As reminder on the background: the Ministry of Health commissioned the New Zealand Institute for Economic Research to do the work. NZIER's report is dated August 2017. The Ministry did not release the report. I heard it existed and put in an OIA request 30 October. The Ministry delayed the release until late January.
I don't know why the Ministry didn't just put the report up on its own website when it was received. Maybe they wanted to brief any incoming Minister on it first, and there was an election that got in the way. But it still took a long time and the Ombudsman's chasing them up. Bureaucratic cock-up is always a plausible explanation, but for a report that was just sitting on their desk, for months, and that took no redacting or anything other than a signoff... I suppose there are advanced degrees in bureaucratic foul-up.
Anyway, we received the report and put out a press release on it; would be a shame for good work to go unnoticed. Best I'm aware, it's not available anywhere on the MoH website, just on NZIER's website.
- I chatted with RNZ's The Panel on it. The host was confused at first about the report, having thought that we at the Initiative had written it, and then pestering me about our membership. Our members are on our website; our work is independent of what any member might think about it. But even more to the point, we didn't fund the report. That was the Ministry of Health. we didn't write the report. That was NZIER. The report found the same thing that our 2016 report found: the evidence base for sugar taxes is weak. A sane Bayesian can then either downweight the chances that our report's conclusions were affected by some Big Sugar agenda, or expand the conspiracy theory to include the Ministry of Health, NZIER, the RAND Corporation, the Reverse Vampires and the Saucer People. I have a hard time telling when interviewers miss the point, and when they're seeking that a point might be explained to listeners who would miss the point.
- Jenesa Jeram and I had a chat with Newsroom's Thomas Coughlan about it. It was nice to see Diabetes New Zealand agreeing. It was also nice to see Minister of Health David Clark saying he has no plans for a sugar tax - though I was a bit disappointed to see they're likely to be strong-arming industry into reformulation. At least with a sugar tax, I can still buy tasty things!
- Former Prime Minister Helen Clark was surprised that NZIER would dispute the WHO's findings. While the WHO might be a good source in telling you whether sugar is bad for you, they are not tax experts. To find out the effects of taxes, you have to talk to economists. Talking to dentists doesn't quite cut it.
- The Toronto Globe and Mail covered the report, with a nice piece from Peter Shawn Taylor.
- Australia's Menzies Research Centre also covered it.
I wonder if the outfits that liked to paint opposition to sugar taxes as being exclusively ideologically driven or driven by nefarious interests will ever provide some apologies. The Public Health Brigade (NZ edition) likes to sue for defamation whenever their motives are impugned, but they're awful quick to assume that any opposition to their Good Works can only have evil motive.
No comments:
Post a Comment