Exposing the hidden beer tax: A win for all hotels
The story behind how the hidden beer tax became hidden no more.
It all started in February 2022 in the back of a Kia Carnival…
I was driving across rural Tasmania with AHA NSW’s media man, Jason Bartlett and Lion’s Kath Conroy. Over three days, we drove from Burnie in the north to Launceston and then Hobart, and we had a simple mission. We were to use the marginal federal seats of Bass and Braddon to finally draw the Morrison Government’s attention to the hidden beer tax.
First published in the new Autumn print edition of AccomNews HERE
A tax which had gone up twice a year in line with CPI for 40 years without fanfare, ever since famed beer drinker Bob Hawke introduced it about the time of the America’s Cup win in 1983.
And draw attention we did.
As we drove, we had front pages and TV coverage in each electorate—bringing local Liberal MPs like Bridget Archer on board and getting Senator Jacqui Lambie to throw her very vocal support behind the “poor bastards” paying so much for a schooner at the front bar at a pub roundtable in Burnie.
We finished in Hobart with a beer excise photo shoot at a pub with sponsors and supporters.
The story of how we got the deal, and how it fell through at the last moment, is one better told over a beer rather than put in writing. But it’s enough to say Morrison went on to lose, and the hidden beer tax became a problem which never went away for whomever was in government.
Every February and every August, as the tax went up again and again, media outlets, seeing the public interest—and the clicks—ran story after story, article after article.
The hidden beer tax was hidden no more.
It was now at the forefront of beer drinkers’ minds—especially during a cost-of-living crisis.
Fast forward three years, and on Saturday, March 1, we finally got what we had been pushing for. Prime Minister Albanese called it a “common sense measure that is good for beer drinkers, good for brewers, and good for pubs…”
It is also a win for every accommodation hotel and motel that has a restaurant or a bar.
‘Albo’ is the first Prime Minister to act on this issue in more than 40 years and deserves our gratitude.
Maybe we didn’t get everything we wanted, who does in politics? But make no mistake, this is a major step forward for hotels right across the country.
The facts were on our side.
The once-hidden beer tax—now ironically probably the best-known tax in Australia—saw Australians paying the third-highest tax on beer in the OECD.
February was the 83rd time the tax had gone up in 40 years.
It went up during a cost-of-living crisis affecting all Australians and was set to rake in another $800 million by 2027.
We all know the price of a beer is influenced by many factors, including energy costs, insurance, wage rises, and interest repayments paid by a publican. But excise is the only lever the government controls directly.
Thanks to our campaigning, the Nationals, seeing firsthand the struggles of regional publicans, were on board.
One Nation’s leader Pauline Hanson backed us in February—and we already had Senators Lambie, Bob Katter, and Tammy Tyrrell on side. Only the two major parties were still ignoring our requests for support.
It all changed that Saturday when the Prime Minister made his announcement and the Liberal Party’s Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor got on board a few hours later, finally making it a bipartisan issue.
It was the best result we could hope for, with the issue no longer a political football for the next two years at least. More discussion is set to take place after the upcoming election.
But the victory brings some certainty to our industry with hotels no longer having to decide between passing the excise costs on to customers or absorbing it every six months.
It brings some certainty to the men and women struggling with the cost-of-living who love a beer down at their local pub or hotel bar. And it brings certainty to politicians that the now very public beer tax won’t feature in the media every six months.
Success has many fathers (or mothers) as they say—and many will claim credit for this across the industry, but I like to think it began on the road in that Kia Carnival in Tassie back in February 2022.
