverages and the sales of these beverages. You would have to question that if you actually accept the industry’s argument that this tax has had no effect since its introduction. Why would an industry such as this pour so much time, so many resources and so much money into lobbying members and campaigning against this tax if it is having no effect? If it is not affecting their revenue in any way because young people are either still buying alcopops at the same rate as they were prior to April 2008 or, alternatively, have switched to full spirits or other forms of alcohol in place of that—and, if you believe the speakers on the other side, young people are actually drinking more now than previously—then why is this industry up in arms? Their bottom line is revenue, making money for their shareholders and making sure their products sell. So, if this tax is having no effect or if people are turning to other alcohol and the problem is still occurring and the increases are still occurring in the sales of this alcohol—as we have heard from speakers on the other side today—why is this industry so determined to see this tax scrapped?

They are certainly resorting to some interesting tactics, may I say. They have had their mobile billboards, they have written many letters to members of parliament and they have sent media articles—there are lots of articles in the paper about whether or not this is working—but I have to make mention of a particular stunt that this industry pulled at the end of last year. This is an industry that is about responsible drinking and genuine debate, if you believe the member for Mitchell. Their idea of working with the federal members of parliament, particularly with me, on this issue and wanting to enter into genuine dialogue was to, without contacting me or my office, come into my office in parliament on a daily basis in the last sitting week of 2008, not seeking to talk to me or any staff, and to drop a bottle of alcohol at my front desk each day. That resulted in four bottles of alcohol being left in my office—which is over two litres of alcohol, none of which I asked for, nor was I asked whether I would like to keep it—all to make a point about binge drinking not being a problem and about how we should enter into genuine debate. On the first sitting day of this year—their staff were obviously busy dropping bottles around the place, so I could not get hold of them the week they dropped these around—one of my staff contacted the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia and said: ‘We have four bottles of alcohol here that we don’t want. Ms D’Ath has specifically asked that they be returned to the industry council.’ The immediate response was, ‘Well, if the member doesn’t want them, tell her to pour them down the sink.’ I said, ‘No, I don’t want these; come and get them.’ They then said that it was not a priority for them but that they would organise it. Here we are in the third sitting week, almost four weeks since that phone call was made, and unfortunately the four bottles of alcohol are still sitting in my office. They are not too intent on coming back and entering into any dialogue with me, obviously.

We are being accused of attacking this industry, but we are not doing so without some reason, I would argue. When you look at what this industry has done since this tax was introduced you will see it has gone out of its way to try to find alternatives to get around the tax—‘malternatives’, as they have been called. It is absolutely shameful that this industry has done that. If the stunt of dropping these bottles around to me and saying, ‘Here is all this mixed alcohol that is not taxed,’ is to try to get me to see that a particular tax on alcopops is not having the effect that it should, I say to the industry as a personal perspective from me: if that is the case, I am more than happy to support fixing any loopholes the industry might find and, if there are these ‘malternatives’ that they say will be just as attractive to young people, I would certainly support fixing that problem.

The opposition have come in here today, unfortunately although not surprisingly, making comments about how the alcohol industry is a major employer and so we should not be forcing a tax on it that may affect its revenue. Again, if they are running the industry’s argument, they should be consistent. If the industry is saying, ‘This tax is having no effect,’ then it is not going to have an effect on revenue and it is not going to have an effect on jobs. So what are they crowing about? The fact is that they know that this tax has caused a reduction in alcopop use, and that is what it is intended to do.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But there has been an increase in spirit usage.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have an interjection that it has increased full spirit usage.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Baldwin interjecting

Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The shadow minister will cease interjecting.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There has been an increase in the use of full spirits, but not to the same level as the decrease in the use of alcopops. So, overall, we have seen a reduction—and the other side does not want to acknowledge this—in the use of spirits.

We are being told by the member for Mayo that we should not have a wowser approach. I did not realise trying to address binge drinking was having a wowser approach. We have heard from the member for Mitchell about 75,000 young people on Facebook who are not concerned about the use or abuse of alcohol; they are concerned about paying more for alcohol. That gives me some heart because, if young people are concerned that their favourite drink is going to cost them more, they might be a little bit more hesitant to buy that drink now.

My local youth group has recently launched a ‘Be aware’ campaign. These young people developed their own materials to take out to educate young people, which included graphic footage of young people at parties involved in drug use and alcohol abuse. If young people themselves are developing programs to educate others about the abuse of alcohol, surely we have a responsibility to be doing the same. We have heard from the member for Mitchell that, when it comes to the ads, young people in his electorate say they just turn down the volume. What is their solution? We have heard that they do not support a tax and they do not support ads. They believe that the revenue should be spent on better initiatives and given to groups who deal with this problem. I do not disagree with ensuring that there is adequate funding going to groups who have to deal with the outcomes of binge drinking, and the government is doing that, but there was not one mention from the opposition of spending revenue towards any preventative programs—not one mention of it at all.

This government is tackling this issue with a holistic approach. We are not just introducing a tax on alcopops. We are committing $14.4 million for community-level initiatives to confront the culture of binge drinking in partnership with sporting and community organisations; we are spending $19.1 million to intervene earlier to assist young people and ensure that they assume personal responsibility; we are putting $20 million towards the advertising campaign ‘Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare’, confronting youths with the consequences of binge drinking; and we have $872 million in funding for preventative health, announced at COAG in November 2008, which will include new initiatives to tackle binge drinking. That is what this government is doing to tackle this issue, as opposed to what we are once again hearing from the other side.

The opposition are all in denial. If it is not climate change or the global economic crisis, it is binge drinking. These things are not happening, according to them, but are being overplayed and blown out of proportion. The opposition have a simple approach to just about everything: ‘Let’s sit back and wait and see if everything fixes itself, whether it is the economy, the climate or binge drinking.’ This government is not going to sit back. This government is committed to addressing this problem and to looking after our young people and doing everything we can to educate them and discourage them from being attracted to the types of beverages that are most damaging to young people. I call on those on the other side to support these bills.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak today on the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. It is important at the outset to reiterate that the coalition does not deny that there is a binge-drinking problem amongst some in society, and we are very concerned about those problems. The member for Petrie just mentioned the ad campaign ‘Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare’. I actually want to congratulate the government, because that is a good ad campaign and I think it does cut through to young people. The coalition is, however, opposed to these bills because they seek to validate a substantial increase imposed on one category of alcohol products: ready-to-drink beverages, RTDs or alcopops, as they are known.

The coalition is strongly of the view that the government’s ready-to-drink alcohol beverages tax increase is extremely unpopular and has failed on both social and economic grounds. The government has provided no credible evidence that it is working from a health perspective. It claims that it increased these taxes as a health measure—a measure aimed at cutting the rate of binge drinking, particularly among young women—but it is nothing more than a tax grab. It is a measure that was drawn up deep within the Ministry of Finance and Deregulation to boost the budget bottom line. On both health and tax counts it is a failure, and the bills before the House are purely about the tax impact. The increase in excise on RTDs of nearly 70 per cent, from $39.36 per litre of alcohol content to $66.67 per litre of alcohol content, will raise $1.6 billion across the forward estimates. That is less than the estimated $2 billion when the tax hike was first mooted and far less than the $3.1 billion estimated in the last budget. In fact, current estimates are that the government has collected somewhere between $220 million and $345 million with this tax binge. On the one hand it is an extraordinarily large sum of money; on the other hand it is not as much as the government expected, simply because the quantity of alcohol consumed in these drinks has gone down. The quantity of alcohol consumed in other drinks has gone up.

Ready-to-drinks are now to be taxed similarly to full-strength spirits rather than at the same rate as full-strength beer, which more appropriately reflects the alcohol content of RTDs. Let us look at some opinions within the Australian community, because our communities are keenly aware that the tax is not working. Recent editorial pieces express the widely held view that the RTD tax increase has been a failure and should be reversed. For example, I will quote from the editorial which appeared in the Australian on 6 February 2009, headed ‘Policy on the rocks’. It states that the government’s alcopops tax is:

… a triple-distilled fib and the Government has now been caught. Certainly, sales of mixed drinks have gone flat, with the liquor trade estimating a 42 per cent decline. The tax is now expected to generate only half the additional income originally anticipated. But there is also evidence that instead of cutting down, people have just switched drinks, taking up straight spirits instead.

The editorial in the West Australian on 24 January 2009 states:

The alcopop strategy has been unravelling since it was announced. It has been revealed as a ham-fisted attempt to cloak a heavy tax in the guise of a health message. If the Government has evidence of the tax’s effectiveness, it must produce it or accept that it is a failure.

The government cannot ignore headlines such as these: ‘Alcopops tax turns out a revenue fizzer’, ‘Alcopop sales down, spirits up’, ‘Young turn to spirits’, ‘Alcopop tax slug “failure”’ and, from an editorial in the Australian, ‘A lesson in spending—Consumers will defy central planners if it suits them’, which I think has some very strong messages for all governments.

Reports prepared by Access Economics for the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia on trends in alcohol related hospital use by young people since introduction of the alcopop tax found that data collected so far did not support claims the alcopops tax had reduced risky drinking by young people. Hospital admissions for young people aged between 12 and 24 years per 100,000 population for alcohol related diagnoses in May and June 2008 were higher than in the same months in previous years. Emergency department presentations by 12- to 24-year-olds per 100,000 population for alcohol related causes were higher in May to August 2008 than in previous years. There was also an overall increase for the months after the RTD tax relative to the months before. Combined admissions and ED presentations for females were substantially higher than in previous years and also higher than in the months before the tax rise in 2008. Access Economics did say that the time frame was too short to draw firm conclusions, but it concludes that the tax may not have reduced alcohol consumption by young people, because they may have switched to other products. A switch potentially enabled them to buy more alcohol for the same budget than prior to the RTD tax.

There is a widespread consumer view that the RTD tax increase is opportunistic, unfair and ineffective. Let us look at a recently commissioned Galaxy poll which revealed that nearly 80 per cent of respondents believe that the tax increase is ineffective at addressing binge drinking. Further, nearly 80 per cent had the view that the tax should be scrapped in favour of a more comprehensive strategy to tackle binge drinking.

