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March 18, 2009
It's good to see the Senate doing its job properly --using its powers responsibly to improve government legislation and to push the government further down the reform pathway to ensure the public interest or a public good. The crossbench is crucial to a long list of bills the Rudd Government wants passed, and it is far from being recalcitrant or dithering or obstructionist.
A good example is the Allcopops legislation, where the Greens and independent senator Nick Xenophon have used their power to persuade Health Minister Nicola Roxon to set aside an additional $50 million from the $1.6 billion raised for measures to tackle alcohol abuse. Why would the Rudd government resist that proposal,when its concern is to stop teens from binge drinking.?
The agreement includes the creation of a $25 million health sponsorship fund to provide support for sporting and cultural activities as an alternative to alcohol sponsorship, mandatory warnings on alcohol advertising, community-level initiatives to tackle binge drinking and enhanced telephone counselling services and alcohol referrals. Alcohol is connected to a health and can cause health problems.
The interpretation of this legislation by Bernard Keane, Crikey's Canberra correspondent, is that:
its lasting political significance will be no more than that of another stunt, Fuelwatch, which fell by the wayside last year after inquiries, theatrics and Parliamentary ranting, and was promptly forgotten .
Keane does appear to behold the view that the Rudd Government has its agenda ensnared in Senate obstructionism and that the House of Represenatives rules. That how he interprets the Rudd Government needing to negotiate its key legislation through the Senate,
However, he misses the point of the allcopops issue. These may be small reform steps in taxing alcoholic lollywater, but they represent a break with the laissez-faire approach to alcohol advertising that paid no attention to the negative effects of alcohol. Keane misses the political symbolism of this, and the explicit rejection of the libertarian position that holds the "nanny state", or wowsers, or do-gooders are dictating how much people should drink or setting upper limits to drinking for everyone.
The Senate is acting because the full cost of alcoholic lollywater is not borne by the producer (Big Alcohol). This is the negative externality problem in economic language, and it challenges the view that the allcops tax is just the Rudd Government utilizing coercion for a tax grab (plunder) at the expense of individual liberty. What we have with allcopop is a political solution to market failure.
Family First senator Steve Fielding wants to push this issue further: to address alcohol advertising during sports programs on television.He wants the Government to close a loophole that permits television advertising of alcohol during family viewing time in sporting broadcasts. For once, Fielding has adopted a reasonable position. The implication is that the laws covering the banning and other restrictions on grog marketing and sponsorship do need to be tightened progressively.
Economic libertarians (the utilitarian variety) would argue against these government policies on the grounds that they exceed the bounds of the minimal state. They would oppose these laws on the grounds that they prohibit certain types of exchanges as well burdening exchanges by imposing high transaction costs. Some would argue that today's market failures will provide the opportunities for tomorrow's entrepreneurs to profit by new innovation. What they need to argue is that such policies to prevent market failure will not produce greater utility than a policy of laissez-faire.
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taxing alcoholic lollywater is a good idea. There are similarities to tobacco re people's health. It is a public health issue as well as lifestyle and choice.