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

Almost two months ago I stood in this spot and urged the Rudd government to reconsider its position on whether or not to keep the money raised by the collection of the alcopops tax in the past 12 months. The coalition, the Greens, Independent Nick Xenophon and I were all in agreement that the tax collected should be retained by the government. But the government said no to keeping the tax collected. It did this because it was more interested in trying to make a political point. It stubbornly refused to do the sensible thing and to keep the millions of dollars that had been collected through the ready-to-drink tax over the past year. In fact, the Rudd government insisted the collected money from the tax be handed back to the alcohol industry.