If we look briefly at the German experience, the German Federal Centre for Health Education in Cologne conducted research into teenage alcohol consumption in Germany over the period 2004 to 2007. In August 2004 legislation was enacted imposing a special tax levied exclusively on RTDs, the stated purpose of which was to introduce higher prices and reduce consumption. While total overall regular consumption of alcohol amongst teenagers aged 12 to 17 years decreased in the first year, 2004, consumption by this age group exceeded 2004 levels by 2007. Furthermore, an overall increase in consumption occurred despite the increased taxes and prices on RTDs and despite a significant decrease in the consumption of spirits based RTDs. The research found a significant overall increase in alcohol consumption for girls aged 16 to 17, which was reported to be primarily due to increased beer consumption. An additional trend of increased consumption was reported for males aged 16 to 17 over the three-year period. Overall, the quantity of alcohol consumed per capita amongst 12- to 17-year-olds increased over the period 2004 to 2007.

I use that experience to illustrate a trend, experienced elsewhere, which clearly is being closely followed in Australia. We can talk statistics, and people on either side of the House frequently bring their own statistics to support their own particular arguments—that is understood—but, as a local member, I contacted many of the liquor outlets in my electorate once this tax was introduced, and the change in behaviour and the speed with which that behaviour changed were remarkable and were reported by every single liquor outlet.

I think this is an irresponsible measure by the government, because we have seen from the emergency department statistics that it encourages young people of a certain age to drink more than is good for them, to write themselves off and to treat alcohol in a way that is very damaging to their health. But we know that that is going to happen anyway. We know that binge drinking is a problem regardless. The opposition has quoted the New South Wales Commissioner of Police, Andrew Scipione, who says the New South Wales Police Force have had enough. I know that they have had enough. If you talk to police at the front line after midnight in any of our major cities, they will tell you they have had enough. Binge drinking is an awful problem. The violence associated with it—and it is not just alcohol; it is clearly drugs as well—is not something we should be asking our police forces to deal with on a day-to-day basis. For goodness sake, it is all in the name of entertainment! After hearing the government’s quotes, my question is: are the New South Wales Police Force or any police force suggesting that the number of call-outs to fights in pubs and on the main streets of our towns has decreased after the introduction of this tax? I think the answer is no. It probably has not changed, and there may be a trend for it to increase anyway. But there just is not evidence that this tax is reducing binge drinking among young people.

The government has been confused and incompetent. The Minister for Health and Ageing blamed former Prime Minister John Howard for binge drinking. She criticised the member for Hinkler for displaying the Bundy bear in his office, as if that were somehow sinister and evil. She is desperate to make this about anything but the evidence and the tax. The Treasurer insists that the tax is to protect the surplus but the minister for health says it is to reduce female binge drinking. Can’t they get their stories right? If the tax is to fight under-age drinking, why was there no advice from the Department of Health and Ageing before the tax was introduced? Labor are confused. I do not think they know what they have taxed. They talk about all these brightly coloured sugary drinks and young women, but in fact three-quarters of premixed drinks are based on coca-cola and consumed by men over the age of 24. To me, there is something irrational and intensely irritating about this debate. From my perspective as a parent and a legislator, this is bad legislation. It raises a tax to tackle a social problem in a totally ineffective way.

Listening to many of the government speakers, I detect a bias against those who choose to drink this type of alcohol rather than other types of alcohol. It is as if on the one hand we have a smart, sophisticated demographic drinking fine wine in moderation, and then on the other hand we have young people binge drinking on sweet, sugary rubbish and unable to control themselves. It is not all about young people. We should not scoop them all up as one group. We certainly should target young females as being in serious danger of binge drinking. But, if indeed this group does have trouble working out and controlling its alcohol consumption—and there is no doubt that that happens from time to time—the question for this parliament is: is this the right way to tackle it? Clearly it is not.

I have gone straight to the horse’s mouth and spoken to young people from my electorate. I would like to read directly from comments made by one 18-year-old girl. She said:

When the alcopop tax was introduced, my friends and I switched to buying spirits and mixing our own drinks. Since then we and other young people, particularly girls, have developed and are developing a tolerance and liking of stronger drinks.

This can become a dangerous situation when everyone in a group is drinking, getting drunk and still deciding on their own neat alcohol quantity. Wouldn’t the government, and parents, prefer that what we drank could be measured?

People will drink if they want to drink, and the safe drinking culture that the government is apparently trying to harness is not being helped by this tax.

As I said, that was straight from the horse’s mouth. I have also spoken to some parents who are constituents in my electorate, and I want to read a couple of comments from them. One mother said:

I honestly believe that an alcopops tax won’t solve the problem of our young people binge-drinking. Education about the dangers of binge-drinking is more important and it should start early at home by parents and be reinforced by schools.

Unfortunately if kids want to drink they will always find a way, we as parents should be helping them by teaching them the responsible use of alcohol, not by thinking if we make it too expensive they won’t drink. That’s where education and schools can be vital tools to help curb the growing problem.

As the mother of three daughters I find that marketing targets young girls to the alcopops drinks. I’m not sure if taxing the drink will make any difference to their drinking habits—I’m sure they will just switch to another cheaper kind.

Another mother said:

When the price of alcopops increased, the initial reaction from my 19 year old daughter & friends was to buy a large bottle of spirits, and not enough coke etc—

to go with it—

They did not know what ratio was required with a mixer and their drinks were far too strong.

Now they are buying cheap casks of wine they call ‘goon’, and still drinking too much.

My young sons … drink beer so the alcopop tax did not affect their drinking style.

I think the only thing that occasionally slows down their drinking is persistent harping from their mother before they go out, reminding them of the perils of too much alcohol.

As I said, I have sought comment from the various liquor outlets in my electorate and, to a business, they say the same thing. But the most interesting thing I would like to report is that premixed drinks are not consumed by young people alone. I spoke to Premix King in Wodonga. Presumably Premix King specialises in selling premixed drinks, but it has reported that the sale of bottled spirits increased by 30 per cent after the introduction of the tax. Talking about the demographic that shops at Premix King, they said the 18- to 21-year-olds pop in for two hours on a Friday or Saturday night but most of the steady custom comes from people aged 25 and up. Ordinary people—tradies and working mums and dads—who often have limited income choose to drink ready-to-drink mixed spirits.

Retailers have also expressed their irritation by saying that they were not consulted about this increase. They could have given some quite valuable information to the government. But, then again, why would the government consult them—because all it wanted to do was raise extra money through the tax? With a case of Jim Beam bourbon and cola costing $80, people are not going to buy it. They are going to buy bottles of spirits for $28 at the cheaper end and maybe up to $30 or $35. With cruisers at $11.40 for four, people are not going to buy those either. They are going to go straight to the bottled spirits.

As I said, this debate infuriates me as a parent of three teenagers because it is irresponsible with regard to the health of our children. It is irresponsible for governments to bring something in and try and pretend it is a health issue when it really is not—it is really about raising revenue; and we have seen how much revenue it has raised. In the process, it is causing young people to slug from bottles of spirits and end up in the emergency departments of our hospitals. Something is going to have to give. I really hope that, when these bills get to the Senate for the second time, Independent senators will take action to prevent them being passed.

What the retailers are asking me is: what happens to all this extra tax, because it cannot really be paid back? At previous times when this sort of thing has happened the money has been put into a health fund. I would support that. I would support something along the lines of the government’s campaign, which has been very good, and measures which would target young people in schools and educate them—tell them how much is in a nip of alcohol, what it does to your body and how little you actually have to drink to pass out and for your system to close down because it has had too much. Sensible health measures targeted at our young people would be a good use for the tax that has been collected so far. I await the process in the other place and I look forward to these bills being soundly rejected by this parliament.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Contrary to the exhortations of the previous speaker, I hope that the Independent senators do not follow the opposition down this irresponsible path and that in fact they do vote with the government to pass the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. I stand here to support this measure introduced for the second time by the Minister for Health and Ageing. The excise tariff amendment billhas a clear aim—that is, to level the playing field in alcoholic spirits taxation in Australia and in turn to discourage binge drinking of so-called alcopops among young people.

The new excise will see these ready-to-drink beverages taxed at a rate of $66.67 per litre of alcohol content, up from the previous $39.36. This brings the excise rate into line with that of a ‘straight’ bottle of spirits and away from the former ‘beer rate’ at which they were taxed. Those in opposition are saying that bringing the tax rates of ready-to-drink beverages into line with those of spirits by increasing that taxation rate could not possibly have any effect and is almost having a negative effect on the rates of drinking in Australia. Are they suggesting that we not tax alcohol at all—that if we make it as cheap as possible then somehow that is going to fix the problem? I think the evidence is that that is not the way to go and that in fact levelling out the treatment of these drinks to bring them into line with what they are—to tax them as a spirit, because in fact they are spirits—is a sensible and rational response to the evidence we have had in recent years about the increase in sales of these drinks.

As a result of this legislation all spirits will be charged at the same excise rate whether they come in a full bottle or are premixed with soft drink. There are scores of ready-to-drink alcohol products on the market. Some have an alcohol content of 3.5 per cent. Most of them, however, are in the five to seven percent range, and some push up to the 10 per cent alcohol content mark. What they do have in common is a tendency to disguise the taste of the alcohol with sugar, colouring and sweet flavours. These drinks, whether milk or soda based, lure in young drinkers with bright colours and labels. Others come with an ‘energy drink’ label and contain high levels of stimulants such as caffeine and taurine. This further masks the taste of the alcohol and can add to dangerous levels of alcohol consumption. Some of these alcopops pack a whopping two standard drinks in a small 250-millilitre bottle.

With these drinks so palatable for young people, and especially for young women, the government knows that it could not continue to leave an open loophole which allowed spirits to be marketed cheaply to young people. This was a loophole created by the former government in 2000 when they gave alcopops a tax break compared to traditional spirits. They opted to tax these sugar-laden drinks at the same rate as beer, giving the liquor companies this loophole to deliver spirits such as vodka and rum to teenagers more cheaply. The result of the former government’s mismanagement has been disastrous.

As the health minister has already explained, between the years 2000 and 2004 the proportion of female drinkers aged 15 to 17 who had consumed alcopops at their last drinking occasion increased from 14 per cent to 62 per cent. Sales of alcopops grew by 250 per cent since the year 2000. Yet those on the opposite side are telling us that people do not respond and that there is no change in habits or decision making as a result of changes in taxation. The changes that the Liberal Party brought in in 2000 saw an explosion in the sales of these ready-to-drink mixed drinks.

