It’s no secret that Labor and the Greens want you to ‘eat ze bugs’. The way our economy is going, eating insects will soon be all we can afford. Steve McQueen was the epitome of cool, but a real-life version of his bug-eating prisoner in Papillon is not the ideal I aspire to. And while McQueen managed to escape by jumping off a cliff, all we have to do to be free from tyranny is get Mr Dutton to shout us a few drinks. I’d vote for that.
As of February 1, the price of alcohol has increased. This is because the alcohol excise, a tax on the amount of alcohol in a particular beverage, increases every six months to kill whatever little joy we have left. Statistically, it’s a bit like the coffee and green tea meme:
‘By replacing your morning coffee with green tea, you can lose up to 87 per cent of what little joy you still have left in your life.’
My local pub absorbed the excise increase a while back, but the price of a schooner of beer is now over $8. My favourite Aussie drop on tap is Resch’s Draught. It’s an iconic Aussie beer for the working-class sporting man. That working class man, if he hasn’t been replaced by a DEI hire, will soon need two or more jobs just to have a beer after work. In Australia, that ought to be regarded as sacrilege.
Why does the government do this? You may not be surprised to know the answer:
‘The World Health Organisation (WHO) has found that the pricing of alcohol is one of the most effective ways to reduce alcohol-related harms.’
Say no more. But is it just the price that affects our enjoyment of what I regard as foundational not only to Aussie social life but also to Western Civilisation? Not just beer, but spirits are affected, too.
Ernest Hemingway, my literary idol, was a fan of Gordon’s gin for making a classic martini. James Bond, of course, would have his martini ‘shaken, not stirred’. But because our nanny state sucks so much, Bond’s shaken martini would be weak as the proverbial.
To make a decent dry martini, shaken is the best option because it makes the gin as cold as, well, ice. But to make a bottle of spirits affordable, the excise in Australia has forced distillers to reduce the alcohol content in most spirits to 37 per cent. Hemingway would be livid and James Bond would complain to the bartender.
In Hemingway’s day, gin was typically 47 per cent, a full 10 per cent higher than most regular spirits are now. You can still buy it at that level, but you’ll pay for it.
A shaken martini with 37 per cent gin tastes like dishwater. Winston Churchill hated the traditional mix that uses too much vermouth. Rather than five parts gin to one part vermouth, Churchill preferred to use gin only and give a nod towards France for his vermouth. I can picture him going through his ritual only to spit out his dishwater martini in horror.
There are reportedly some 700 distillers in Australia, half of them in the regions. According to Stephen Ferguson of the Australian Hotels Association:
‘Beer and spirits excise is a dripping tap which delivers $6.2bn of drinkers’ money to Canberra already – and is budgeted to go up another $800m by 2027.’
Our treasurer, however:
‘…has hosed down concerns, saying the impact of the excise increase equates to “less than one cent per schooner.”’
Rather, we might say that Jim Chalmers invented the ‘dishwater martini’.
Jesus changed the water into wine. He did this to save the host of the wedding in Caan from embarrassment. It was his first miracle. According to John, the host thought the wine was excellent.
The alcohol excise revenue grab is not only adding to inflation and making our cost-of-living crisis worse but also making Aussie life strait-jacketed and boring. I’ll take the quality of the ingredients of my drinks over its economic make-up any day.
By making alcohol too expensive and not fit for purpose, there is an argument that the communist lefties are trying to undo our Christian heritage yet again. Unlike the charitable actions of Our Saviour in Caan, the actions of the nanny state in Australia are embarrassing and expensive.
Your shout, Mr Dutton.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is a political scientist and political commentator. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport (CILTA), and a Member of the Royal Society of NSW. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy, Chairman of the ACT and Southern NSW Chapter of CILTA, and a member of the Australian Nuclear Association. Michael is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon and was appointed to the College of Experts at the Australian Research Council in 2022. All opinions in this article are the author’s own and are not intended to reflect the views of any other person or organisation.