Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Government Business in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to provide some additional information to a question asked yesterday by Senator Fielding in relation to an article in the Lancet. The authors also said that the tax change would be ‘part of a battery of strategies to reduce both binge and excessive drinking’. The authors also said that ‘overall rates of usual or binge drinking in Australia are unlikely to fall due to the small overall market share of spirits’. But they also said that ‘this conclusion does not indicate, however, that the government’s decision was wrong. Going part of the way is not the same as going the wrong way’.