Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to stand here today to formally put on the record my opposition to a push by technocratic think tanks and various others for sugar taxes. I fundamentally do not believe that we should be introducing a moralistic levy of around 40c per 100 grams of sugar simply to push forward the idea that we should decide people's consumption behaviour.

Rather than promoting the benefits of nutritious eating and exercise, health experts are increasingly outsourcing, or wanting to outsource, their efforts—particularly through the technocratic approach—to the Australian Taxation Office to enforce decisions on Australian society. Recent pushes have sought to appease the searing urge of many moralists who consistently attempt to engineer social outcomes by punishing people for exercising their free will.

Let's face it; research into similar levies in places like Denmark, Mexico, the United States and the UK show that sugar taxes do not work. But let us get past that and remind people that we already have our own type of sugar tax: we have a GST. Fresh food is exempt, and processed food is included. Yet some still want to impose more and more burdens on Australian households and taxpayers to try and dictate their behaviour.