Tax double whammy hits beer

South Australian beer drinkers will be hit with a 20 cents levy on their schooners when the GST starts on July 1.

[my comment: A schooner is a glass of beer(10 oz.? approx.) larger than a butcher glass(7 oz.? approx.) but not quite as much as a Victorian pot-o-beer that floweth over. GST stands for Goods and Services Tax.]

The new tax would push the price of a schooner up to $2.45 - after a 5 cents excise goes on to a glass of beer this week.

But brewers and hotel association lobby group are frantically working behind the scenes to ease the bad news beer story by urging the Federal Government to ease the excise-GST slug.

There is little doubt the pub beer price slug would have a severe impact on the hotel bar trade.

Beer prices yesterday were an average $2.20 a schooner...

If the beer battle is lost at a Federal level, the brewers and hotels association have hinted they will launch a campaign against the Government.

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Comment:
Beer is an national icon. Odes of adulation are sung. Laments for empty kegs are ....er....lamentable. Songs are composed about pubs with no beer. Ah! The tales that are told about beer, better than mere nectar, better than ethnic wines, greater than Gough Whitlam who did a passable impersonation of God, much more delectable than Elle; no, that's wrong...; well, I can go on but you get the message. There's war brewing!!!!!

Beer Story

Regards from Deepest Sorrow Down Under

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 05, 2000

Answers

Pieter - Do the Aussies homebrew like the New Zealanders do in order to get around the high prices/taxes?

-- mitchell barnes (spanda@inreach.net), February 05, 2000.

A local shop trading in all things to-doing with the amber fluid does well. At any rate it hasn't shut down, yet.

Home brewing beverages of finest flavours requires a deft palate, the finest schnoozle for sniff tests, and an unerring faithful cast iron lined stomach. Plenty of bore water helps too. Rainwater is so so and ordinarily tame.

Homebrewers seems to attract a masonic closed circuit of strange whisperers, and good brewers are justly famed on the boards or around the block. Dedecation is rewarded by constant calls from friends.

Average alcohol content is 8% that sends a glow and a throbbing red nose shining. Some brews have been known to make grown men cower, and a particularly savage beer took the lining of teeth. It was guaranteed to grow polyps on the liver as well! It did.

All in all though, Aussie homebrewers are renown, but mostly we just keep it among ourselves. Sheesh, we wouldn't want the government to have thoughts.....bless 'em.

Regards from ...hick....hehe

-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 05, 2000.

Is this just when purchased in a pub, or do I need to restock my Fosters?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), February 06, 2000.