Yesterday, Health Minister Nicola Roxon excoriated long-serving Nationals’ MP Paul Neville for supporting the best-known export of his Queensland electorate, Bundaberg rum.
Roxon railed that a Bundaberg rum poster in the window of Neville’s parliament house office was more evidence of the Opposition’s ‘flippant’ attitude to that great national crisis, binge drinking.
Backed into a corner on the alcopops tax grab, Roxon has become steadily more indignant in her rhetoric. Not only did Roxon rely on a pretty thin evidentiary base to support the tax increase, the Government has also shied away from addressing cheap bulk wine (particularly casks) which is the product of choice of many problem drinkers, including young binge drinkers.
Demonisation is a popular way for pollies to fight their way out of an awkward, tight spot. The idea is to portray your opponent as not just wrong but also evil. A glorious battle between good and evil is much easier to conduct than some messy argy-bargy over facts.
Roxon has divided the world into two irreconcilable groups. On one side, there are the good and virtuous like herself and her government colleagues who are engaged in permanent war against binge drinking. Their team includes the thoughtful and morally upright citizens in our community like parents, health professionals and police commissioners.
And the other side? Well, it’s made up of actual evil-doers in the alcohol distilling industry and the ‘flippant’, like the now outed rum promoter from Queensland. People like Neville, Roxon wants you to believe, are wantonly undercutting her great moral crusade against binge drinking.
Flippant is a wonderful word. I had a school teacher who used to thunder, a lot like Roxon does, about our lack of seriousness. We were naughty boys and girls. The charge of flippancy is a way of undercutting your opposition without addressing their arguments.
But Roxon also has to parse her language very carefully. She wants to be seen to be ever-so tough on drinking without offending the electorally significant wine industry. That’s why she referred to distillers yesterday and left out winemakers and brewers in her list of evil doers.
Presumably, that’s also why she got Amanda Rishworth, Member for Kingston (which includes the McLaren Vale wine region) to ask her the Bundaberg rum question. Rishworth has already proven herself to be a strong supporter of the local wine industry, promising water security for the area. In her first parliamentary speech this year she also spoke proudly of the area’s “magnificent vineyards”.
In Roxon’s confected moral universe the wine industry is OK but rum, a 120-year-old Queensland industry based on a by-product of local sugar milling, has become morally indefensible.
Nicola Roxon’s 7.30 Report performance on the alcopops tax was cringe-making – she just couldn’t get a grip on the questions or, of course, answer them. She shamefully relied on lateral shifts and obfuscation. So sad for a minister. Does this suggest the good little boy scouts sent out to do the PM’s bidding need to be intensely pressed by the PM’s office to learn much better the principles and the process for proposed govt actions?
And, have we learnt nothing about the futility and unpredictability of tiny little pieces of social engineering applied in a domain where opportunity and choice still abound?
I understand from reliable sources that the liquor distribution industry has for quite a time had contingency plans in place to provide alternatives.
It doesn’t always happen, but I agree with JamesK on this. The tax on alcopops was a pretty crude measure for trying to deal with the issue, and there are real doubts about whether this will actually reduce teenage binge drinking or just shift teenage boozers to cask goon or cheap spirits. Although JamesK suggests grog is grog (and if you’re looking to get p-ssed, that’s probably true) the reality is that some grog is brewed/distilled with far more effort (to produce refined flavours and distinctive characteristics) than other grog. Bundy is in the first category in my opinion, and it’s also got a very strong relationship to its hometown of Bundaberg. For both of these reasons, Roxon’s comments were not smart politics. While it is possible to binge on quality beverages as much as cheap goon, cheap goon generally only exists to get people maggotted, and criticising those who prefer to drink quality beverages ahead of cask wine drinkers is probably missing the mark as far as the larger proportion of binge drinkers go.
Good article. Roxon is fast boxing herself in. Perhaps slow to listen and quick to explain although that may be little unfair (Most of her interview responses are prefaced with “Well look…..”).
I initially supported the tax increase on ‘alcopops’ but nothing is ever that easy and I have to acknowledge that there is little evidence to support it. The other surprising aspect which has not helped her is the extraordinary tax harvest that such a seemingly small directed change made. The attack on Neville was not smart politics.
Even an alcoholic may have a preference and that could be either spirits or wine but in the end, grog is grog.