Does Australia need a sugar tax?

The UK has announced a ‘sugar tax’ on soft drinks in order to help combat obesity. The tax will take effect in two years’ time and apply to drinks containing more than 5 g of sugar per 100 mL, with a higher rate applying above 8 g per 100 mL.

Pure fruit juices and flavoured milks are exempt from the levy, as are small producers, with the tax calculated according to the volume of sugar-sweetened beverages produced or imported.

With Australia among the top 10 countries for consumption of soft drink per capita, some commentators have called for Australia to follow the UK’s lead, including celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who was a lead campaigner in favour of the British tax.

Professor Gary Wittert, Professor of Medicine at the University of Adelaide and independent chair of the Weight Management Council of Australia, said there was widespread public support and acceptance of the idea of taxing sugar among the Australian public, with surveys suggesting around 80% of responses supported the idea. He said there was “no question that the data shows there’s harm from consumption of sugared beverages”.

Dr Christina Pollard, from the Curtin University School of Public Health, said Australia was behind the times on the issue and that taxes on unhealthy foods have been shown to be effective ways to improve diet, reduce chronic disease and raise revenue for government. She believes that we need to tax foods detrimental to health, citing ABS findings that Australians spend a much larger proportion of their food dollars on junk food (58%) than healthy food (17%).

Dr Pollard said evidence suggests that unhealthy foods need to be taxed by 20–30% for effective changes in consumption and healthy foods should be subsided by 20%.

But the Australian Beverages Council has labelled the soft drink tax “an exercise in futility”, with CEO Geoff Parker describing the tax as “yet another step in the wrong direction to end the global obesity epidemic”, highlighting analysis of the Australian National Health Survey commissioned by the Australian Beverages Council that showed soft drinks contribute just 1.7% of the daily intake of kilojoules for Australian adults.

The Beverages Council maintains there is no evidence globally that a soft drink tax has any impact on obesity rates, pointing to the example of Denmark, which introduced and subsequently repealed a ‘fat tax’ within 18 months.