Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

Do you want to listen or not? When this measure was first introduced, modelling predicted that it would only slow the astronomical growth of alcopops sales, which would have been an achievement in itself. However, as we have heard, the ACNielsen figures—the figures accepted by all parts of the industry—demonstrate a reduction in the overall consumption of alcohol of 124 million standard drinks. That takes into account alcopops, straight spirits, beer and wine. And no-one on the other side is listening because that is the statistic they do not want to hear. They do not want to know that the overall reduction in consumption of alcohol has been by 124 million standard drinks. That is not a bad start. Let me expand on the ATO data. To quote from the Department of the Treasury’s submission to last week’s Senate inquiry:

The clearance data reveals a 34.6 per cent decrease in RTD consumption over the period May 2008 to January 2009, compared with the same period in the previous year. In contrast, solid growth was recorded for this period in each of the previous three years: 12.3 per cent in 2005-06, 8.2 per cent in 2006-07, 10.1 per cent in 2007-08.

So we had year of growth after year of growth for the preceding three years and then we have subsequently seen a reduction by 34.6 per cent.