Release: NSW Taxpayers Slam Alcohol Price Floor Plan
The Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance (ATA), a 75,000+ member national grassroots advocacy group that represents the nation’s taxpayers, today condemned the Royal Australasian College of Physicians’ proposal for a minimum price floor on alcohol as well as their support for restrictive trading hours and other anti-business ideas.
“These draconian ideas are nothing more than an unjustified attack on responsible Australian adult drinkers and hardworking taxpaying businesses already doing it tough due to brutal sin taxes on alcohol and social engineering programs like NSW’s lockout laws” said Satya Marar, ATA Director of Policy.
“A price floor on alcohol will hurt poorer Australians the most and will increase the appeal of home-brewed alcohol which could be produced under dangerous conditions, with drinkers moved to unregulated environments rather than licensed venues.
“Australians work hard for our money and if we want to enjoy a gin and tonic or three at the end of a long work week, then the government already punishes us by sculling three-fifths of it in the form of tax. It is the taxman who has a serious drinking problem, not the vast majority of responsible Aussie drinkers.
“That’s why nanny state lobbyists and bureaucrats who demand price floors and support lockout restrictions that have ruined businesses, done nothing to make our streets safer, and have turned Sydney into a ghost town by night, form a fringe minority.”