Cheap wine threatened by tax plan

The price of cask wine could double under a new tax regime aimed at saving lives. Source: HWT Image Library

THE price of a four-litre cask of wine would double to $20 under an alcohol taxation plan being pushed by a coalition of 50 health groups to cut the nation's drinking rate and reduce the 3000 deaths a year caused by alcohol.

The National Alliance for Action on Alcohol which includes academics, surgeons associations and cancer councils today urged the government to place alcohol tax reform on the agenda of the Federal Tax Forum in October.

And while plain packaging of alcohol has been ruled out by the National Alliance for Action on Alcohol, it wants health warnings, placed on alcohol labels.

Each standard drink would face a tax rate of at least $1 per under the plan proposed by the group, but the tax rate on some spirits and beer would remain unchanged to ensure their price did not fall under the new taxation regime that is targeted at cheap $2 bottles of wine and cheap casks.

"We know that alcohol tax in Australia is a dog's breakfast and it urgently needs reform," alliance co-chair Professor Mike Daube said.

"When you can get wine at less than $2 a litre it's cheaper than bottled water, that's the time for action," he said in Canberra.

The alliance says 60 Australians a week die as a result of alcohol, a further 1500 are hospitalised as a result of alcohol-related harm and alcohol misuse costs the national economy $36 billion in lost productivity, healthcare, crime and child protection costs.

The group says research shows that alcohol consumption per head has increased over the last two decades and much of this was due to the increasing market share of wine and a rapid increase in the amount of alcohol in wine since the late 1980s.

Health Minster Nicola Roxon, who has asked her preventative health body to draw up a draft plan for an alcohol floor price, said the reform of alcohol taxation would be one of the issues discussed at the tax forum but she was unsure if proposals for a floor price would be discussed then.

The discussion of alcohol tax reform follows the action of Coles and Woolworths supermarkets this year imposing a floor price on cheap alcohol in their Alice Springs stores to contain alcohol misuse in the area.

And it came as health Minister Nicola Roxon introduced world first plain tobacco packaging laws into federal parliament.

The alliance said yesterday it would not be pushing for plain packaging of alcohol.

Tobacco was the only product that when used as directed killed half the people who used it and "alcohol doesn't fit that category", Public Health Association of Australia chief Michael Moore said.

"I think the cases are very different and that is not what the agenda of the group is here today," Todd Harper, the chief of Cancer Council Victoria said.