> First they went after smoking, with that nonsense about plain packaging.
Plain packaging is nowhere near the first against smoking; it's more like the start of the end-game for it. The government has been very open about wanting to get rid of smoking altogether, and has been so for decades. I was at high school in the late '80s and remember a bloke from Quit saying that they were funded by cigarette taxes, and his job was to put himself out of a job. Punitive taxes and advertising bans long predate plain packaging, as do bans on smoking in hospitality venues.
Alcohol isn't going to go away any time soon for exactly the same reason negative gearing isn't - too many pollies like it for themselves. Alcohol is also a major industry in Australia, unlike tobacco. Similarly, mainstream Australia identifies strongly with a tipple - for example, we like to boast that one of our PMs held a world record for skulling beer. I've never heard any such patriotic murmurings on the topic of tobacco.
Plain packaging is nowhere near the first against smoking; it's more like the start of the end-game for it. The government has been very open about wanting to get rid of smoking altogether, and has been so for decades. I was at high school in the late '80s and remember a bloke from Quit saying that they were funded by cigarette taxes, and his job was to put himself out of a job. Punitive taxes and advertising bans long predate plain packaging, as do bans on smoking in hospitality venues.
Alcohol isn't going to go away any time soon for exactly the same reason negative gearing isn't - too many pollies like it for themselves. Alcohol is also a major industry in Australia, unlike tobacco. Similarly, mainstream Australia identifies strongly with a tipple - for example, we like to boast that one of our PMs held a world record for skulling beer. I've never heard any such patriotic murmurings on the topic of tobacco.