The pledge has given hope to advocates pushing for a sugar tax but puts leader Anthony Albanese at risk of a Coalition scare campaign.
Public Health Association chief executive Terry Slevin said while a sugar tax would not be “the silver bullet” to fixing Australia’s complex obesity problem, international evidence showed it could “drive down consumption of a nutrient-poor, energy-dense product”.Like plain packaging laws, which were part of a “comprehensive strategy” for reducing smoking rates along with higher taxes, Slevin said when it comes to obesity, “the sugar-sweetened beverage tax is one piece of the complex puzzle”.
About one in four children are overweight or obese and preventable chronic conditions account for around 58,000 potentially avoidable premature deaths of people aged under 75 each year, an AIHW report published on Friday said. “These are urgent public health issues that require attention,” Martin said. “If we want to support Australians to be healthy, regulation is required.”
In the ALP letter, Erickson highlighted the efforts of then-Labor health minister Nicola Roxon who introduced the world’s first cigarette plain-packaging laws that started in 2012, despite intense lobbying by tobacco companies. The strategy, launched by Health Minister Greg Hunt in December, recommends boosting investment in preventive measures such as cancer screenings and public information campaigns to reach 5 per cent of the health budget by 2030, equivalent to $6.6 billion in 2022-23. In launching the strategy, Hunt mentioned his personal commitment to prevention and his government’s move to ban the importation of liquid nicotine without a prescription.
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