Hague Kevin: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hague Kevin: Alcohol Reform Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 06 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7288. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KEVIN HAGUE (Green) 
: 
 Thank you very much Mr Chair. I appreciate the call and I give my thanks also to other members for facilitating that. I was speaking in an earlier contribution about the importance of price. Just as we use price as a mechanism for reducing the consumption of tobacco and thereby producing savings to our health sector and creating funds to fund treatment services—and there is consensus in the House about that—we ought to be doing the same thing around alcohol. 
The Supplementary Order Paper—130—that I have before the Committee in relation to excise tax is one to implement the Law Commission’s recommendation which is to increase excise tax by 50 percent. As I indicated earlier I think that there are some problems with that across-the-board recommendation from the Law Commission but the Committee ought to have the opportunity to debate that recommendation. Had a Supplementary Order Paper to that effect not been brought the Committee would not have done so because it is one of those recommendations that the Government dismissed out of hand without even considering it. 
 An increase in excise tax of 50 percent would do a number of things. It would reduce consumption of course and the estimate is that the savings that that would produce to the health sector and to the police—and I am sure members of the Committee will remember those studies that I quoted at an earlier stage in the debate around the significance of alcohol consumption in all sorts of offending—and the increased revenue from the tax would amount to something like $74 million per annum for a 50 percent increase in the excise tax. That is a saving that ought not be sneezed at by this Government. So why has it not done that? It has not done that because of course the industry does not want it. 
That increased revenue from the tax is also important to enable us just as we do with tobacco to fund treatment services. The evidence is that the alcohol and other drug treatment services that we have in this country do an excellent job but they are drastically underfunded. They are in acute need of further funding and they are currently so underfunded that they cannot deal with the needs of those who are queuing up outside their doors actually wanting treatment for alcohol and other drugs—even inside our prisons where surely every inmate with an alcohol or drug problem ought to be receiving treatment. 
Price can make a very substantial difference in this battle to minimise alcohol-related harm and it is a shame and a disgrace that the Government has chosen not to go there. As I said I believe that the Government has chosen not to go there because of pressure from the alcohol industry. That relates to another of the Supplementary Order Papers in front of the Committee and that is the one from the Hon Phil Goff Supplementary Order Paper 122 in relation to ready-to-drinks. I think it reflects very poorly on the Government that it has chosen to go with exactly the prescription that was requested by the alcohol industry around ready-to-drinks. Rather than choosing to regulate to minimise the harm the Government has instead chosen to go with a formula that was requested by the industry and that we know to be a formula for failure and that is a formula for the industry to self-regulate. All of the evidence is that self-regulation by the alcohol industry is going to fail and we will be back before this House in a matter of years I guess in exactly the same place that we are now with countless more harm being done to particularly young people by that failure of regulation. If there is one lesson that this House ought to have learnt again and again and again across many different areas it is surely that regulation is required.