Those opposite have heard the statistics about binge drinking and alcopops for themselves, but they are still sceptical that we face a problem in Australia and that ready-to-drink products target the younger demographic of society. These are groups which typically have drinking patterns that put them at the most risk of harm, especially from these products marketed to them. Yet the opposition are continuing their denial of the binge-drinking problem. They say—along with the big alcohol companies—that sales of straight spirits shot up immediately in response to the tax increase introduced last year. This is a misleading point. Yes, there was an increase in straight spirit sales, but both the health minister and the Public Health Association of Australia have pointed out that in fact there was an overall reduction in the number of standard drinks sold. This included one million fewer standard drinks sold in the first month after the introduction of the tax. The latest numbers say that total spirit sales have fallen by eight per cent, which is beyond all expectations. It is exactly the result we were looking for and proves this government is on a clear path to tackle binge drinking in our community.

In their submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, the Public Health Association of Australia wrote in support of the government in this initiative. They wrote:

… the very early indications are that this approach is effective in reducing introduction to alcohol amongst young women and arresting the disproportionate growth in RTD sales.

…            …            …

Around one million standard drinks equivalent in one month is a significant reduction.

The Public Health Association of Australia have spoken out in support of the exercise. As they point out, their support is not based on a commercial interest but is simply with the view of improving the health of the population. Other groups, including the Australian Drug Foundation, the Australian National Council on Drugs and the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia have all spoken in support of the government’s measures.

The measure to increase the tax rate on these drinks is part of the overall National Binge Drinking Strategy from the Rudd government. The strategy includes: $14.4 million for community-level initiatives to confront the culture of binge drinking, particularly in sporting organisations; $19.1 million to intervene earlier to assist young people and ensure that they assume personal responsibility for their binge drinking; and $20 million for advertising that confronts young people with the costs and consequences of binge drinking. We have already seen that very confronting series of ads ‘Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare’.

At home in my electorate of Capricornia, binge drinking is as much a problem as it is in other parts of the country. Too often we read in the local paper on a Monday morning reports of an alcohol induced fight or a car crash after a weekend of drinking. Taking this step with the excise tariff amendment is just part of our approach. The government is also committed to tackling the problem in other ways. In Rockhampton, this has seen local community group Milbi Inc. granted $150,000 over two years with the aim of creating a greater level of awareness of the risks of alcohol and the alternatives to harmful drinking amongst Indigenous youth aged 12 to 24 years. The program is called Club 500 and it aims to access 500 Indigenous youth and their families to be members of a social development club that will deliver newsletters, health information and youth and family activities. This will provide a community based safety net for family and friends to help them become good role models for the children and young people around them. The program will feature posters, flyer marketing and video clips with anti-binge-drinking messages. I wish them every success.

I have also been in contact recently with John Fitzgerald, who is the preventions program officer with Rockhampton Alcohol, Tobacco and Other Drug Services. He sees firsthand lives that are on a road to ruin because of drug and alcohol abuse. He says that the alcopops tax is a good start and is looking forward to more long-term research data. John and his reference group met this week in Rockhampton to discuss binge drinking, and I am pleased to say that they are focused on harm minimisation, just as the Rudd government is. This has involved education programs for young people, making them aware that they can reduce their risk of harm by lowering their intake of alcohol. It also involves practical things for people when they are out drinking. In Rockhampton, one of the more notorious taxi ranks has been moved to a more central location and is now patrolled with full-time security, making it a much safer place during the night. Likewise, John informs me that there are plans for greater lighting in the CBD, an illuminated path of arrows directing patrons to the cab line and an increased security presence in the city.

John is also busy promoting a very worthwhile program called Good Sports, which is working with sporting clubs across the country to reduce alcohol and other drug problems, increase the viability of the sporting clubs and improve the range of sporting options available within our community. It is not about turning off the taps and removing the kegs from sporting clubs; rather, it is about responsible service of alcohol and making clubs more aware of their position as role models in our community. It helps create a positive community image for the club and secure its long-term future. Rather than there being fears about losing revenues, John says that many clubs have increased involvement due to greater family participation.

John is also involved in a program where Rockhampton will be one of three pilot cities that will showcase the ‘Putting Youth in the Picture’ initiative. This program is endorsed by the NRL and is aimed at keeping younger sportspeople on track, informed and out of trouble. It is an education program developed in regional Queensland to deal with issues confronting young people. John tells me it uses short films to show how young people can become involved in life-altering incidents as a result of poor decision making. The issues presented and discussed include sexual assault, a bar-room fight, use of illegal recreational drugs, binge drinking and underage drinking at a party featuring all these behaviours. It is an exciting program and I look forward to hearing more about it when it is launched in Rockhampton on 28 April this year.

These are just two examples of people working at the grassroots level in Rockhampton to educate young people about the dangers of excessive drinking, which makes me ask: why does the opposition want to make their job harder by defending a tax break for the spirits industry? All this legislation seeks to do is to tax a spirit as a spirit, because that is what is in those alcopop drinks. Companies should not be rewarded through the tax system for clever gimmicks that dress up spirits with packaging and labels that appeal to the underage market. As a government and as a community, we need to send a very clear message about excessive drinking and the dangers of the culture of binge drinking that has taken hold, especially amongst young people. This legislation is, of course, just one part of a larger strategy to combat problem drinking. There is also the $872 million that the Commonwealth government has put towards the National Preventative Health Partnership and, as I have just outlined, the $53.5 million for the National Binge Drinking Strategy, which is already seeing results and getting out there into the community.

That is our message to the community, and it is a consistent message. The opposition’s response is to give hundreds of millions of dollars back to the distillers and to continue the tax break that saw an explosion in the sales of alcopops after 2000. That fact cannot be ignored. The opposition’s position is sending the wrong message, and I think it is a slap in the face to those in the community attempting to moderate drinking amongst young people.

Ian Macfarlane (Groom, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst I have some sympathy with some of the comments made by the member for Capricornia—and I know that she is a parent, as I am—no parent can speak in this place on this bill without saying how concerned we all are about ensuring the safety of our children, particularly as they go through their teenage years but also as they go into their 20s and 30s. I guess a parent never stops worrying about their children. But in so speaking, and in opposing this Excise Tariff Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008 and its cognate bill, at no stage are any members of the opposition abdicating that responsibility. Every father and mother worries when their daughters or sons go out at night, knowing that they will be drinking. As parents, my wife and I spent a great deal of time talking to our children in their teenage years—in those years before they started drinking. We also, of course, tried to set our own example in terms of drinking with moderation. I guess that is a challenge that we all set ourselves, and I think we all wish each other well on it. But this bill is not about ensuring the safe consumption of alcohol. This bill is just a tax.

Before leaving my experiences and moving to the context of this bill, I would like to convey a parent’s perspective on this. That is, quite simply, that if I have a choice between seeing my daughters go to a party with a sixpack of ready-to-drink premixed drinks or seeing them go with a bottle of coca-cola and a bottle of spirits then I know which I would prefer. In fact, I know which I actively encouraged. Just as my father actively encouraged me to drink beer rather than spirits, I encouraged them to drink a drink where they knew straightaway how much—as in the volume in the mixture—they were drinking. There is also the added advantage, particularly for those with a smaller frame, that it is difficult to consume a huge amount of pure alcohol if you drink these premixed drinks. It is much easier to pour half a glass of bourbon into a glass and then top it up with coke, thereby drinking three or four times the amount of alcohol in the same volume of fluid. So it was that perspective that annoyed me—and, quite frankly, frightened me—the most about this bill.

Having watched my daughters’ and their friends’ reactions to the huge jump in price of these premixed drinks, I know that there has been no decline in the consumption of alcohol as a result in that group of people. That is only one group of people, but I guess that if you cannot see for yourself then you will never see at all. What I see, on those rare occasions when I have to clean up after my daughters, is that the amount of alcohol being drunk has probably gone up—perhaps not by my girls but certainly by the boys in the group. We are told repeatedly how this legislation is targeted at young women, but the effect of it seems to be more on young men. I notice, when I clean away the empty cans and bottles in the morning, that there has been an increase in the volume of alcohol drunk.

I have noticed with some satisfaction—although I think it probably reflects the fact that they are now earning their own income—that my daughters are swinging back to RTDs and just paying the extra money. So they are just paying the tax. But at least as a parent I can rest at home knowing that they are not going to have a drink spiked or have some friend pour them a drink that is more spirit than soft drink. The member for Capricornia said that the aim of this legislation is to tax the contents of the can or the screw-top small bottle as a spirit because it is a spirit. I say to the member for Capricornia: I did grade 12 chemistry and I can assure her that the bottom line is that it is alcohol. Whether it comes from a spirit or from the fermentation of barley, it is alcohol that does the damage. A decision was made by our government to apply the excise to premixed drinks at the same rate as we applied it to beer, on the basis that both were being taxed on their alcohol content. To suggest that we have created a loophole and encouraged the growth of premixed drinks as a result shows, I think, the highly political nature of the way this government has approached this issue.

This whole legislation is a clear illustration of Labor’s preference for stunts over substance. From the very beginning, and under the guise of it being a health measure, this policy has been nothing more than a classic Labor high-taxing manoeuvre. It is a tax grab, pure and simple. Despite the Minister for Health and Ageing’s repeated attempts to dress it up as something else, it is nothing but a tax grab. Despite the mounting evidence that this measure will not have an impact on reducing binge drinking—which, from my experience, occurs more with young people drinking straight spirits than RTDs—this measure will have no impact on reducing binge drinking. This government has continued the charade, still trying in vain to make the case that this tax grab is a health measure. But the truth is that, one year on, this government has been unable to provide any evidence of its own that it is anything but a tax grab. The coalition does not dispute that binge drinking is a serious issue that must be addressed in society. As I said at the outset, no-one on this side of this House would dispute that for an instant. No-one on this side of this House is less committed to ending binge drinking than anyone over there. There is no monopoly on righteousness as a result of sitting on that side of the chamber. However, if there is no evidence that Labor’s tax grab on ready-to-drink products is going to have any impact on binge drinking then why are we persisting with it?

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare told the first Senate inquiry that the drinking status has been stable for almost two decades. There has been a modest increase in the apparent consumption of RTDs over the last five years. The preference for RTDs has increased slightly from 2001 to 2007, particularly in the older age groups—that is, particularly amongst people who see the convenience, as I said, of taking a sixpack in the esky or having a couple of cans after work rather than having to go through the process of mixing and measuring, and quite often not measuring at all.

The trend amongst under-18-year-olds is not clear. There has been virtually no change in the pattern of risky drinking over the period 2001-07, including among younger Australians. The government’s National Preventative Health Taskforce technical report No. 3 noted a downward trend in risky drinking by young people in the 14- to 19-year-old category over the period 2001-07. It also noted that the greatest increase in RTD consumption was amongst males. There goes the young female drinker theory proposed by those on the other side!

