Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to Minister for Health and Ageing. Will the minister outline to the House the government’s legislative action on alcopops and any new obstacles to its implementation?

Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Ageing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Petrie for her question—she, like many on this side of the House, is very determined to make sure that the action taken by the government is upheld in this parliament. Members would probably be aware that the Senate committee looking into the alcopops excise measure reported today to the Senate. The debate is being undertaken today in the Senate, and we anticipate that there will be a vote on this measure today or tomorrow. We hope that the Senate will be looking at the clear evidence that was presented to the Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, which shows not only the sales data from the Australian Tax Office but also the very wide support for the government having taken action on this measure. This support has come from the AMA, the Public Health Association, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Australian National Council on Drugs, as well as experts commissioned by the previous Howard government. They have all backed this measure.

If the Liberal Party really do care about binge drinking and about health policy, they should be making sure that Liberal senators vote for this bill. Of course we know that if the bill does not pass in the Senate it will only be a number of weeks before we have teenage girls back using their pocket money to pay those low prices for lolly water drinks that the Liberal Party have stood next to every step of the way.

The new development today, in addition to the Senate committee report, is that the Leader of the Opposition came out today and said that he is going to vote both for and against this measure. He has taken the extremely logical view that this is going to be, and should be, a tax that is good for 12 months—during which time it will be supported—but not good for the following 12 months, during which time it should not be supported. This is not a sustainable position for the Leader of the Opposition; however, it does seem to be quite consistent with what he has been doing on everything else; it is consistent with supporting the Economic Security Strategy and then opposing it, and it is consistent with saying that Work Choices is dead and then thinking that he is now going to vote to keep it in place. Today, we saw the latest one of those: the homeowners grant that the Liberal Party opposed and that they are now going to be back into. We have got the Leader of the Opposition faced with a choice of whether he will vote for or against, and he wants to do both.

Obviously, this is not a sustainable position, but, perhaps even more embarrassing for the Leader of the Opposition is that he has today done a Julie Bishop. He has come out and said that he has a new policy. The new policy is that they will vote for this legislation for 12 months and that they will vote against it for the following 12 months. People might think that the Leader of the Opposition promoted this as a new idea of his own. In fact, he stole it directly from the distillers—it is exactly the position the distillers put in their letter to the Senate inquiry only a week ago. This is plagiarism by the Leader of the Opposition, who is not even able to think of his own policy ideas.

But, in case anybody was not convinced that the Liberal Party had lost all credibility on this issue, we have to also go today to the member for Dickson. The member for Dickson went out today to the media and said that he had a really good idea. He went out this morning and said that he thought binge drinking was such a problem that we should have a national advertising campaign against it. And I thought: ‘That’s a really good idea! That is such a good idea that we have actually already implemented it!’ We have already—last year—had a $20 million advertising campaign on television, in magazines and in our newspapers, and the only person who has not noticed is the member for Dickson. I mean, this is completely ridiculous. Today or tomorrow, the Liberal Party will have the opportunity to vote for or against this measure—they will not be able to do both—and the weights are on them whether they want teenage girls to be able to buy these drinks for their pocket money prices.