If they want to prevent dental issues, they can start with preventing gronks in local councils from removing fluoride from the water.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Sugar is the bane of maintaining basic human health. Its more harmful than drugs I'd wager.
That's a bit of an exaggeration.
Not everybody does drugs or wants to. Whatever you're eating, you're getting sugar.
Yep, it affects everyone.
Not going to happen. The ALP is losing strugglers to One Nation across the country. They feel abandoned and have a perception Labor is out of touch with cost of living and in the pocket of lobbyists and big business.
To be very clear I think One Nation are full of shit and people putting their trust in them are being scammed and are putting our whole country in danger. But with the cost of petrol and smokes and rent and food and stagnant wages, living standards are going down for many people. I don't think they are going to see any regressive tax as a positive. A policy like this will only sell well amongst affluent educated Labor and Greens voters and they aren't the ones deserting Labor. Free dental on the other hand is a winner.
I agree with your last comment.
Do you really think that if the govt committed to free/cheaper dental care when putting up the price of soft drinks people would jack up?
Just look at the isle space for soft drinks in the supermarket. Even the zero sugar ones are bad. Can’t see Albo taking this one on.
While I support this, why do none of these studies or articles talk about carbonic acid, which is what makes soft drink fizzy? This directly erodes enamel and causes tooth decay. By simply rinsing your mouth with water after soft drinks, you massively reduce the amount of time your teeth are exposed to acid. Same for orange juice etc. This also work for the sugar in the drink - dilution in action.
There are studies on carbonic acid in soft drinks. I know because your comment sparked me into looking it up.
As far as I'm concerned, another reason to not drink carbonated drinks. Better and cheaper to filter water at home and take your own bottle with you.
Yes I know there are studies. What I'm saying is since tooth decay is predominantly caused by acid erosion, not sugar, I'm confused why they would ignore this in this study and the modelling. Except for people who do not brush their teeth daily (which isn't 0%!), then sugar is food for oral, acid-producing microbes.
Reducing sugar is good, but tackling tooth decay requires public health education on acidic drinks as well as a sugar tax.
Annual dental checks, and necessary procedures being covered by medicare would be more beneficial.
The revenue from the tax could go precisely to the services you mention.
Also less sugar would help with a lot of other health issues like diabetes, obesity etc.
Substituting Sucrose for chemical and “natural” alternatives is no better for your health. Your brain still triggers insulin production, but with fewer carbohydrates, you are more likely to suffer health issues.
Social change where hyper-sweetened foods are rejected in favour of more subtle flavours would be much more beneficial.
I don't have an issue with the prices going up on soft drinks, but it would achieve very little unless it was (as you suggest) used to fund medicare dental.
The government cannot be trusted though, if they really were genuine, dental medicare could easily be funded, there are currently another few very, very obvious places taxpayer money is going to, where it shouldn't be.
They would not have a leg to stand on if they put up the soft drink tax and then not implement better dental care as the medical/dental profession and the rest of us are seeking, but I understand where you're coming from.
Worse case scenario: the govt doesn't do anything to improve access to dental care, there would still be positive health outcomes. Overseas they've found that putting up the price has reduced consumption of these drinks which in turn has reduced some obesity and dental caries, particualarly in the young.
The price of cigarettes increased dramatically decades ago, to a much higher price point than soft drinks ever will. That definitely stopped/helped some people from smoking, but many others continued, and many more have taken it up since.
If the government were serious, advertising these drinks would be banned as a 1st step. The 2nd step would be banning the drinks themselves, which would have to flow onto other items that fit in the same category.
The government is, as per usual, completely full of sh*t though.
I agree with you. It's just capitalism is a beast. No govt would dare, not even a more progressive mob like the Greens if they were in power.
The Australian government used to do some positive things, a long time ago.
It would not doubt be a slow process to help change the way Australians think, especially given lobbying, and dodgy media. The people themselves are mainly against decent government these days, as illogical as that is.
“Suggest” and “could be used” are weasel words already. When they're spoken by researchers with no say in how the budget is spent, i cant help feeling sceptical.
More likely it gets lost into general revenue with only some big media buys and ad campaigns to show for it; (with message variations of “Govt good😀, Sugar bad☹️” )
We can't know for sure and it's also up to us to support the research and and demand better dental care services.
It could, but it wont
How can you know for sure?
Precedent
Illinois tried this a few years back to help shore up budget shortfalls. Number one, it didn't bring in very much revenue. Number two, literally everyone hated it because it is a tax on poor people.
It was killed, I believe in less than a year.
There is honestly no downside to less sugar.
unless that means more artificial sweeteners
They're pretty dodgy too. Our palates have been conditioned by the processed food and drink industries to seek overly sweet foods and drinks (let alone all the other chemicals they put into what goes into our mouths). All of these make the so-called food and drinks addictive which leads to exactly where they want us to be.
I would take sugar over that stuff any day.
Yeah I smoke a pack a day and its all good because I keep going back to my doctor and he let's me know I am actively harming myself and wasting both his time and taxpayer money by continuing to live an unhealthy life
They aren't the same thing, and your erm 'argument' appears to be against dental being included in medicare, which it very obviously should have been for a long time, or are you just arguing against medicare completely?
I very, very rarely consume soft drinks, and I don't smoke. I do have teeth and lungs.
My argument is that if we are going to have social healthcare, which I believe we should, the logical decision is to not destroy the health of people.
Australian voters and politicians are very far from logical unfortunately.
Many of our politicians are much healthier than they should be.
The losses for dentists and sugar manufacturers would be immense and lead to the destruction of countless paying jobs for the dental staff, farmers, factory workers.
---Some capitalist probably
😂
A tax on sugary drinks is literally a poor tax. You're taxing poor people for one of the few pleasures they have in life that they can afford easily.
You know what would improve dental health across the board? Offering free dental insurance to every man woman and child in the country. You know what would stop people from having to buy sugary drinks so often? Fully fund food stamps across the board. Give people the ability to buy healthy whole foods to feed to their kids.
Edit: My mistake in not realizing this article was about Australia. My point still stands though. A tax on sugary drinks is only going to punish poor people unnecessarily and not lead to a dramatic reduction in soft drink consumption. It was tried here in my state and failed spectacularly.
This post is about Australia.
You do have a seriously inequitable food system in the US. This is a sad and unnecessary situation.
Studies tend to show that sugary drink taxes do have some effect on better health outcomes. For example<
It is the poor who bear the brunt of ill health in large part due to only being able to afford cheap, bad-quality processed food. Sweetening the poison only adds more poison. Stand up for clean water in the US which you have problems with too:
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/americas-failing-drinking-water-system
I'm a bit confused with your comment. Australia as far as I know does not have a good stamp program. Do you think this is an article about the US?
And on your first point there is a variety of reasons to tax sugar. The majority of which are related to health outcomes and not just dental.
They've been talking about this for ages. I hope it happens.
This just means more corn syrup. A lot of things are sweet, and way worse for you than sugar.
Why would a tax on sugary drinks not cover corn syrup, which is a sugar?
Is it though? Legally? My point is that the law has to be explicit about what is taxed. Manufacturers will figure out ways around it and we will just end up paying more for sugar to make our banana bread or whatever.
Yes, corn syrup is a sugar. It shows up as such, by law, in nutrition tables.
Sugar is a broad category referring to many different compounds. If it's a carbohydrate that is sweet and dissolves in water, it's a sugar.
Sugary drinks would include those sweetened by corn syrup (fructose) and from cane sugar (sucrose). They would be taxed no matter the source. Most fizzy sweet drinks have an excess of sugar no matter where it comes from.