Trends in youth drinking, as I said, were unclear. In the August 2008 edition of the Lancet, researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre of the University of New South Wales stated that the Australian government’s recent decision is likely to arrest the increased sales of premixed drinks; it is unlikely to substantially reduce the overall rates of usual or binge consumption.

Access Economics’ report on trends in alcohol related hospital use by young people, prepared for the Distilled Spirits Industry Council of Australia, found that data collected so far did not support the claims that the alcopops tax had reduced risky drinking by young people. Access Economics said the time frame was too short to draw firm conclusions but stated:

The tax may not have reduced alcohol consumption by young people because—

they may have—

switched to other products.

I wish not to go over the same ground as previous speakers but to highlight what they said: there has certainly been a switch. In some cases it has been to spirits and in other cases it has been to wine. The switch potentially enabled those people to buy more alcohol for the same budget they had prior to the introduction of the RTD tax. The bottom line is that this tax has done nothing to lower the incidence of binge drinking. Instead, the evidence suggests it has only served the purpose of shifting young people’s drinking habits from ready-to-drink to straight spirits. That should strike fear into the heart of every parent. It should strike fear into the heart of every person who supports this tax. Reducing the amount of revenue and having no impact on the quantity of alcohol consumed is the net outcome. Therefore, as a tax measure and as a health measure, it has been a complete failure.

This proposal was released with the usual Rudd government fanfare on 26 April last year and, of course, given the tag ‘a war’—this time a war on binge drinking. The tax has been collected ever since. But, like most of the Prime Minister’s media-driven stunts, in the intervening months this measure has fallen victim to its own stunt-driven nature. The slug in excise on RTDs from $39.36 to $66.67 per litre of alcohol content will raise $1.6 billion across the forward estimates; however, this is a dramatic drop from the $3.1 billion in revenue estimated in the last budget.

One of the biggest flaws in this tax grab is the absence of real measures to address binge drinking. The government promised hundreds of millions of dollars would flow to preventive health measures, yet current estimates are that the government has collected somewhere between $220 million and $345 million through this tax and spent nothing like it in return.

I have in my electorate an extraordinarily committed young man called Adair Donaldson. He is a young solicitor who has come up with a meaningful program to address the dangers young people face when they drink or take illegal drugs. Adair has done an enormous amount of work and spent an enormous amount of his own money—tens of thousands of dollars—because he is so committed to this program. The Putting Youth in the Picture program has been launched almost entirely as a result of his efforts. This multifaceted campaign, which includes teenagers, schools, parents, sports groups and community leaders, is a fantastic example of how committed people are to solving the problem of binge drinking. There have been no media stunts. There have been no lies told. He has created a program that is directly targeted at the grassroots problem and has ensured that he gives teenagers and young people real examples and plenty of information to make their own decisions about alcohol consumption. It is described as a ‘brutally honest’ approach and it has already had success in connecting with youth, truly engaging young people on this issue and changing their attitudes to binge drinking. I have sat with Adair through several scenarios that he has had filmed and put on DVD, and it is chilling for me as a parent to watch them. Those of us with good memories will think back to our own youth. It would have been a great thing to have a program like this when I was a teenager.

We are dealing with a situation where we need to get this message out, and this program will certainly do it. It has attracted widespread interest in Queensland and also from major bodies such as the NRL and AFL players associations, who have engaged Adair in utilising this program. It also includes amongst its supporters local government associations and the PCYC. This is a real program focused on actually addressing the problem. It is working now, on the ground, in addressing binge drinking while the Rudd government continues to say, ‘Our programs will be starting soon.’ Again, I draw comparison between Adair’s program and the one which the member for Capricornia has described. Her program may be worthy but it is not widely implemented, and Adair’s program is already having an immediate effect.

When Adair came and saw me I suggested to him that he write to the Minister for Health and Ageing, which he did. Despite the fact that this program is already delivering benefits and would continue to do so with just a fraction of the funds that the Rudd government has claimed it will commit to preventative measures, it was not given a second thought. It is good enough to be adopted by football clubs—and I will not name them—in the NRL, some of whose players have been featured in the media from time to time for misbehaving, to say the least, as a result of alcohol consumption, but according to the minister for health the program is not good enough for her to take the time to look at it. If the Rudd government is serious about addressing the causes of binge drinking, it is programs like this that must be given support in place of a tax grab. If this government is serious about binge drinking, it will have to do more than just increase taxes. If the Rudd government is serious about reducing the incidence and impacts of binge drinking and is not just focused on generating headlines, it must incorporate a wide range of measures, including education, law enforcement, industry and community involvement and rehabilitation. Until it does that, serious questions remain about this bill, because the government has been unable to provide any evidence that it is anything other than an empty, tax-driven ploy that will have no impact on binge drinking.

Mr Deputy Speaker, as time will not permit me to read all of the contents of Putting Youth in the Picture, I ask permission to table that document. I urge those members who are seriously interested in this issue to take the time to read it and those members who want copies of further information, including the DVD, to contact me. I would be happy, in place of this tax grab, to do something meaningful to address the issue of binge drinking. As I have said all the way through this speech, the coalition does support sensible measures to reduce binge drinking, but this tax grab is not such a measure.

Leave granted.

Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand in this House to show my continued support for the protection, health and wellbeing of our young Australians by supporting the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009, because I know that many mums and dads around the country and in my own electorate of Franklin are concerned about the growing consumption of alcohol, particularly the ready-to-drinks, by young people in their local communities. What I hear from my constituents is how easy it is for young people to fall into the trap of binge drinking—how easy it is for them to go to a party and have the ready-to-drink beverages that to them are easy and fun to drink. But, sadly, you really only have to open a newspaper or turn on the TV to see the dire consequences associated with this alcohol consumption among young people.

It is with these views in mind that I support these amendments. They validate in legislation the increased rate of taxation for the ready-to-drinks—or alcopops, as they are commonly known—to correspond with that for spirits. This will increase the current taxation per litre of alcohol content, bringing the tax on the ready-to-drink beverages back to a rate equivalent to that on spirits. This is the fair thing to do. I was a bit curious that the member for Groom, who spoke earlier, seemed to imply that wine and beer are also alcohol and that therefore all alcohol should have the same tax. Why then do we tax spirits at a different level? He is actually shooting his own argument in the foot with his comments. It is really the logical approach that spirits—bottled or premixed—be taxed at the same rate. I do not understand how those opposite continue to argue that spirits should be taxed at the same rate as wine and beer, which is effectively what they are trying to argue. They created this loophole. The Rudd government cares about the health of our young people, and these amendments will close the Liberals’ loophole.

Why are those opposite so concerned, one might ask? I think it is because they do not seem really clear on this issue. We have heard from members opposite that they think binge drinking is a problem. If they were serious, they would not have sided with the alcohol distillers. In my view, they have really turned their back on young Australians. They do not really care about the health of our young people and they do not care that, since the year 2000, after their changes, RTD sales grew by 250 per cent. Instead, they became the public supporter of the alcohol distillers. You only have to listen to the speeches they have made in here today to see where they are getting a lot of their material from. They have consistently been obstructive on a range of measures. They continually put cheap political point-scoring ahead of looking after our young people. There does need to be a pragmatic, common-sense approach to dealing with binge drinking, and it requires more than one measure. We cannot turn our backs on these issues.

They seem to think that this growing problem in our society can be given little credence. Why don’t they support it? Perhaps it is because there are some people on that side of the House who seem a bit doubtful about it. Malcolm Turnbull, addressing the National Press Club on 22 September last year—2008—said, ‘One should never underestimate the enterprising ingenuity of the Australian drinker.’ This implies that you can do nothing about binge drinking—so why do anything? It is interesting to see the member for Warringah here in the chamber because, on 17 June last year, he said:

Trying to say that binge-drinking is happening nearly all the time, in ways which are a deadly threat to the youth and even to the adults of this country, is a beat-up, not to put too fine a point on it.

It is interesting that the member for Warringah thinks that, because there are many people on this side of the House that do not think that. It is not a beat-up. On 30 March, the member for North Sydney said: ‘I don’t think you should overplay it. Let’s not go over the top.’ Do they really seriously think this is not a problem? If they do think it is a problem, why will they not support this measure to do something about it?

I am a parent of a teenage daughter. I know what goes on. I know that these drinks are marketed to young children. There is no doubt about that. You just have to see how out of touch those opposite are. They are out of touch on a whole range of issues. They are out of touch that this is a serious issue and that it is affecting our young children. There is no doubt these bills will go a long way to assist in curbing the teenage drinking problem. They will help protect our children.

Figures released in 2008 by the National Coroners Information System revealed that at least 100 young people die each year with a blood alcohol level at or above 0.05. These figures are distressing. If you look at the figures between 2003 and 2006, there were 400 deaths—that is excluding Queensland and South Australia, because of the reporting systems—of teenagers and young Australians who died with alcohol in their systems. This is a very real problem. In my state of Tasmania, 32 people in the age group of 13 to 25 died—they had blood alcohol levels too high, and alcohol was a significant factor in their deaths. That is 32 Tasmanian families who lost a child. One death is too many; 402 young Australians is too many indeed. The report also identified that weekends were the peak time for deaths of such young people. Most fatal incidents occurred between 6 pm and 6 am on the Friday-Saturday and Saturday-Sunday evenings. This comes as no surprise, because it is about binge drinking. The most common cause of death, sadly, is road traffic injuries with the combination of alcohol and drugs. This is something that we on this side of the House really take seriously. I urge those on the other side to take it seriously too. It is a common problem amongst younger people in our society. It is real.

Closing the RTDs loophole is supported by community leaders, police and health experts alike. In any given week, one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds are binge drinking or drinking at risky levels. Almost 20,000 girls aged 12 to 15 drink daily or weekly. The number of young women aged 18 to 24 being admitted to hospital because of alcohol has doubled in eight years. In a year, more than three-quarters of a million Australians are physically abused by persons under the influence of alcohol. The annual societal cost of alcohol is estimated in Australia to be over $15 billion.

