Budget inaction

With the Federal Budget put to bed for another year, exhausted Treasury officials, and political staffers headed to their local watering holes and favourite eateries to unwind and relax. After long days and nights under intense pressure to help Wayne wring a surplus from the budget, it’s a night to kick back and let off steam.

For a few golden hours, the only number they need to pay any attention to is the number of drinks they are putting away. No doubt a few lost count and woke up in the morning a little worse for wear, sleep deprived, and nursing a hangover.

The good news is; their hangover would be gone before the day is out. The bad news; Wayne Swan failed to introduce one single meaningful alcohol reform measure in the 2012-13 Budget.  As a result, the nation’s collective hangover is set to continue into 2013 and beyond.

And that’s a problem, because unlike the hungover public servant from Treasury, our nation’s problems with alcohol cannot be solved simply with a Barocca and a burger.

Alcohol use and misuse is the cause of substantial harms to the Australian community. You might have heard these sobering stats before. But I’d ask you not to tune out. Don’t just skim over the next few lines.  Because this is not someone else’s issue. Unfortunately, this is an issue that impacts dramatically upon all of us.  60 Australians die and a further 1500 are hospitalised every single week. Alcohol misuse contributes significantly to crime and violence, and chronic diseases. In fact the total cost of alcohol use and misuse is put at $36 billion each and every year – $20 billion of which can be attributed to alcohol’s harms to others.

The good news is that it’s not a problem without a solution. There are measures government can take; evidence-based approaches that are proven to be effective.  And with the cost of alcohol misuse so high, there is even a financial incentive for governments to introduce such policies.

This makes Wayne Swan’s scant budget announcements concerning alcohol so disappointing because they amount to little more than tinkering around the edges, and are not even motivated by the need to improve public health.

Let’s take a look at what was announced.  Unfortunately this won’t take long.

Leading health groups have lobbied long and hard for government to replace the current wine equalisation tax (WET) which taxes wine according to its value, with a volumetric alcohol tax, a system that taxes products based on the volume of alcohol. Such a move would have boosted Wayne Swan’s surplus by $1.5bn and done much to remove cheap wine from bottle shop shelves.

Eight separate government reviews have recommended overhauling the WET.

Instead, the Government announced a Band-Aid solution aimed at improving the integrity of the wine producer rebate by ensuring that wine producers cannot claim multiple rebates where wine is blended or further manufactured.

While the move will begin to address the widely acknowledged rorting of the WET, it doesn’t go nearly far enough.  With the WET still in place, we are still left with a system that results in cheap wine selling for less than bottled water.

That’s not just absurd; it’s a real concern. Why? It’s a problem because children and young people are drinking earlier and at dangerous levels and we know that they are influenced by price.

If further proof was needed that this Government measure really is just a temporary solution that fails to deal with the problem, the announcement was enthusiastically endorsed by the Wine Federation of Australia.

And that’s it for alcohol policy measures…oh sure, the Government also announced some tax concessions for micro brewers, news which was welcomed by the Australian Real Craft Breweries Association and the Greens; because it promotes job creation and that’s always a good thing. It’s just a shame that some of that extra work will be created in our hospital emergency departments.

But when it came to announcements of meaningful alcohol reform measures, this Federal Government came up empty handed.

No tax reform, no funding increases for preventative health measures, no public education campaign to promote the national drinking guidelines, and no funding for the completion and piloting of the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder diagnostic tool.

In short, nothing. The Government has missed another opportunity to contribute to the prevention of one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in Australia.

We know that Australians are keen for change and that they believe that more needs to be done to address alcohol-related harms.

FARE’s Annual Alcohol Poll again showed that over 76% of Australians believe Australia has a problem with excess drinking and alcohol abuse, and 75% of Australians say they want something done about it.

Unfortunately, those calls fell on deaf ears this time around.