Farmers go sour on Greens’ sugar tax plot

Queensland LNP Senator Barry O’Sullivan also savaged the sugar tax plan with a tongue in cheek response saying Green’s leader Richard Di Natale failed to address other potential, taxable public health dangers, like fumes from suburban lawnmowers.

Senator Di Natale announced the new tax on sugary sweetened beverages today in Sydney as a means of helping to tackle Australia’s obesity epidemic.

The Greens highlighted celebrity television chef Jamie Oliver’s challenge to Australia earlier this year to follow the UK and introduce a tax of sugary soft drinks.

Senator Di Natale said the Australian Greens accepted that challenge and would introduce a 20pc tax on sugary drinks which evidence showed would reduce uptake by at least 12pc.

“We have a major health crisis on our hands with over a quarter of Australian adults and children overweight or obese,” the former medical doctor said.

“Sugary sweetened beverages are a major contributor to increasing rates of childhood obesity and if this trend continues our children may be the first generation to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.

“Every cent of the expected $500 million per year raised by the tax on sweetened drinks will be reinvested back into positive health initiatives for Australians.

“Over four years $2 billion could be raised by ensuring that sugary sweetened drink manufacturers contribute to the harms their product causes.”

But the National Farmers’ Federation and Australian Food and Grocery Council stood shoulder to shoulder with CANEGROWERS and Australian Sugar Milling Council to say the Greens’ tax proposal was ill-conceived, regressive and would falsely demonise sugar as the cause of health problems related to obesity.

The farm groups said the research quoted by the Greens in support of their new GST was based on a mathematical calculation which wasn’t the reality of how humans eat, live or behave.

They said that research found that after 25 years the impact of the proposed tax would be an average weight loss in Australian males of only 300 grams which was “virtually nothing” but over the same period it would raise $10 billion.

However, they said the sugar industry was a vital employer in regional towns and cities from Grafton in northern NSW to Mossman in far north Queensland that needed to be backed.

CANEGROWERS Chairman Paul Schembri said a sugar tax would have a massive negative reputational effect on the 4000 cane farming businesses in the two States and it was also a simplistic solution to a complex problem.

“Targeting any particular food product is not in itself going to be the solution to Australia’s overweight and obesity issues, instead we need to continue to focus on the totality of health and wellbeing,” he said.

“The sugar industry provides good stable jobs with a future for our kids and in a highly competitive global market.

“We export over 80pc of our product without government subsidy and we are asking not to be hamstrung by more government taxes.

“We welcome the major parties’ continued support to the sugar industry by opposing an indiscriminate tax.”

Australian Sugar Milling Council CEO Dominic Nolan said that the sugar industry was synonymous with the economic growth of regional economies located up and down Australia’s east coast.

But he said a sugar tax would have a significantly negative effect on the broader food sector while also impacting consumers at the checkout by pushing up prices.

“This is simply a tax grab by the Greens – another GST dressed up as a public health measure,” he said.

“Regional Australia cannot afford another hit on a vital industry that employs thousands of Australians.”

Senator O’Sullivan said the Greens must explain why they’d chosen not to address toxic lawn mower fumes, which had potentially reached “epidemic” levels across suburban Australia.

He said millions of Australians were potentially exposing themselves to alarming amounts of illness-causing chemicals every time they started their whipper snipper. 

“A study from Stockholm University discovered lawnmowers take only one hour to generate the same level of carcinogens as a car engine on a 160-kilometre journey,” he said.

“Surely this is something the Greens could create a scare campaign around?

“The Greens must get their policy team to immediately investigate how these dangerous fumes can be taxed.

“The Greens fully understand that the Australian public are not capable of taking personal responsibility for their own actions and the best way to ensure public safety is to enforce more taxes.”

Senator O’Sullivan said with only 10 days remaining in this election, Senator Di Natale must immediately explain why he’d chosen to promote a sugar tax but overlooked introducing a tax on dangerous lawn mower fumes.

He said it made no sense why thousands of Australian canegrowers were being demonised under the Greens’ sugar tax policy while the garden equipment sector carried on without any real scrutiny.

But Senator O’Sullivan said  it was clear both ideas were “as ridiculous as each other”.

“Dr Richard Di Natale and the rest of the Greens need to explain why their policies consistently attack our farmers yet overlook the activities in suburban gardens,” he said.

“Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that many Greens voters own a lawn mower?”

Senator Di Natale said the sugar tax was part of a broader prevention strategy for obesity, including clear food labelling; restricting junk food advertising to children; and encouraging physical activity through active transport.

Public Health Association of Australia President Professor Heather Yeatman said a 20pc price increase for sugary drinks was a “great step forward” by the Greens to tackling Australia’s obesity problem especially for children.

“PHAA has long supported taxing of unhealthy commodities as part of multipronged and comprehensive approaches to improving the public’s health,” he said.

“Bipartisan support is needed for this tax to make an impact on the obesity problem in Australia.”