We know that RTDs are a problem. We know they are clearly targeted at and marketed for young people. We all know that wine and beer—particularly cheap wine—taste like alcohol. These RTDs do not—deliberately. They are sweet. They often taste like lolly water not alcohol. The alcohol taste is commonly disguised, and a lot can be consumed very quickly because of the sweet, light taste. Young people—inexperienced drinkers—can have a lot of alcohol in their systems very quickly. I know; I have seen it. They do not realise how much they have taken in. That is because the alcopop makers make these drinks in bright colours and give them groovy, hip names. They are deliberately marketing to young children and attracting young children to these alcoholic beverages. I know it works—as I said, I am a parent of a 15-year-old. I have seen it. I know young girls are consuming these RTDs in large numbers.

Between 2000 and 2004, the percentage of young female drinkers aged 15 to 17 who had consumed RTDs at their last drinking occasion increased from 14 per cent to a massive 62 per cent. These are 15- to 17-year-olds! That those opposite would think that that is not a problem and that we should not do anything about it just astounds me. For females drinking at very risky or high-risk levels in 2004, 78 per cent drank RTDs on their last drinking occasion. That figure has increased threefold since 2000. That is what we have really got before us: real happenings and real statistics about what alcohol is doing to our vulnerable young people. What those opposite should have done in the past was to side with these families who have kids, families who are deeply concerned about how easily Australian teenagers can purchase ready-to-drink beverages. If we are truly serious about looking after the health of our society, the health of young Australians, all of us should support these bills.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of health experts support these measures. The Australian Drug Foundation CEO, John Rogerson, said:

This tax fixes a problem started with the introduction of the GST and shows that the Government is serious about tackling alcohol problems in our community.

We have heard the minister quote former Liberal minister Dr John Herron, from the National Council on Drugs:

Utilising the taxation system is one of the most effective measures we have for reducing alcohol-related harm and problems for both individuals and communities.

The Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia CEO said:

… this initiative clearly recognised the problems created by the excessive consumption of RTDs which were attractive to the youth market.

The Public Health Association president, Mike Daube, said:

There is now dramatic evidence showing that young women are out-drinking their male counterparts - and unfortunately many of them drink to get drunk …

We know that price is the most effective single measure in reducing alcohol consumption, especially by young people. This increase will make a real dent in one of our biggest current social problems.

These are not my words; these are experts’ words. These are health experts working in the drug and alcohol industry who believe this measure works. They are the experts; we are not. These views are in contrast to those of the RTD industry—and we all know their motivation—and clearly in contrast to the views of those opposite, who do not see a need to act and to support these measures.

We have recent Australian taxation figures drawn from the first nine months of this measure that show that the measure is working, because RTD sales have dropped by 35 per cent compared to the previous year. This outcome is a significant drop in sales, and it is well beyond what we predicted. When this measure was first introduced, the modelling predicted that it would slow the astronomical growth of RTDs—and that in itself would obviously have been great—but, in fact, RTD sales have slumped, and they have brought overall spirit sales with them. Despite a smaller increase in full-strength spirit sales, overall spirit sales have actually fallen across the board by almost eight per cent.

The industry have tried time and time again to confuse the issue. We saw this today with yet another report by the alcohol industry trying to justify their position, but I want to read a small quote from the Age today. It says:

… the report also warns against any definite conclusions on the effectiveness of the tax being drawn … because of limited data.

There is limited data in the Access Economics report, so it is saying, ‘Don’t rely on its conclusions.’

Why do we need to close this loophole? This is just one measure—there are other measures; we have heard members in this place talking about local programs—but this measure is part of a strategy. It is part of the National Binge Drinking Strategy, which this government announced in March 2008. The strategy includes $53.5 million to address binge drinking among young people. There is $14.4 million to invest in local community initiatives to confront the culture of binge drinking, particularly in sporting organisations. Six major sporting codes have signed up to a code of conduct. We heard the previous speaker, the member for Groom, talking about NRL teams and things. Surely these people are leading by example, and being involved in these programs is a good thing. There is $19.1 million to intervene earlier to assist young people, to ensure that they assume personal responsibility for their binge drinking. There is $20 million to fund advertising that confronts young people with the costs and consequences of binge drinking. We have all seen the ‘Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare’ campaign. It confronts young people with the dangers and the consequences of binge drinking. It is in your face. It is gritty. It is hard hitting. And the government are pleased that it is gritty and hard hitting because it needs to be, because these young people think they are bulletproof, and we need to shock them. We need to do something about this.

At COAG last year the Rudd government announced the single largest investment ever made by any Australian government in preventative health, to support a range of programs and interventions to reduce the impact of chronic illness on the community: $872 million. All of this is new money and supported by revenue from closing the RTDs loophole. It is a massive investment, but this story does not end. The national Preventative Health Taskforce is currently well down the track in developing a National Preventative Health Strategy, and alcohol is one of its highest priorities. We have heard from the other side that they want to see what measures we are undertaking. I am going through them—there are many. Emerging from that strategy will be further significant initiatives to tackle alcohol. The RTDs measure will raise $1.6 billion, somewhat less than the original estimate of around $3 billion at the last budget. But, put quite simply, this means that the measure has been working.

What these amendment bills do is to align the tax on ready-to-drink beverages back to the equivalent rate of spirits. This is part of the government’s overall National Binge Drinking Strategy—it is not just one measure; it is part of a whole strategy—to discourage binge drinking, particularly amongst our young people. These amendment bills support the government’s stance on caring for the health and wellbeing of young Australians. These amendment bills reverse the Liberal Party’s decision nine years ago, in 2000, to give the RTDs a tax break. This loophole needs to be closed.

It is clear that either those opposite think binge drinking is too big an issue to tackle or they do not think it is a problem at all amongst our young Australians. Binge drinking is not okay, and we need to do something about it. I am proud to be part of this Rudd Labor government, which has an overall strategy. We are getting on with the job of dealing with this problem. We must protect the health and wellbeing of our young people. We can do this by admitting there is a problem, we can do it by closing this loophole, and we can do it by listening to what the experts are saying. I call on those opposite to support this measure, and I commend these amendment bills to the House.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. There is no doubt that there are alcohol, binge drinking and alcohol related problems in Australia. I strongly support serious and sensible measures to counter binge drinking and broader issues with excessive alcohol consumption and, equally important, the issue of drug use. These measures include providing education and information, the support of families and young people, the support of communities, law enforcement, industry involvement and harm minimisation processes as well as rehabilitation measures.

Excessive alcohol consumption and binge drinking are not problems confined to young women or one specific age group; they are problems across age groups and for both male and female members of society. They are problems that require a comprehensive approach, not just a 70 per cent tax on one specific alcohol product range.

The government introduced what has become known as their now infamous alcopops tax, the tax on ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages. The Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs has acknowledged that this bill is a direct tax measure by recommending that an examination of alcohol taxation—which of course includes measures in this bill—be included in the comprehensive review of the tax system currently underway.

The government sought to promote this taxation and revenue-raising measure as a health measure. However, we know that there was no consultation with the Minister for Health and Ageing or the Department of Health and Ageing prior to the introduction of this tax. If this were a genuine health measure aimed at excessive consumption of alcohol and binge drinking, the department would have had a very strong and direct involvement in the process. The health department would have included a suite of measures accompanying that measure, to assist in managing the diversity of health and social problems that go with the excessive consumption of alcohol, and there would have been consideration of all forms and categories of alcohol, not just the ready-to-drink beverages.

A comprehensive strategy is required to deal with what is a complex health, social and economic problem. How many young women did the minister ask whether this tax would stop them binge drinking or simply encourage them to switch to other forms of alcohol products with higher alcohol contents? I have an email from a young lady who said that the reduction in alcopops consumption and curbing binge drinking were, in her mind, two separate things. She said:

To really know if it is really curbing binge drinking that would take months of research into the reduction in brawls and fights outside clubs and pubs, the reduction in hospital related alcohol abuse, ambulance related alcohol abuse, and police and bouncer survey’s of women.

She went on to talk about the substitution of total spirits compared with RTDs, and she said essentially that it was much easier for young women who were drunk to have more uncontrolled and unmeasurable amounts if they were using spirits as opposed to RTDs.

I would be very interested to hear an analysis of the evaluation, research and supporting data on all forms of comparative alcohol consumption undertaken by the government, both prior to and since the introduction of the tax. Has there been a switch from ready-to-drink beverages to another form of more potent product or beverage and has this tax effectively driven consumers to a full-strength substitute? Has there been an increase in drug use as a substitution? What changes have occurred in the retailing of full-strength spirits since the introduction of this tax? What alternative products have entered the market to bypass the tax and what impacts are they having on binge drinking and young people? These are just some of the evaluation methods necessary to support the purported health benefits of the tax. This evidence is only one part of the wider excessive alcohol consumption problem. The government must provide supporting evidence that this tax has decreased levels of risky drinking across all alcohol products on the market and that RTDs are not simply a substitution for other alcohol products, spirits or indeed other substances altogether.

Early reports from an ACNielsen survey from May 2008 showed massive increases in the sales of full-strength spirits. According to an Australian newspaper report on 17 May, this tax measure emanated from a Department of Finance and Deregulation budget submission, explained in the terms of closing a tax ‘loophole’, and was reinforced by a Treasury statement that it had all the data it needed by talking to Customs and the ATO, not the health department. This clearly defines the alcopops bill as a tax issue. The government also claimed that increasing these taxes was a measure aimed at cutting the rate of binge drinking, particularly among young women. We have also seen measures applied to that. To date, the government has not provided firm evidence that this tax has had an impact on binge drinking across all forms of alcohol.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare said at the first RTD Senate inquiry that the increased availability of ready-to-drink beverages does not appear to have directly contributed to an increase in risky alcohol consumption. It also noted that there was no clear trend in preference for RTDs among under-18-year-old females, and there appeared to have been a decrease in the proportion of drinking at risky or high risk levels. Worth noting is the August 2008 edition of the Lancet, in which researchers from the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, who were supportive of the tax rise said:

Although the Australian Government’s recent decision is likely to arrest the increased sales of premixed spirits —it is unlikely to substantially reduce the overall rates of usual or binge consumption.

The Wine Research Institute says binge drinking could be less of a problem if wines were produced with a lower alcohol content. Research manager of the wine biosciences group, Dr Paul Chambers, said that lowering alcohol content would be a more effective counter to binge drinking than tax increases.

There is no doubt that excessive alcohol consumption and binge drinking are both very serious problems and are not just confined to young people. There is also no doubt that the abuse of alcohol is a significant social, health and economic issue in Australia. For young people specifically, teenage years are a time of experimentation as well as various forms of risk taking. Young people drink for many reasons: sometimes it is seen as a way to build confidence, in other instances it is because their mates drink, and sometimes it is just to be part of the crowd. Some like to feel as though they are an adult by drinking and others just think it is part and parcel of having fun. Teenage years are also often a time of uncertainty, experimentation and change.

