Bacchus only knows who advises the Federal Minister for Finance, Penny Wong (above), but she's got absolutely no hope of getting her head around the current collapse of the Australian wine business if today's blithe Radio National interview is any guide.DRINKSTER normally affords much more respect for this savvy minister than we can stretch to her ramshackle colleagues and most of the current crop of lamebrain Labor twerps, hard right Catholic wierdo thugs and shelf-stackers from the Shoppies. But she's gonna have to do a lot better than this:
STEPHEN DZIEDZIC: And how about alcohol? You've got doctors' groups this morning in Parliament House - they're saying that you need to look at the way that you're taxing wine and at the moment it isn't taxed enough. Is that something the Government's willing to look at next week?
PENNY WONG: Look, can I say on alcohol this Government's got a very strong record of reform in the area of managing alcohol abuse and lessening alcohol abuse in Australia, both through the tax system but also health policy. But when it comes to tax what we would say is we are seeing a very significant restructure in the wine industry at the moment. We don't believe this is the time to be looking to additional changes of taxation regime.
Questions on Notice:
1 The Gillard federal government, and its intellectually crippled South Australian infant, have a disgusting record in the area of "managing alcohol abuse" and "lessening" [sic] it. Give one credible example of this "very strong record", in, for example, the APY Lands, or the bed of the Todd River in The Alice.
2 What is "the significant restructure" you are seeing in the wine industry "at the moment"? Who is managing this restructure? Does it have anything to do with the collapse of irrigated desert viticulture as we knew it, and which existed almost solely to provide bladder pack plonk which is hardly taxed at all relative to good wine, but contributes a great deal to Australia's annual $15 billion plus bill for alcohol-related harm?
2 comments:
And what stops the APY lands people and other alcohol dependant drunks brewing their own high alc beer?
Nothing!!!! Its happening already in far north QLD and the NT.
So do we then stop the availability of sugar?
Can I say that sentences (not questions mind you) that begin with "can i say" should be henceforth banned?
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