Top doctor hits out at plans to introduce 'sin tax' on sugary drinks
Story by David Southwell For Daily Mail Australia• 20h
- Nick Coatsworth hits out at 'sin taxes'
- Says Covid set a 'disturbing precedent'
Nick Coatsworth has hit out at a proposed tax on sugary treats arguing that '$8 cans of coke' will only punish the poor and fail to fix the nation's obesity crisis.
A recent Senate report recommended a 20 per cent tax on unhealthy products such as soft drinks in order to curb surging obesity rates, particularly in children.
But the prominent doctor, who became the face of Australia's Covid vaccine campaign as the national deputy chief medical officer, argues that implementing a so-called 'sin tax' is misguided and echoes the draconian government overreach seen during the pandemic.
'It's hard to escape the conclusion that sin taxes are proposed by rich people looking down on the behaviour of the sinful masses,' Dr Coatsworth told Daily Mail Australia.
'Can you imagine a can of Coke costing $8? Is that what it will take to reduce consumption?
'In regional and indigenous communities I predict it will reduce consumption by precisely zero.'
He noted that while governments can legitimately regulate things such as age of consumption of products such as alcohol and penalise people who sell harmful products to children, it should be cautious in applying such restrictions to adults.
'The recent trend to is to make penalty and prohibition the first choice and not the last resort, and this is leading to bad policy choices,' Dr Coatsworth said.
'If you're struggling to make an income and support your family there is much less capacity to make good health choices, and the 'sins' help you get through a tough day.
'A sin tax that does nothing to lift people into a position that they can make positive health choices.'
Dr Coatsworth also warned there are limits in trying to legislate people into being healthier.
'We've just been through a very disturbing episode in our lives where we criminalised or harshly penalised legitimate actions of citizens in the name of public health,' he said referring to the Covid period.
'As a basic principle public health should operate by consent of the community not by coercion.
'This applies as much to current debates as it did to Covid.'
The Australian government already imposes similar taxes on tobacco products and raises the excise every year to make it prohibitively expensive. It currently stands at about 75 per cent of the sale price.
Although the rate of smoking has decreased from above 20 per cent in 2001 to 11 per cent now, illegal vaping rates have soared along with the illicit tobacco trade.
'It's a law of diminishing returns,' Dr Coatsworth said.
'Tobacco excise had climbed so high that a black market has blossomed.'
'It's clear that the Australian Federal Police can't stop illicit tobacco coming into the country, let alone illegal vapes and it's creating a problem for state policing who now have to deal with the emergence of organised crime.
'It's bizarre that the same people who acknowledge that a 'war on drugs' is the wrong way to tackle hard drug use passionately declare that a 'war on vapes' is likely to work.'
Despite Dr Coatsworth's opposition to raising taxes on unhealthy food and drink, he does agree that there is an 'obesity crisis in Australia and that diabetes is an enormous cost-burden for our health system'.
'There is a big gap between agreeing with that and asserting that sugar taxes will have a meaningful impact on either,' he said.
'The classic behaviour of the activist is to surf a moral panic and then criticise an opponent as being an enemy of the public good.
'Labelling someone as being an enemy of public health is a very effective way of silencing debate.'
Earlier this month a Senate report recommended the federal government implement a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages and look to international examples to fix prices.
It pointed to the British example of 'tiered tax' where the levy grows with the amount of sugar in a product.
The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated applying a 20 per cent tax on all sugar sweetened drinks would bring in about $1.4billion annually.
