Sturge: Business chambers putting profits before young people

Akash Sama­roo

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge has ac­cused busi­ness groups of putting prof­its ahead of the wel­fare of young peo­ple as he de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s con­tentious move to raise the le­gal ages for al­co­hol, to­bac­co, cannabis and gam­bling.

Speak­ing dur­ing de­bate on the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill, 2026, in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ear­li­er to­day, Sturge took par­tic­u­lar aim at the Cham­bers of Com­merce over con­cerns raised about the leg­is­la­tion.

“The Cham­bers of Com­merce don't care that they're de­stroy­ing young peo­ple. They want more cus­tomers. That's what they want,” Sturge said.

“We have to pro­tect the young peo­ple from the Cham­bers of Com­merce be­cause all they're study­ing about is their right to make mon­ey.”

Sturge ar­gued that the con­se­quences of al­co­hol and drug use ex­tend be­yond the in­di­vid­ual and can even­tu­al­ly be­come a bur­den on fam­i­lies, the health­care sys­tem and tax­pay­ers.

He point­ed to ill­ness­es as­so­ci­at­ed with sub­stance abuse and ar­gued that when peo­ple be­come un­able to work, the State and their fam­i­lies are of­ten left to sup­port them.

“That's all well and good, you know, as long as your poi­son doesn't af­fect me. Or as long as your poi­son doesn't af­fect the tax­pay­er,” he said.

The De­fence Min­is­ter de­scribed the leg­is­la­tion as “bit­ter med­i­cine” and “tough love”, ar­gu­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect young peo­ple even if some of those af­fect­ed op­pose the mea­sures.

Un­der the leg­is­la­tion, the per­mis­si­ble age for al­co­hol and to­bac­co would move from 18 to 21, while the thresh­olds for cannabis and gam­bling would be set at 25.

Sturge said some young peo­ple may ob­ject now but could even­tu­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the re­stric­tions.

“This bit­ter med­i­cine is what many young men and women in my con­stituen­cy so des­per­ate­ly need,” he said, de­scrib­ing the leg­is­la­tion as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of parental love.

Sturge ar­gued that par­ents some­times have to make de­ci­sions their chil­dren dis­like be­cause they be­lieve those de­ci­sions are in their best in­ter­ests.

“Now is the time, Mr Speak­er, for tough love,” he said.

He al­so re­ject­ed Op­po­si­tion ar­gu­ments that young peo­ple could face se­vere $50,000 fines un­der the leg­is­la­tion, ac­cus­ing MPs of us­ing the max­i­mum penal­ty to fright­en the pub­lic.

Sturge stressed that a $50,000 penal­ty would not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly be im­posed on some­one con­vict­ed of an of­fence.

“Fifty thou­sand dol­lars is the max­i­mum,” he said.

He ar­gued that courts have dis­cre­tion when sen­tenc­ing and would take the cir­cum­stances of the of­fend­er and the of­fence in­to ac­count rather than au­to­mat­i­cal­ly im­pos­ing the max­i­mum pun­ish­ment.

Sturge said the leg­is­la­tion al­so cre­ates a dis­tinc­tion be­tween those fa­cil­i­tat­ing pro­hib­it­ed ac­tiv­i­ties and the young peo­ple the Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers the in­tend­ed vic­tims.

He said young peo­ple is­sued with fixed penal­ty no­tices would have op­tions be­fore reach­ing the point of con­vic­tion.

A per­son could chal­lenge the no­tice if they be­lieved they had been wrong­ly charged, while some­one ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty could in­stead pur­sue re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

Sturge said re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion could in­volve re­li­gious coun­selling or psy­cho­log­i­cal in­ter­ven­tion.

Once the re­quired re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion was suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed, he said, the young per­son would not be con­vict­ed.

“The short point is, we are about pro­tect­ing young peo­ple,” Sturge said.

He main­tained that the leg­is­la­tion forms part of a wider Gov­ern­ment ef­fort to ad­dress so­cial prob­lems af­fect­ing young peo­ple, in­clud­ing sub­stance abuse and gang in­volve­ment.

Sturge said ed­u­ca­tion alone would not be suf­fi­cient to change be­hav­iour and leg­is­la­tion was there­fore nec­es­sary as an ad­di­tion­al de­ter­rent.

“We do ed­u­cate. But the point is some peo­ple, no mat­ter how much you drum it in­to their head, it wouldn't work. So you have to have a back­up plan,” he said.

In­vok­ing a say­ing from his grand­moth­er, Sturge added: “Who don't hear does feel. That's what the law is for.”