GST on fresh food could price lives and include $1bn to wellness spending budget, say doctors

Scrapping the goods and companies tax exemption for fresh fruit and vegetables could expense lives and include a lot more than $ 1bn to the wellness spending budget, doctors have mentioned.

Analysis published in the Health-related Journal of Australia last yr estimated that fruit and vegetable consumption would decline by practically 5% if the GST have been broadened to include fresh meals.

“We determine that [this] could cost about a hundred,000 wellness existence-years above the lifetime of the 2003 Australian grownup population,” stated the University of Queensland authors Lennert Veerman and Linda Cobiac.

Feasible consequences included “an additional 90,000 cases of ischaemic heart illness, stroke and cancer” each year, rising healthcare fees by around $ 1.04bn.

Speaking on ABC radio on Tuesday, the Queensland Liberal senator Ian Macdonald named for the GST to be broadened to include fresh meals, in line with the unique model proposed by the former prime minister John Howard in 1998.

The idea was swiftly ruled out by Tony Abbott, who informed 2UE radio his view was that Australians “pay a lot more than ample tax already”.

The West Australian premier, Colin Barnett, final week also signalled his assistance for broadening the tax, saying it was “silly” to exempt fresh food from the GST whilst nonetheless applying it to foods in packages.

Public overall health advocates say a tax increase on healthier food would have “devastating consequences”.

“We know lower-income folks devote a massive proportion of their income on food, and it has the likely to be regressive at a time when the recent dietary survey showed that men and women are not eating almost ample fruit and vegetables,” explained Jane Martin, executive manager of the Obesity Policy Coalition.

“Price is a key driver around food determination-generating … We need to be delivering incentives for folks to eat far more healthily, not disincentives,” she said.

This was especially critical “given the cuts to prevention in the budget”, she mentioned, referring to the price range prepare to near the Australian Nationwide Preventative Well being Company.

In latest years poor diet regime and weight problems have overtaken tobacco as the leading trigger of condition between Australians.

GST on fresh food could price lives and include $1bn to wellness spending budget, say doctors