Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

My position remains that I believe a number of the measures that have been agreed to by the government, as a result of discussions between the government and my crossbench colleagues, the Greens, are a quantum leap forward in dealing with alcohol abuse in this country. We will have for the first time mandatory warning labels on all alcoholic beverages. That is significant. There will be an end to the self-regulation—some would say the self-delusion—of the alcohol industry so that there will be pre-vetting of ads for the first time. There will be $50 million spent on a variety of very important measures. The sponsorship issues that the Greens have been advocating for are dealt with. That is an important step forward. There will be $20 million for community education campaigns—those grassroots campaigns that research shows make a very real difference in getting the message across to young people particularly when dealing with alcohol abuse. There is $5 million being spent on social marketing, which Senator Siewert referred to. That will target those groups in new and innovative ways to make a difference. And, of course, there will be the alcohol abuse hotline.

This all leads us to the outstanding issue that Senator Fielding is concerned about. I want to make it clear that I commend the advocacy and work that Senator Fielding has done on this for many months. He has been consistent in his concern about tackling alcohol abuse in this country. My concern is that all of those good measures will be lost. Rather than looking at the whys and wherefores of who is right and who is wrong we need to put this in context. There is an opportunity now to move forward in a very significant way to tackle alcohol abuse in this country with the programs and the mandatory warning labels on bottles, casks and cans. Senator Fielding has been a long-term advocate of these things, and he deserves to be commended for that. This is a quantum leap forward in terms of what we have seen previously with tackling alcohol abuse in this country.

If the government is prepared to agree to a process of winding back alcohol advertising with sport and if it is prepared to put in a not insignificant sum of money to have advertisements dealing with alcohol abuse in the context of sports broadcasts, that would go a long way in dealing with the concerns of Senator Fielding. Advertising during sports programs could well have an effect on reducing consumption. That is what the research from the University of Connecticut that I referred to the other day has found. If there are funds set aside not only for the social marketing that Senator Siewert referred to to specifically target groups but also for advertising to get the message across about alcohol abuse, I believe that would remedy in a significant way the concerns that Senator Fielding has set out.

My fear is that we will throw the baby out with the bathwater. My fear is that we will lose this quantum shift in terms of the way we look at alcohol abuse in this country. I do not want to be critical of the opposition or indeed of previous Labor governments, but they have done very little in terms of dealing with this. This is a breakthrough. It is fundamentally important that we grab this opportunity. There is a real opportunity here for Senator Fielding to hold his head high, even though he has just left the chamber—and I am not sure whether that is a good or bad sign. There is a real opportunity for Senator Fielding, along with my crossbench colleagues, the Greens, to take credit for some significant reforms in this area.

I do not want us to go back to the bad old days of self-regulation and no pre-vetting of advertising; to retain the status quo of no warning labels on alcoholic beverages; to not have funds in place, significant programs in place, to tackle alcohol abuse, and the social marketing that will actually break through and cut through to young people in particular; to have no hotline; and of course to not substitute current alcohol sponsorship through a $25 million fund. These are all things that will shift and change the culture of drinking in this country, and the damage caused by advertising and sponsorship. Let us not abandon those very good measures because we cannot get everything, because the ideal world cannot be achieved right here and now. So my plea to my colleague Senator Fielding—and again I accept fully his sincerity, his genuineness, in tackling this problem—is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I urge him to support the package of measures, with some modification perhaps in terms of addressing a number of his key concerns, so that we can get on with this and have a good piece of public policy in place.