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April 29, 2008
I see that the Rudd Government has placed a heavy tax on alcopops, the ready mix alcoholic drink that tastes like soft drink and is primarily marketed to teenage women. The excise on pre-mixed drinks, or alcopops, almost doubled on Saturday, from $39 a litre of pure alcohol to $67. The change means the price of alcopops such as Bacardi Breezers and Vodka Cruisers will increase by between 30c and $1.30 a bottle, depending on the alcohol content.
This kind of policy is in the tradition of taxing cigarettes to help reduce their consumption. No doubt the libertarians will mutter about the nanny state and individual freedom and teenagers will shift their alcohol consumption back to beer and wine. No doubt the AFR will do its populist sneer routine whilst going about competition, productivity, infrastructure and tax reform.
Bill Leak
The justification for the tax rise is that a "significant proportion" of the revenue would be directed to the new black in health funding, preventative health programs. So something has come out of the 2020 Summit, in which each section had to come up with one big idea, and three policy ideas, including one that came at no cost.
This does help to shift the debate away from the medical model and hospitals to health and prevention. What we don't want is the money being spent on chronic diseases in public hospitals as the aim is to keep people out of hospitals by keeping them well.
Will junk food be next? We do need to make healthy food choices easy and this could include having a single food labelling system and food component labelling system; having healthy food choices at child care settings, schools, sporting venues and workplaces;regulating food marketing to children (banning junk food advertising and marketing through internet sites).
Update: 30 April
This cartoon represents the two aspects of the tax on alcopops. Most of the libertarian emphasis is on the tax /revenue raising side withe the public good of health prevention being pushed into the background.
Moir
The libertarians in Australia are primarily consequentionalists about individual liberty ----liberty is conducive to good consequences. A morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. Since the tax is an imposition on individual liberty, it is bad. Limited government is good as it gives more space to sovereign individuals to exercise their liberty. The nanny state is bad because it impinges on individual liberty.
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I could never fathom why mixers were so popular if you were to base it on alcohol content. They have less alcohol content then beer and wine & you would have to consume more to become drunk.
I think it may be more about the flavour.