Senator Steve Fielding - Leader of Family First
Footy’s back and so are the booze ads
Posted by Senator Steve Fielding on March 26 2009 | 15 Comments
Tonight Aussie Rules football is back and so is the saturation of alcohol advertising targeting young people.
Footy’s back at 7.30pm tonight during family viewing time and the alcohol giants must be rubbing their hands with glee knowing they can clog the screens with ads promoting their products because the Rudd government allows them to.
And there will be more of these ads during the Grand Prix this weekend, all targeted to influence young children and teenagers.
All this, as Victorians watch the video of the horrific brawl outside the Queensbridge Hotel last weekend - proof that Austrlia booze bingeing culture continues to fester and affects us all.
When will the Rudd government stand up to the alcohol industry and the advertising industry and break the link between alcohol advertising and sport?
Australia’s streets are splattered with the blood of victims of alcohol-induced assaults, hospital admissions are up, one in five people die in a road accident involving alcohol and numerous sporting heroes get drunk and violent and their impressionable fans copy them.
I wonder how many children will come away from watching the booze ads during the football tonight or the Grand Prix on the weekend with the message that alcohol must be cool because it’s linked with sport.
Still the Rudd government refuses to break the grip that alcohol has on our culture by shutting down alcohol ads during sport and instead just wants a tax grab. This government has spat the dummy and won’t even use parliament to keep the revenue already raised by validating the tax during budget week from May 13, when it knows full well it can do so.
This is a government that won’t make the tough decisions. Australians should expect more. They should expect this government to make the hard decisions to stop the booze bingeing destroying our society. A tax grab won’t do it.
Adrian, I don’t know if you’ve caught up with the fact that the distilled spirits industry has moved to stop showing alcohol ads during sports events in family viewing time. This is a significant move on their part and something I have been pressuring the industry to do. The government reckons it’s “too hard” to get the industry to agree to shut down alcohol advertising in sports events before 9pm - clearly it can be done. The government should now move to legislate to shut down the loophole that allows these ads to be shown. But the silence from Canberra is deafening. If the industry agrees to do it, and 72% of Australians want it, why won’t the government act? Aren’t you curious about the government’s reasons for sitting on their hands when alcohol ads target impressionable young people? And just for the record - there was no deal done with the distilled industry. Despite what the government, and others, may like to put out there my vote is not for sale.
Comment by Senator Steve Fielding on 03 April 2009 at 09:47:03 AM
Its too late Steve you’ve already done your dash on the topic of alcohol. How you and your ‘Alcopops First Party’ ever expect to be treated with anything but contempt on this issue is beyond me.
Comment by adrian on 02 April 2009 at 07:46:01 AM
It’s absurd to suggest taxing alcopops. This is policy designed to play to ‘the people’. Additionally, tightly regulating the advertising market is not the answer.
What we really see here are two issues:
Firstly, societal drinking, is what kids do. The question is why is so?
Secondly, there are tough laws and regulations governing the selling, restriction and consumption of alcohol.
Perhaps existing laws should be policed and enforced. This leads back to adequate police forces being in place. Presently, police forces, in so far as funding and numbers, are inadequate.
Waynet
Comment by Waynet on 01 April 2009 at 09:27:13 AM
Thank you all for your input. Shane and Jo, you both have hit the nail on the head. Alcohol abuse is about more than just the individual drinking too much. Domestic violence, street violence and abuse of children often have a link to Australia’s culture of acceptance that getting drunk is okay, that if you’re drunk you “didn’t know what you were doing” when you bashed your wife, hit some bloke at a pub or frightened your children. This is not just about alcohol advertising. It’s about changing the way we think about alcohol. It’s about acknowledging, as Shane says, that we have a problem and taking real steps to fix it - not a tax grab on one product. And Stewart_in_Oz I do expect the government to act on this. It will take a long time to change this mindset but until we take those first steps, we don’t know. What really annoys me is this government, and previous governments, won’t even try and the public is just accepting the government’s spin that it’s all too hard. Try telling that to the kids cowering under their bed from a drunken father. Try telling that to the women fleeing from abusive drunken husbands to refuges. Try telling that to the kids who have gone out with their mates and had their heads kicked in by drunken thugs. I get that it’s hard but that’s not a good enough excuse to sit back and not try to fix it, not try to make it better. Australian families deserve it.
Comment by Senator Steve Fielding on 01 April 2009 at 09:17:22 AM
Retaining the alcopops tax would have focussed minds, helped alcoholics and the money could address problems facing sportsclubs etc .
How are you going to keep alcohol in advertising in the public’s eyes and minds ?
Comment by jimmy on 31 March 2009 at 06:23:57 PM
Congratulations on a gutsy stand Steve.
Not a popular decision at all it would seem, from many of the comments posted here, and from people I have spoken with. Being able to make an unpopular decision like this on an issue that has so much at stake marks you as a leader standing up for real values.
I believe you made a good stand on the issue, and this is why. Alcoholism is one of the most serious problems in “accepted Australian culture”, and few people it seems want to face it. Domestic violence and family break ups are one area strongly affected by this problem. Hmmm would Family First want to stop those things? I reckon so.