A 2002 Australian school students alcohol and drug survey found that, by the age of 14 years, approximately 90 per cent of students surveyed had tried alcohol, and 12- to 17-year-old students surveyed said that parents were their most common supplier of alcohol—a fact that is often overlooked,. In fact, it was the No. 1 issue identified by high school leaders as part of a youth forum I held last year in my electorate. The 15- to 17-year-olds were extremely annoyed and concerned that the age of binge drinkers was getting younger and younger. They spoke of 12- to 14-year-olds who regularly, in their words, ‘wrote themselves off’. As they said to me, so often the ‘coolest’ kid at the party was seen by some to be the drunkest kid at the party. This group reflected the same findings in the national survey—that it was their parents, friends and sometimes older siblings who supplied the alcohol most often. The most common venues for drinking were at home, at parties and at a friend’s home.

However, one of the most telling factors in that 2002 survey was that the older students said that the most common types of alcohol they drank were actually non-pre-mixed spirits. The younger students were more likely to drink wine, low-alcohol beer and champagne although the dominant drink for young males was beer. And, in Western Australia, this was in spite of liquor licensing laws prohibiting access to and sales of alcohol to people under 18 years of age, as well as laws prohibiting drinking alcohol on the street and buying alcohol for underage people.

There is no doubt that the challenge for so many parents and communities is to keep our young people safe during their teenage years—to not only help them to find the balance of responsible and safe drinking and social behaviour but also make sure that they all come home safe and well from whatever it is they have been doing. How many parents watch their children leave home for a night out with friends and then sit waiting and praying just to hear them come home again? So many parents wait for that precious phone call—the one that says, ‘Come and pick me up,’ when the evening’s plans do not work out or get out of control. It is sometimes the best phone call a parent can receive—even when that is at two o’clock in the morning. No parent wants to see the police officer on their doorstep. Many parents worry about their children drink-driving or being in a vehicle with a driver who is affected by alcohol. Most parents are very aware of their duty of care and responsibility for not only their own children but also their children’s friends who visit the family home. In Western Australia, alcohol is a major contributing cause of hospitalisation and death among young people. One of the toughest jobs for parents can often be that of simply communicating with their teenage children about a range of issues. Being patient, calm, understanding and sometimes non-judgmental can often be the biggest challenge of all.

The economic costs of alcohol abuse are very high. A 2008 report from the Department of Health Western Australia, Impact of alcohol on the population of Western Australia, found that hospitalisation costs associated with alcohol were more than $33 million in 2006—excluding the costs of emergency department presentations. There are also the social costs associated with alcohol abuse in the at-risk and trauma areas: the fractured families and domestic violence, the assaults, road deaths and injuries, the child abuse, the drowning deaths and the female and male suicides—just to name some.

One way of finding out whether this tax measure has decreased binge drinking or alcohol consumption in young women is to ask them. Teenagers were asked this question on ABC Radio 666 in Canberra on 12 February. In response to the question of whether increasing the price of alcopops had worked, the unequivocal answer was no. Neve Breen of Launceston said:

When you put the tax up on the Alco pops it’s not really the drink that people drink to binge drink anyway. It pushes them to drink boxed wine and straight spirits.

Jemima Buckman of Narrabri was asked:

Jemima … are the kids drinking any less?

She answered:

What I find is they … buy … just straight spirits.

One finding of an Access Economics report on trends in alcohol consumption since the introduction of the alcopops tax, in relation to young people switching to other products, was that ‘a switch potentially enabled them to buy more alcohol for the same budget than prior to the RTD tax’.

As suggested previously by the member for Bradfield, the manufacturers of distilled spirits and ready to drink beverages do not want this tax returned to them. The $200 million to $300 million should be placed into a fund independently administered to support education about alcohol, and prevention of, treatment for and rehabilitation from alcohol abuse as part of a comprehensive national alcohol strategy—a strategy that encompasses parents, families, individuals and communities right across Australia.

I do not support this legislation.

Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009, also known as the ‘alcopops legislation’. We have heard a wide-ranging debate on the reasons why this legislation is either good legislation, in the sense that it will curb the drinking habits, patterns or culture of anybody who has access to alcopops or alcohol generally, or not good legislation and why it may or may not work. But what we should consider in this debate is that governments need to take a wide-ranging approach. They need to look at all the facts and all the detail, and then they need to actually act in these areas. There is a great difference between what this government has done and is doing in terms of alcohol consumption and the abuse of alcohol, and what the opposition did when in government. There is also a stark difference between what the opposition talk about and the reality of what they did not do when they were in government. That is the real question that needs to be on the table today when we discuss these two bills in relation to alcohol.

This government is committed to finding ways to change the culture of binge drinking and, more specifically, to try and tackle that issue in relation to young people—young women in particular. But it should not be isolated to these two areas because it needs to be understood that alcohol abuse more broadly and binge drinking in particular are great problems for the community at large. We have heard a lot of comments about the impact that it has on families, communities and individuals, and I will make some further comments about that.

This legislation introduces measures, as part of this government’s National Binge Drinking Strategy, to discourage binge drinking, particularly among young people. We do not just talk about that. We actually commit funding to that goal, that outcome, that end—funding such as $14.4 million for community-level initiatives to confront the culture of binge drinking—and we also use sporting organisations and community based organisations where they have a direct link to young people and an influence over them. There are opportunities out there to change those behaviours and that culture.

I note with some interest that opposition members refer either to a range of surveys or radio polling which ask young people whether or not this has had any impact on them in changing their behaviour. The opposition seems to be saying that it has made no difference at all and in the end young people will just go and drink something else instead. I would say to the opposition that they have misunderstood what those young people might be saying. What I believe young people are saying is that they actually do want help in different ways, they do want some assistance. Yes, they might make some particular buying decisions when it comes to price—but that is a good thing. Isn’t that what we are trying to achieve? We want to change the behaviour of young people either to drink less or to understand that certain types of drinks are worse for them, in the sense that the alcohol can be masked so that they may not be so aware of the amount of alcohol they are consuming compared to other drinks. In the end, those surveys go to the heart of what should be understood about this debate—that is, that the government is having an impact, and I think a positive impact, in trying to curb some of the worst parts of binge drinking.

Our commitment does not end just there, though. Our commitment goes on further, into intervention. We have committed another $19.1 million to intervene to assist young people. We want to assist them. We want to ensure that they assume personal responsibility for their own behaviours and the way that behaviour affects other people. That is an important part of trying to get young people to take action for themselves, to be a part of their own practices and of what happens within their own groups. Part of any strategy that aims to do that needs to have some strong messages delivered in ways that young people can access. That is why we are also committing $20 million for advertising that particularly confronts young people with the costs and the consequences of binge-drinking behaviours. We have seen successes in campaigns in other areas. In the area of drink driving we have seen it in road fatalities. You can have a positive impact by having confronting advertising campaigns that really drive home some of the key issues, so I am very pleased to see that we as a government are committing funding to make some positive impacts. What we are trying to do is not only help young people specifically in terms of the alcopop excise but also deal with this issue of binge drinking in Australian culture.

It is of no surprise to anybody that Australian culture does have embedded within it a certain attitude to and behaviour associated with drinking alcohol on many, many different occasions. That in itself I do not see as a problem. Responsible alcohol consumption is part of life. It is part of the things that we do to celebrate, to commiserate, to commemorate—to just live our lives, enjoy ourselves and have a particular lifestyle. But it is when that behaviour becomes a problem for others or for a particular individual that it becomes a problem for government, in the sense that it is the taxpayer that ends up picking up the bill. The taxpayer picks up the social costs, the health costs, the hospitalisation costs, the road trauma costs—all of the costs associated with the worst effects, the worst impacts, of people who abuse alcohol—and we see that nowhere more prevalent than in abuse of alcohol by young people. Young people need to understand that. Although they often pay a high price themselves they need to understand that there is a cost beyond that—the cost of hospitalisation, the cost of doctors and the time they spend, the social cost of what it can do to families, such as family break-up with a whole range of associated issues. I am confident that, as part of the package that we have on the table, we have some serious money to try to deal with some of the excesses.

On the more technical issue of what this bill does, should there be more tax on this particular product? This seems to be at the core of questions being asked, particularly by members of the opposition. In the end, what this bill does is realign properly the rate of excise on premixed drinks, which was an anomaly created under the previous government during the Howard era. The lower rate of excise for premixed spirits that was introduced by the former government was associated directly with a 250 per cent increase in sales of ready-to-drink products. It is pretty clear that, from the point where the previous government made a tax change to make it cheaper for those particular products, there was a massive spike. The problem with the spike in those particular products is how they are marketed, how they are delivered, how they are consumed and the impact they have on people. Unlike other products where you can clearly identify the alcohol through smell, colour and taste, the problem with alcopops is that they are almost a soft drink. That is what they smell like, that is what they look like and that is what they taste like—and there is no question that that is a deliberate marketing strategy by the industry.

I can understand that the industry is trying to promote a product, but if the industry wants to promote a product that contains alcohol then it must do so within a bound set of rules and it must do so responsibly. It must do so in a manner which is ethical. While there is nothing morally wrong or unethical about sweet flavoured alcopop type drinks, what is wrong is deliberate marketing campaigns to particularly target young people through certain sporting facilities or through other marketing methods that deliberately aim at one particular class of person, one category of people in the community, with a drink where you cannot really tell whether you are drinking alcohol or not. People do not really know, and may not know until it is too late, exactly just what it is they are consuming and the impact it is having on them. The industry needs to do a little bit of soul-searching and maybe look a little bit closer at the way they produce, market and develop these products. Of course, if they do not then that is where government has a role to play.

That is what we are doing here today. It is the responsibility of the government to curb those excesses and to ensure that people are safe. It does not mean that you cannot buy these products. It just means there will be a higher cost associated with those products, and that high cost will be reflected in a number of ways. The outcome, that higher cost—the tax revenue to government—will fund the campaigns I mentioned earlier. That is where that extra revenue to government will be going. We will be trying to address those excesses and the problems in the community that are created by abuse of alcohol generally but particularly with RTDs.

