Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Siewert will speak a little bit more on the specifics of these requested amendments, but we are now looking at modifications to government bills which are going to raise some $1.6 billion over the next four years from the sale of what are called alcopops. The Greens and other members of the crossbench have been endeavouring to hypothecate a very small amount—I am talking about one to five per cent of that huge amount of income—to put into health measures and other measures to ameliorate and, hopefully, offset some of the impacts of alcohol abuse in Australia.

For reasons which are not quite evident to us—and I do not know how evident they are to the minister herself—the government has decided that it is not going to go that far. It will accept proposals to do with warning signs on labelling and on advertising but it will not go so far as to agree with proposals which would give sporting organisations an option other than alcohol advertising—and isn’t that a telling factor—or establish an alcohol hotline which would be available to those highly motivated Australians who wanted to get away from the problem they are in.

It needs to be said at this juncture, in this committee stage, that it is quite remarkable that the government in the Senate has said that it is not going to support those proposals. They are very, very modest proposals when it comes to the huge amount of revenue being raised here. Just a little later in the week, we are going to be asked by the government to agree to $2 billion to back the banks and big development corporations on the risk, which is yet unproven anywhere, that there may be some failure by overseas lenders to renew loans. That is $2 billion the government is going to put into the big end of town if that legislation goes through, but, as far as the proposals by the Greens are concerned, it refused to give a total of $20 million to provide an opportunity for sporting organisations not to have alcohol advertising funding them but to have the public purse doing it. That is money that did not have to come out of this $1.6 billion, but it is 1¼ per cent of this $1.6 billion and yet the minister said no. Now, a little bit of hypothecation goes a long way. It would have been wise of the minister to think this out a little bit better. The resolve of the Senate is being tested, no doubt, and there is a lot of thought, sense and community consultation that has gone into the proposals that Senator Siewert and the Greens have put forward, and I have no doubt the same is true for those put forward by Senator Fielding and Senator Xenophon. I would think that, if this debate does go overnight, the government should very seriously consider this intransigence, which is totally out of proportion to the matters we are dealing with here tonight and to the amount of money that this tax is raising.

I finally want to say at this juncture that last year I wrote to the Prime Minister asking for hypothecation of this money to help people who are having difficulties with alcohol and therefore offset the massive impact that alcohol abuse has on the economy, not to speak of society. I have had no reply. We passed a motion in this Senate almost 12 months ago warning the government that it could not take the Senate for granted as it went ahead and raised the money without bringing the legislation in 12 months ago. Well, that moment of test is now on. The government ought to be thinking very carefully overnight about whether or not it respects the role of the Senate and the very reasonable proposals that have been put before it or whether it expects to act like a steamroller. It might look at what happened to the Howard government. Obviously it has forgotten the three years leading to 2007. I think that in the cool of the morning the government might have time to think afresh. It would be very wise of it to do so.