Introducing a law on alcopops wont solve the problem. Neither will introducing laws banning advertising of alcohol at sporting events. But what will begin to stop the rot, is ironically, Australia collectively owning up to the fact that “we are Australia, and we have an alcohol problem”. This issue, and Family Firsts rejection of the tax based on the Rudd governments resistance to the extra measures (effectively meaning that the Rudd Government decided against its own law becuase of its own pig headedness - have a think about it), has brought Australia’s alchol problem into focus.
What we need now is to maintain opposition to alcohol abuse (its not the alcohol thats the problem, but how its being handled in our society). The children of the future deserve much more than an acceptance of alcohol abuse and the family issues that flow from it from todays society.
Comment by Shane on 31 March 2009 at 05:39:52 PM
I agree that young drinkers start with Alcopos because they hide the taste of alcohol. I still remember my first taste of beer all those years ago (I was 15 years old). It tasted terrible but I kept going because it was the thing to do. I only drank 2 bottles but if it had tasted better I would probably drank a lot more. I learnt that should drink in moderation. There is more important things at stake here, Steve, than trying to separate alcohol advertising fr5om spoert. you live in a fools paradise if you think by reducing the tax on a product it will happen. It would be more important that all alcohol advertising contain messages about drinking in moderation. You forget that you only got belected by default and will probably got dropped at the next senate election which will probably be a double dissolution with one of the items being your obstruction of this tax. Why don’t you pass this based on the things you already got accepted as part of this legislation. 2 out of 3 is pretty good.
Comment by sarge on 31 March 2009 at 04:52:30 PM
Big business always dictates. A sad reflection of our society. Nobody wants to deal with unpopular issues and booze is one area that nobody wants to take away from sport. For most people footie is more important than health. Jo Maxwell.
Comment by Jo Maxwell on 31 March 2009 at 04:08:01 PM
You don’t seriously expect a government to get tough on alcohol consumption when there are so many vested interests pushing the production and consumption. Who do you thing would pay for the NRL, Ricky Ponting’s mob (with some exceptions I wouldn’t call them cricketers) etc? Think of the money it would lose, like Speeding fines with cameras. Licence to print money. How many political party candidates get a helping shove from the Alcohol Industry?
It’s all part of the cultural scene when the admired male figure was a big tough, hard-drinking, fornicatingmale with hair on his chest, not by me admittedly. For how long do think this icon has been indelibly imprinted in the social ethos? Well I fancy it would take at least 5 generations toget rid of it.
Sláinte Mhath.
Comment by Stewart_in_Oz on 31 March 2009 at 02:55:24 PM
Alcohol advertising should be treated the same way as cigarette advertising is now.
Caritas
Comment by caritas on 31 March 2009 at 02:28:11 PM
I don’ t think you will ever get rid of alcohol, however if young people were to see their idols drinking responsibly in public, with nominated drivers etc, it may have a positive effect
Allan
Comment by Allan on 31 March 2009 at 02:10:33 PM
In response to the comment made by Damien. Which type of drink would a group of 17 year olds choose?
In fact they would chose whatever drink that is currently in vogue. Simply putting tax on what is currently in vogue will simply require more and more legislation to handle what is in vogue, irrespective, in a large number of cases, of the detrimental effects.
Couldn’t the detrimental aspect be enticing? Isn’t part of the lure that which is bad or shouldn’t be doe?
From what I understand the tax was leading people to experiment and make their own cocktails, so the tax has had an affect of further increasing the willingness of the young and easily led to experiment further with their lives and thus the lives of all.
If advertising were not successful, then companies would not succumb to the cost of advertising. Thus it is obvious that banning advertising would had some affect. Thus I’d go further and look to banning such advertising wherever it could influence the youth of Australia.
Comment by Herald4Justice on 31 March 2009 at 01:02:44 PM
Mr Fielding, you are right about breaking the booze advertising link to sport BUT you were wrong about blocking the alcopop tax.
Your argument used to justify your opposition on the alcopop tax is feeble and nonsensical, and i reckon you know it too, but like most politicians once you take a stand you hold on to it come hell or highwater. The real problem is you do not have the intestinal fortitude to admit you were wrong.
Comment by Archer on 31 March 2009 at 12:49:45 PM
damien is dreaming. He says that it WAS having an effect in his PS. What a load of rubbish! people jsut switched and mixed their own, and this was PROVEN by the stats presented in parliament. The government was shown to be just after the tax, while not wanting to do ANYTHING (not even spend the tax collected already) to fight alcohol. When are people going to wake up to the mass spin that the government is trying to put out there!?
Comment by Mclexy on 31 March 2009 at 12:46:39 PM
You just don’t get it do you?
Sure drinking is portrayed as cool and a part of the Aussie way of life, BUT when a young person first experiments with alcohol, sweet tasting alcopops sure get them right in. Give a beer or rum and coke to an inexperienced drinker and just watch them grimace. Have a big night on Beer or spirits and you will probably throw up, repeatedly, and be crook as a dog for two days. Vodka drinks on the other hand, rarely upset the belly, dont cause headaches and huge hangovers.
Which type of drink would a group of 17 year olds choose?
Which type of drink is about to get cheaper?
Congrats Family First Party
ps. We dont need ads to show us drinking is normal or cool, our parents do that for us, encourage us, give us our first drink, expect us to drink. I feel banning ads would have little effect, while the alcopops tax WAS having an effect and was at least a first step towards responsible drinking policies.
Comment by damien on 30 March 2009 at 12:57:29 AM