Assistant Health and Ageing Minister Ged Kearney last month asked her department to provide a series of options for raising awareness of the dangers attached to alcohol consumption. Emulating those confronting smoking warnings on packages is looming as the most likely recommendation the minister will feed further up the line.
I assume plain packaging will be a bridge too far, but you just never know. Given there is evidence former Labor health minister Nicola Roxon’s strategy contributed to the downward trend in smoking.
To be sure, doing what governments can to curtail smoking is one thing. Most Australians would support such moves. Some jurisdictions are even banning it altogether for emerging 18 year olds. This was an election discussion point in New Zealand, for example. Although I don’t see the Australian government moving on from its addiction to the tax proceeds it gets from the cigarette industry.
Extending paternalistic approaches to curtailing smoking (narrow and reasonable) to alcoholic beverages would be a bridge too far.
For starters, you can consume alcohol in moderation safely, enjoying a beer with a burger or a red wine with steak. Is it really fair for the vast majority of people who do that appropriately to have to stare at a diseased liver on the side of their bottle while enjoying a drink with friends? Talk about killing joy.
Then you have the trading consequences to think about. I would love to know Trade Minister Don Farrell’s thoughts on the matter. He has been working overtime to remove Chinese barriers to the importation of Australian wines. Their protectionism has decimated the industry. What are the chances they will prefer Australian wines uniquely labelled with horrific images to the many alternatives they can import from around the world?
If the answer is that brewers and distilleries can simply use different labels for different markets, think again. The labelling process isn’t cheap and the sector’s margins are already tight. Australia’s much loved craft brewing sector is already financially struggling. Moves of the kind Kearney is considering would result in the big end of town dominating more than it already does, killing off business and costing jobs along the way.
Smaller brewers and distillers live and die by their branding. They don’t have multimillion-dollar marketing budgets, most of their marketing is done on their labels. Take that away by slapping a picture of a diseased liver on there and its game over.
Equally, if this does come into effect, what happens where alcohol is served in clubs and pubs? Poured out of taps or put in glasses, will those containers require labels? If not then the ends isn’t even supported by the means. Most heavy consumption of alcohol occurs in these environments.
And what comes next? If the government wants to be paternalistic but at least effective – not to mention consistent – it should also label fast food this way and impose a sugar tax while at it. The obesity epidemic is wider than alcohol abuse. Perhaps I shouldn’t give a government that thinks it can legislate away the problems large societies always face new ideas. If it’s not already planning such further moves.
So is this a deliberate strategy or a sign of a government starting to lose discipline? Let’s hope it’s one minister thinking she can muse about such things without the authority to follow through. The concerning reason to doubt that possibility is that Kearney is a senior member of the factional left, as is the Health Minister (Mark Butler) and the PM. And Butler is Anthony Albanese’s closest ally in the parliament. it’s therefore unlikely such freelancing hasn’t been approved, or isn’t reflective of centralised sentiments.
You have to wonder how many fights this government wants to pick. Pharmacists, farmers, miners, every airline except Qantas. Indeed any business employing anyone subject to IR laws – which is most businesses. The list of industry groups the government is at war with grows by the day.
Programs warning of excessive drinking already exist, and perhaps there are good evidence-based reasons to do more on that front. To innovate in order to clamp down on such practices. But not at the expensive of the enjoyment of the many who do the right thing.
Government might not be the problem Ronald Reagan said that it was, but he was right when he said that it can’t solve all our problems. Sometimes paternalistic attempts to do so create more problems than they purport to fix.
Peter van Onselen is professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.
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Just when you thought the nanny state (better described as paternalism) couldn’t get any more overbearing in this country, the minister responsible for food and beverage labelling is seriously considering plastering alcoholic products with the same images that adorn cigarette packages.