That wasn't the intention of the tax though. If you read my post, what it was intended to do was preserve the price of fresh food, and keep it the same as it was before the tax. The GST was applied to everything else, food, clothes, everything, and it was intended to bring taxes in line, before GST Australia had hundreds of hidden taxes, for example the 10% tax on icecream replaced a 27% tax on the icecream containers!!!! Although the icecream itself was tax free previously. the tax did have some huge flaws and still does, for example sanitary napkins and tampex are considered a "luxury item" and subject to GST, whilst shaving cream is not and is tax exempt - guess the majority gender of the Australian parliament.............lol
It's very easy to mock BuckyTom, but lets see your public policy recommendations.
As I stated in my post, I think the the intervention governments can have, particular in countries like Australia and the UK which have free government provided health care, can be a direct one. But tax is surely one of the tools the government can utilise to raise revenue to provide these services. And if it encourages someone to perhaps buy an orange or a banana instead of a chocolate bar for their three o'clock sugar fix - all the better.
It's a competely different proposition in the US where you health care isn't government provided.
I think society should take responsibility for helping one another reach a healthy weight. It shouldn't be up to the individual to go it alone, at the mercy of charlatans and witch doctors out to make a quick buck with ridiculous weight loss programmes with outlandish claims. Call me a left wing sympathist, but I believe we should all be working together for the greater good. Surely a healthy population of people who can look in the mirror each day and feel proud of themselves is what we should be aiming for as a society.
It just baffles me how much money our government is throwing at hospitals and keeping the largest publicly provided healthcare system in the world ticking over fixing the problems caused by lifestyle issues, but is so reluctant to providing preventative healthcare measures to those who are already obese, but not yet ill.
I had no help from my doctors at all. Nothing. If I didn't want weight loss surgery, I wasn't entitled to anything, no dietician support, nothing. I find that sad. And fortunately I am the type of person who was willing to go out and research and find my own way, however a lot of people haven't got the confidence and the nouse to go out there and do that, otherwise we wouldn't have an obesity epidemic.