Along with the changes made by the previous government and the associated 250 per cent increase in sales of RTDs, we know that in 2004 62 per cent of female drinkers aged between 15 and 17 reported that they were drinking more RTDs. In 2000, the figure was only 14 per cent. Again, there is a marked leap in the number of people who particularly started to consume these products once they realised the lower cost. I think we can clearly identify that price does have an impact on who buys it and how much of it they buy. There will always be replacements. That is something that you can never get away from, but we must curb consumption of those particular drinks by young people. Older people might have a better comprehension of this and a better measure of the amount they are drinking. The issue is with younger people who may not be able to tell the difference. I think the industry needs to pay more attention in this area.

In any given week, the reality is that one in 10 12- to 17-year-olds are binge drinking, and they are doing it to a level of high risk. That data is from the 2005 Australian secondary students alcohol and drug survey. This high level of alcohol consumption has led to very alarming levels of hospitalisation. The number of young women aged between 18 and 24 being hospitalised because of alcohol consumption has doubled in the last eight years. There is something happening in the community in the way that people are abusing alcohol, particularly young women and very young adolescents. But it does not just end there because there is an ugly side to binge drinking—that is, violence. The level of violence associated with binge drinking hurts the whole Australian community and the Australian economy. A recent estimate of the social cost of the misuse of alcohol is a staggering figure—$15 billion per year. That is a credible measure and it is from Collins and Lapsley’s work on the cost of tobacco, alcohol and illicit drug abuse to Australian society. Alcohol abuse on its own costs the economy $15 billion a year—a massive cost to every single Australian and every single taxpayer. Anything that a government can do ought to be supported. Anything that a government can do to curb those excesses and spend more money on education, particularly for young people, I think is a good thing.

If only the opposition could come into this place with a coherent argument about why we should not do this, apart from just saying, ‘It’s not working as well as maybe we’d hoped,’ or, ‘It has not quite had the impact,’ or, ‘People still drink.’ We have heard that people are just drinking something else. Of course, some of that is right. People are going to perhaps drink something else or perhaps keep drinking. That is not the point of what we are trying to achieve with this. Where I think we are having success is in reducing the level of consumption of ready-to-drink products, particularly among young people. We have attempted to get this message across loud and clear to the community, and I think that has been achieved. I think that message to curb those excesses is out there and it has been heard by the community.

Not only is it a fact that we are fixing an anomaly created by the previous government with its tax break on alcohol camouflaged as a fizzy type sweet drink—the loophole which led to a 250 per cent increase in the sale of those ready-to-drink products; we are also trying to reduce the number of young people who are binge drinking. The number of young people binge drinking is very high, and we have heard about this from other speakers. Of females who drink at risky and high levels, 78 per cent actually reported that they drank alcopops on their last drinking occasion in 2004—an increase from only 21 per cent in 2000.

Dr John Herron, former Liberal minister and former AMA president, and a member of the Australian National Council on Drugs, wrote to the Prime Minister on 13 May 2008 and said:

I am writing on behalf of the Australian National Council on Drugs … to congratulate your government—

the Rudd government—

on the recent announcements regarding alcohol, particularly the public personal support you are providing for the encouraging work undertaken by the Minister for Health and the Parliamentary Secretary for Health.

He goes on to say:

Utilising the taxation system is one of the most effective measures we have for reducing alcohol related harm and problems for both individuals and communities.

I think that is a resounding endorsement of a step in the right direction. For those listening to this debate, industry people and perhaps young people, I think a number of messages need to be taken from this. One is that we all need to take responsibility for alcohol consumption, alcohol abuse and binge drinking. It has a high cost on the community, taxpayers, individuals and families. This cannot be brushed aside with simplistic arguments which say that this or that will not work and that people will just drink some other product. That is too simplistic. We have fixed the loophole and we have realigned the proper application of tax in relation to particular alcohol products.

Making it more difficult for particular organisations to promote, market and even produce products which are less and less identifiable as alcohol is a good thing. We need to make sure that the industry takes up its responsibilities. No-one is trying to stop them from selling alcohol or particular products, but the taxing regime needs to be right. We are absolutely on the right path on this and industry needs to be responsible for the way it markets, promotes and produces these products. Nobody is trying to tell them not to produce them but rather to do it in a proper way. It was all a little bit too clever and half cute the way that they produced a beer under the definition of beer in the tax act to circumvent the excise tariffs that are applied under these regulations.

That is not the intent nor should it be the attitude of the industry to get around what this parliament is trying to achieve. That is not how this ought to work and it is not how it is going to work. There are many good reasons we have heard in this debate as to why we need to curb the worst of abuses. I am very supportive of what we are trying to do. I, like everybody else in this place and in the community, am very supportive of people having the freedom to consume and buy and do whatever they want, but within the bounds of responsibility. Be responsible. The industry needs to be responsible. Do not make it a cost for someone else. Do not make it a cost for taxpayers, a bill for them to pick up after you have made mistakes in relation to alcohol abuse. I want to commend both these bills to the House and support the work that is being carried out by the Minister for Health and Ageing in this area.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I believe I would hold the record in this place, full or empty, for the longest period of experience in the retailing of alcohol. And when it comes to youth, I might remind the member for Oxley to hang around for a minute so I can correct some of the statements he made. I purchased a half share in my first freehold hotel when I was six months younger than the then legal age to drink, 21 years of age. These two pieces of legislation, the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009, are fraudulent if their stated intention is to reduce the consumption of alcohol amongst the young or the elderly and to have some beneficial health effects in the process. It does not work. It has never worked and we know the purpose of this particular issue. It is bad public policy. Governments have the right to impose taxes and it is not a bad idea that they do not promise during an election campaign not do it but then go ahead and do it, but they think they have found an excuse for the purpose.

The excuse on this occasion is we are going to tax you because it is good for you. That has progressively happened to cigarettes over the years. I remember when you used to get change out of a dollar for cigarettes. Today they are probably up around $10 for the same size pack. But that is not what reduced consumption. What reduced consumption was the bans that apply on just about every public area today even out on the footpath surrounding air terminals, et cetera. I do not object to that. Fortunately, I never took up the habit of smoking although most of the kids around me did. Might I add, my mother started at 13 and finished at 73 and would often say that she would not walk a yard to buy alcohol but she would walk a mile to buy a packet of cigarettes. That is the addiction that comes from that particular substance.

But if this government is fair dinkum about preventing or reducing the consumption of alcohol, it should take steps to reduce the consumption of alcohol. It is not my personal belief, but they might go back to the age of 21 as the approved drinking age. If you genuinely feel it in your heart, go out there and try that on all the 18-year-olds to whom Gough Whitlam gave the vote. Try that one. If you are genuinely interested in the cheapest alcohol available for alcoholics you would do something about the tax on cask wine and you might take note of the lives that that particular product kills. Those who are truly alcoholic do not bother about alcopops because they are five per cent alcohol. It takes an awful lot of them to get drunk. You have to consume a huge amount of moisture in the process and our body has some limits on that as it does on the over-consumption of alcohol typically with the young. They get violently sick because the body says, ‘You have had enough of that. You’d better get rid of it.’ The media and others take great pleasure in photographing some young person at some open-air function being sick in the nearest flowerpot as some evidence of binge drinking. Young people can get to that state of ill health or uncomfortable health. Their stomach will rebel after a very limited number of drinks. We become immune to that as we age and maybe overconsume.

For the information of the member for Oxley, who has departed as quickly as he could go, it is a myth that the previous government created a loophole. They did not. They set about to close the loophole. But, as the member for Oxley has admitted, as soon as you start to fiddle with the tax rates on alcohol and you do not have a standard rate—which I admit our government were never able to resolve—people just change the mix. The early alcopops, as they have come to be known, were all based on wine based spirits. Why was that? Because in my living memory in this parliament there was no tax and no excise on wine. There was originally a sales tax which was totally unrelated to the alcohol content. If there were anything other than a cash grab in this legislation, today we would be debating an ad valorem tax on alcohol—in other words, the more in the bottle the higher the tax. That is the test and that is what the kids discovered. You start to add an additional cost to a can of Coke with five per cent alcoholic content and they turn around and go and buy the 45 per cent stuff and then add their own mixer. I can tell you they are much more generous with the alcoholic drink than they are with the mixer.

So why would you do that? Why would you think that a single increase in tax on a single alcoholic product would alter the drinking patterns of the young, the middle-aged or the old? Of course, when it came particularly to rum and coke, it was very quickly established that it was youngish males, if you like—those in their late 20s—who were the main drinkers of that product. It was a convenience that they could also have achieved by buying a sixpack of coke and a bottle, or a half-bottle, of rum. But they chose it the other way, and the mix was known.

Most of the persons of reasonably mature age in this parliament would never have drunk anything but seven per cent beer, and nobody ever thought that was binge drinking. But then, in what I thought was a very weak attempt to try and justify a tax grab for every other possible reason, the member for Oxley referred to ‘violence’. The main reason I have entered this debate is to talk about violence, about why violence has now become a major issue associated with drinking establishments and about why this government does not even want to talk about it—I am talking about drugs and, more particularly, those that are sometimes labelled ‘recreational drugs’. They are so ‘recreational’ that we have a new demographic entering high-care aged persons homes. They are 50 years old, and they have fried their brains with cannabis or, of course, the new phenomenon of amphetamines that, apparently, can be made in a kitchen with very little effort.

Tragically, the other day, a young woman of 18 set off to the pub or to the club having taken an amphetamine before her mother drove her to the establishment. She had two more with her to keep her going during the night, and, very unfortunately in one regard, under the new regimes in Western Australia—our new government thinks drugs are bad—the police entered the premises to check who had drugs. They had some sniffer dogs with them—and I want to talk further about that—and, when they walked in and the girl saw them, she unfortunately swallowed the other two tablets in fright and died. She could have drunk alcopops all night and she might have been a sick little girl, but she would be living today.

I do not believe that alcohol has the same degree of addictiveness or that, for that matter, the body is able to keep absorbing amphetamines to the same degree as it is able to keep absorbing alcohol. But, as you force the cost of alcohol up, those amphetamines get relatively cheaper and cheaper. Why doesn’t this government have any genuine concern about these drugs in the same way that they do about alcohol? Because they cannot tax it, and because the police force throughout Australia really finds it all a bit too hard! There is no corruption known to me in the police force associated with alcohol, but there is sure plenty of it associated with so-called ‘recreational drugs’. I have spoken in this place about the outrage of the Australian Football League, the attitude they had to tolerating elite sportsmen’s use of these drugs and the tragedies that that has brought upon us.

