Statement Attributed to Geoff Parker re. Sugar Tax
Date: 11 July 2025
Statement attributable to Geoff Parker, CEO of the Australian Beverages Council Limited (ABCL)
As the peak body representing the non-alcoholic beverages industry, the Australian Beverages Council rejects the recent calls for a sugar tax to address obesity. This outdated policy proposal overlooks shifting consumer behaviour, supported by government data, the broad range of beverage choices already available, and the lack of clear evidence from overseas jurisdictions that such taxes have made a difference in public health outcomes.
The facts are clear – there is no evidence to show that taxing sugar in drinks would reduce rates of obesity or type-2 diabetes in Australia. Singling out a small and declining part of the diet is a simplistic, misguided and inequitable response to a complex health issue. In 2025, the beverages industry believes Australia needs a comprehensive, whole-of-society approach to addressing overweight and obesity underpinned by the highest quality real-world evidence.
In fact, our industry is the only supermarket category to have proactively committed to reducing sugar through the nation’s only industry-led voluntary Sugar Reduction Pledge – eliminating more than 200,000 tonnes of sugar from beverages since 2015. This has been achieved through investment in product innovation and reformulation, shifting marketing strategies to promote low- and no-sugar options, and empowering Australian consumers to make informed choices, including through tools like the Health Star Rating scheme – all without the need for a punitive tax that would disproportionately impact households already struggling to manage cost-of-living pressures.
Internationally, since 2017, all nine United Nations official forums tackling non-communicable diseases like diabetes have considered and rejected a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages because it repeatedly fails the evidence quality test to be accepted. No country that has introduced such a tax has demonstrated any reduction in rates of overweight or obesity. The clear position of the United Nations and the lack of any credible real-world health outcomes help explain why successive Australian governments have not adopted this discriminatory and regressive intervention.
Instead of a tax, a more credible and results-focused approach to reducing rates of diet-related disease is needed and must be comprehensive, evidence-based, and delivered through a whole-of-society effort. Our sector continues to lead the way in delivering tangible, measurable reductions in sugar intake. We encourage other sectors to match this commitment and adopt similar strategies to reduce nutrients of concern, as the drinks industry has done with sugar.
Studies:
- W. S., & Butcher, B. E. (2020). Sales of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in Australia: A Trend Analysis from 1997 to 2018. Nutrients, 12(4), 1016. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12041016
- https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/global/sugar-tax-soda-tax-ssb/
- Kiesel, K, Lang, H and Sexton, RJ, “A New Wave of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes: Are They Meeting Policy Goals and Can We Do Better?” Annual Review of Resource Economics, 2023, Vol. 15, pp. 407-432.
- CSIRO, The role of beverages in the Australian diet: A secondary analysis of the Australian Health Survey: National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey (2011-12), January 2019