Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

Settle down! Back in September 2007 Family First put forward three real measures to start to address the culture of binge drinking and reinforce a responsible drinking culture through the Alcohol Toll Reduction Bill. Frankly, you have been stalling ever since we introduced the bill. To be absolutely clear, I spoke to the current Prime Minister before he was Prime Minister—and I will not divulge what he said, but I did I raise the issue well before the last election—and I was absolutely gobsmacked to think that the best that you folks could do was pull the tax lever on one product.

The measures that Family First put forward were, firstly, health warning labels on alcohol products. It makes sense; you cannot defend not putting those labels in place. The second measure was to address the crazy exemption given to sports programming which allows alcohol ads to appear any time of the day, and the third one was to get alcohol advertising out of the industry’s hands into the hands of a regulatory body independent of the industry. We have a situation in Australia, through inaction by the Rudd government, that has allowed alcohol and sports to continue to be tied so closely together, and we have seen only in the last few weeks some of the issues that sports have with alcohol. You try to apply a brake, but you have your foot down on the accelerator, allowing alcohol advertising to continue any time of the day because it is during a sports program. Why would you allow that tight link between sport and alcohol when you have clearly got a problem?

You are doing Australian families a disservice and hiding behind a tax grab. You should come clean and say it is a tax measure and maybe get the Treasurer to come and do the negotiations on the tax measure rather than Minister Roxon. In good faith, we have been in discussions with them. We are hoping to see some real action rather than hiding behind a tax grab. I was still hoping that you folks would move on all three measures in that area.

We are left with the situation that money has been collected. The last thing that Family First wants to see is for that money to go back to the industry. I do not think there is anyone in this chamber here who would like that money to go back to the alcohol industry. What we have got before us is a request for an amendment to basically authorise that money to be kept by the government for the year. We do not want any furphies getting out there tomorrow that we want to see the money go back to the industry. I am making it quite clear that this is a request for an amendment so that the money collected up until this measure receives royal assent actually stays with the government. We do not want to camouflage, again, the issues about where the money would go.