I know about violence from 30 years managing and owning big hotels as well as smaller ones, with all sorts of customer bases, and from having to deal with people who were drunk. Towards the end of that period, and prior to coming to this place, I began suddenly to deal with a new group of people—people who were violent and who not only would not leave when they were asked to but would try to kill you. The evidence of the deaths arising from this form of violence is a matter of record. It took me a while to understand that they had a horrible mix in their body. They had come to the place having taken, or had taken during the time they were present, a so-called ‘recreational drug’ and had consumed alcohol. There was an article published some years ago in, I think, one of the major dailies in Sydney, and I read it on a plane. It featured a woman who had just come out of jail. The cause of her internment was that she had attacked an old lady in an airport toilet in order to get at the old lady’s handbag to get the money to buy more drugs—she was addicted to that point. Of course, she was giving this interview, so she must have had some celebrity status, and she said to the journalist, ‘I could not believe I would do to that lady what I did.’ That is the point I am making: when drugs are involved, all of the normal human constraints are lost. As I said, the deleterious effect is that you can end up in a nursing home at 50 by the consumption of those drugs. I can take you where some of those people are in my electorate.

So this is what we are talking about. We have a government defending their ‘smart’ move to get a bit more revenue by focusing on an issue promoted particularly by the police forces of Australia when they should be focusing on drugs. I mentioned earlier one of the ‘big nights out’ or whatever it was. In Western Australia—we have a television junkie over there as police commissioner—we had fully televised coverage of the police at a train station where young people were getting off a train for the purpose of going to this function. The sniffer dogs were taking their part, and, of those they apprehended, there were about 10 per cent in possession of drugs. No doubt some had them for their own consumption and others had them to sell at the function. I thought, ‘You beauty!’ Then I understand that before the bigger event, which was on the other day, they did not do it. And why was that so? Because they have not got any sniffer dogs! The dogs in the TV show were borrowed from Customs, who, I would think, would be very concerned about lending dogs out to anyone—if only for the reason that, over time, people would know when they were not available to Customs. That is just an invitation to import drugs and do these other sorts of things.

There is an issue regarding this amount of money, and putting advertisements on television telling kids not to drink is great for the television company but of very little use in reducing the amount of consumption. In fact, I could give you a couple of examples of where advertising has sometimes drawn attention to the product rather than discouraging its use. Usually every parent tells their young people not to drink too much. I did not take any notice, and I bet most others do not. The reality is that the money has now been collected under the bill—a bill which I do not agree with and hope is lost—to the full extent of the 12 months available under the customs legislation for the government to raise the tax without getting the permission of this parliament. Why could the government not have tested the parliament a month or so into its effect? Then, if the bill were to be lost, they would not have to work out what they will do with this money.

If the government were to come back into this House with a very specific bill to the effect that they would use the money to finance a special task force of police units around Australia—with their sniffer dogs and other methods, including drug testing, in the same way that we test for alcohol through random breath testing et cetera—to go into nightclubs for the purpose of arresting people in possession of these drugs, be they AFL footballers or otherwise, then, whatever the view of my party, I would vote for it. After 30 years of experience in retailing alcohol in hotels, I know that drugs are the big problem. I also know that, when you have a variety of taxes and excises imposed on alcohol, the industry will always find a way to market a product using alcohol produced by the least taxed form. An example is low-alcohol beer. The Swan brewery was selling one per cent alcohol beer and made that product by boiling the alcohol off. That alcohol, which is then a raw product, can be inserted into an alcopop which can then be claimed to be a product of low-alcohol beer and taxed accordingly.

In the wine industry we have this hang-up about the fact that their business is built around cask wine, which they frequently import from Chile. They fight against an ad valorem tax on alcohol when they produce high-quality wine, which is what they should be producing. However, of course, the tax does not apply to exports. If they had a flat tax, the incentive would be to produce higher quality wine and not rubbish for alcoholics, particularly those in the Indigenous population. That is the cheap form of alcohol. If the government has a genuine concern for the health of people, why did it not increase the tax on that? Oh no, that is a bit difficult. This one looked easy, and they thought they were going to grab a lot of revenue. But even the revenue has not come up to expectations. History says that a tax of a more specially applied nature will not reduce the consumption of alcohol. In fact, there is every chance that it has increased consumption, because the young have gone and purchased large bottles of 45 per cent alcohol and they are making their own mixes, and that is stupid—and stupidity is the greatest insult that I can deliver in this place.

It was bad public policy, it has not achieved its intended outcomes and it broke an election promise. The real challenge amongst the young is amphetamines and associated recreational drugs, and I never hear a word about them. I never hear the Minister for Health and Ageing, in her rantings on this subject, say one thing about drugs. They are where the violence comes from, and we should be prepared to confront it—and confront it in the places where people consume it. We will never stop some, but if you went into a major nightclub, locked the doors and said, ‘Okay, all line up,’—or, for that matter, had a policeman with a sniffer dog standing outside the door as they sought entry—and you got every kid who had one tablet, put them in the paddy wagon to the police station and rang their parents and said, ‘Come and get them,’ then that would be a positive measure. For those who were clearly proved to be retailing or selling these drugs, I do not think 10 years is too long a penalty, and I would build a special jail for them out in the Simpson Desert. It is a dreadful attack on young people, and I have not seen a scrap of evidence since this government has been in office that it has any interest in it whatsoever. I put that down to the simple fact that you cannot tax it.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Excise Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009 and the Customs Tariff Amendment (2009 Measures No. 1) Bill 2009. In the year 2000 the Liberal Howard government, for reasons best known to itself—and we can only speculate as to what those reasons were—introduced a loophole, a tax concession, if you like, for alcopops, otherwise known as ready-to-drink spirit based alcoholic products. It worked in the following way. Up until that point, spirits based products had an excise tariff of $66.66 per litre of alcohol content applied to them. But, in relation to pre-mixed drinks, that figure was reduced to $39.36 per litre of alcohol content. It had this effect: you could go out and buy a bottle of bourbon and you could buy a bottle of Coke and you could mix the drink yourself to get a drink of bourbon and Coke. You could also go out and buy a premixed can of bourbon and Coke in the same quantities and with the same measure, and what would happen is that those two drinks, which were in essence precisely the same, would have completely different tax regimes applying to them. Indeed, you would be drinking the premixed drink at half the tax rate of the drink you mixed yourself. As I say, why that occurred is best known to the government of the day, but that it occurred was a very dangerous exercise in public policy, in the context of what has evolved as a significant binge-drinking problem in this country.

One in ten 12- to 17-year-olds are now drinking at levels which are defined as being risky. Twenty thousand girls in this country between the ages of 12 and 15 are reportedly drinking daily or weekly. The number of young women between the ages of 18 and 24 who are admitted to hospital for alcohol related reasons has doubled in the last eight years. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that the proportion of treatment episodes for which alcohol is the main drug responsible for people between the ages of 10 and 19 being treated has risen from 15 per cent to 23 per cent in the past five years. Of course, drinking in that way has an enormous adverse impact on a person’s health, but it also has an impact on the health of others and on the health of the society in which we live. Three-quarters of a million Australians are physically abused every year by people who are under the influence of alcohol. The social cost to our nation of alcohol misuse has been estimated at $15 billion a year. Only last year the New South Wales Police Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, said:

… something like about 70 per cent of every police engagement with a member of the community in the streets of NSW has alcohol as a factor.

Against that backdrop, why a government would seek to provide a tax concession for alcopops beggars belief. But that is what they did. It particularly beggars belief when you consider that alcopops are a product designed specifically for and targeted specifically at young people. They are the people who drink alcopops. Alcopops are designed with bright colours. They are designed to taste sweet to disguise the alcohol in the product. By any measure, if what was sought by this tax concession was to increase the consumption of alcopops then it works. It works spectacularly, because the sales of alcopops increased by 250 per cent since the year 2000. The percentage of girls between the ages of 15 and 17 who reported that an alcopop was the last alcoholic drink that they had consumed rose from 14 per cent in the year 2000, before the tax break was introduced, to 62 per cent in 2004. For girls in the same cohort who were described as drinking in a risky manner, the percentage who indicated that an alcopop was the last alcoholic drink that they had consumed in 2004 was 78 per cent. That figure rose threefold after the year 2000.

This is an issue of enormous concern for the people in my electorate of Geelong, and indeed I spoke about it in this place on 16 September last year. For me, there is something of an interesting story to the speech I made in this place in relation to binge drinking among young people. At the time, I had working in my office a young work experience student, Sumeyra Eren, from Matthew Flinders Girls Secondary College in Geelong, a member of that exact cohort—a girl between the ages of 15 and 17. The task I set her during her week of work experience was to prepare a speech for me which I would make in this place. She could prepare that speech on any topic that she chose, but the one that she chose was this: binge drinking amongst young people. For young people in this country—for young people in Geelong—binge drinking is a huge issue. In the speech that she prepared she talked about a party that had occurred at Tettenhall Ridge in Belmont in Geelong on 31 August last year. It was arranged through MySpace and MSN and saw, in the middle of the night, 200 drunk and disorderly young people milling around in the streets, throwing bottles and cans and being raucous in what was a quiet suburb.

Alcohol fuelled violence has been a key issue within the CBD in Geelong over the past few years and indeed was behind a measure that this government took to the last election. That measure, which we have introduced since being elected to government, was a $300,000 commitment to improving the safety of the Geelong CBD. An interesting community response to the issue of binge drinking and the lack of safety which it was creating in the centre of Geelong has been taken up by the local paper, the Geelong Advertiser, and the Geelong Football Club—in particular its captain, Tom Harley. Those organisations have come up with the Just Think campaign, a campaign very much aimed at young people. It is not intended to be a wowser campaign and it is not intended to tell people that they cannot drink, but what it does seek to do is to say to those people who are about to drink that they should ‘just think’ when they start consuming alcohol. They should think about what their drinking does to themselves, about what their drinking does to their families, about what their drinking does to their friends, about what their drinking does to their community and about what their drinking does to their health. It has been a spectacularly successful campaign within the community of Geelong. It has received the support of the Premier of Victoria, Mr John Brumby; it has received support from the then Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon; and it receives support in this place during question time from the Minister for Health and Ageing, Nicola Roxon. Indeed, the Geelong Advertiser, being a News Ltd paper, has spread this campaign to other News Ltd papers around Australia, and the Cairns Post has taken up this campaign and is running it within that city.

What is very clear when it comes to the issue of binge drinking and how we tackle this problem is that money counts. When you are talking about young people and binge drinking, you are talking about a group of people who do not have money readily available to them who are very sensitive to the price—

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

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.