I’ve worked in the beer industry for nearly two decades. I met a huge proportion of my friends through it. I write this. It is a significant part of my identity. And it’s not an easy time for beer, right now. But it makes me extremely uncomfortable when people — in the business, or the wider subculture — call for direct, targeted support from government. I want to try and explain why, with help from a simple piece of moral philosophy nicely illustrated by, of all things, an episode of Bluey.

In ‘Library’,¹ Bluey’s cousin Muffin is being driven over to visit and sees her dad ignore a traffic signal. Panicking a little, he says it was a “special case” and when Muffin follows up asking if she’s special he tells her “you’re the most special kid in the whole world.” She then proceeds to act like an absolute nightmare at Bluey’s house for most of the episode until he eventually clarifies: that is how he and her mum feel, but “you’re probably not special to everyone else.”

It’s a simple point, well made. Your favourite thing might not be quite so beloved by others, and almost certainly isn’t objectively more important than theirs. I think this is important to keep in mind when advocating for something, so you don’t veer into expecting special treatment for your business or your hobby — if someone didn’t care as much as I do about this, would they still agree to what I’m proposing?

When beer fans are distraught over the latest in a string of brewery closures, you’ll see calls — demands, even — that the government do something. It’s often vague and abstract, though some concrete suggestions make the rounds, most often targeted tax breaks. But the problems facing beer aren’t specific to beer.² There is a general cost of living crisis in New Zealand, Australia, the U.S., and the U.K.; all places I see loud calls to “support” craft / indie beer with an energy that would be better spent on addressing the root causes — which would benefit the industry indirectly, if that’s still your focus, but more fairly and sustainably.

The catch-cry of craft beer used to be “a rising tide lifts all boats” — which we said both to celebrate a collective spirit, and caution against narrow zero-sum thinking. So what if that… but for everyone. It’s pretty standard politics journalism these days to look at a budget in terms of “winners” and “losers” or to describe a party’s election promises by referencing the constituency they’ll benefit. I don’t think we should play along with that. First, I think it’s grotesque. But second, it won’t get us far. If “beer” is too often in the winners column as other things get ignored, we risk losing a lot of our social license.³ And we are, ultimately, drug dealers. Folks often point to the societal benefits of a beer culture, and I think those are real. The argument for “support” is strongest and most sympathetic with those in mind. But it’s worth remembering, for example, that one of the reasons pubs are such valuable ‘third spaces’ is that there has been a hollowing-out of investment in public space. Promoting certain benefits via privately-owned makers and sellers might be extremely inefficient and inequitable.

I completely understand adjusting some of your own purchasing decisions partly to help out your favourite businesses in trying times. I do that myself. But it’s frankly kind of bizarre, cruel even, to look at the world and think the brewing industry is an urgent priority for government action. If you want a bailout for beer specifically and would let politicians off the hook for ignoring deeper problems if they gave it to you, you are falling for some real bread-and-circuses shit.

Some policy proposals don’t fall foul of this. Going after anti-competitive behaviour in the beer market (like the ‘tied taps’ phenomenon) is perfectly valid because monopolies are bad for the same reasons no matter which industry we’re talking about. Campaigns run by Australia’s Independent Brewers Association are a fascinating mix of exactly this sort of sensible, widely-applicable proposals, and a bunch of absurd special pleading that is the worst kind of lobbying. Rather than mucking around with the minute details of how excise tax is applied,⁴ they could be using our industry as a relatively-understandable case study and a way to argue for systemic fixes in the wider economy.

In Australia, the vast majority of beer is produced by two aggressively-consolidating companies, and retail is similarly dominated by two others. The market-distorting effects are dramatic and the product is an everyday one; it’s the perfect place to be proposing stronger fair trading law enforcement, or maybe a more sophisticated company tax regime (including around the offshoring of profit) to discourage such concentration — some solution, not specific to beer, which might be equally helpful in more obscure industries and overall.

Instead, the IBA and many of its members are focused purely on the fact that those two brewing conglomerates are ultimately foreign owned and rely on ham-handed nationalism rather than any kind of systemic critique. It’s a dark path, and they wouldn’t be okay with the same attitude applied to their products from within someone else’s borders. But your country is only special to you.

Australia’s exports include a lot of raw materials, mostly minerals and fossil fuels, but a recent report⁵ also suggests that it’s the #8 grower worldwide for both malt and hops used by the brewing industry. If that was cut off or subject to crippling tariffs — just to pick a wild hypothetical that lies a few steps down the road of this narrow my-country-first mode of thinking — the local industry would presumably suffer.

In terms of finished product, I was struggling to think of an Australian one that famously makes its way around the world. Foster’s doesn’t count, and we probably should be boycotting News Corp., but not because Rupert Murdoch is Australian.⁶ But then I found it: Bluey. Created and produced in Brisbane, in partnership with the public broadcaster, the show brings a significant amount of money home from overseas via distribution deals, merchandising, and such. If the rest of the world wasn’t watching it because of that, I think Australians would quite rightly find that ridiculous.

Calling for some as-yet-unspecified government intervention to “protect” local beer⁷ betrays (at least) two distorted priorities — expecting favourable treatment for your subculture and your country just because they’re special to you. There are real issues implicated in all this, but the industry is all too often acting like a total brat. I still love it, and am trying to channel my frustration in productive ways. But it’s not easy.

I worte this piece together with one on claims made about the unfairness of beer excise tax specifically. Check that out if your reaction is “but the ATO is killing small breweries” — there’s a lot to complain about with the current system, but a lot of misinformation, too…

---

1. Season 2, episode 30. It’s on ABC iview if you’re in Australia (or know how to use a VPN) and Disney+ — a point we’ll come back to later, weirdly.
2. The Crafty Pint article ‘Working Inside Beer’s Sinking Ships’ is mandatory reading, and I wrote a bit about how every closure is a different story in my reflections on the changes in and around where I worked in Melbourne. And in the companion piece to this one I try to show how excise in particular is being mythologised and scapegoated.
3. This election, in Australia, there’s a common trope comparing the beer excise to the lesser amount collected in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax — see this article, and this post from Wayward. But there are two ways to equalise a disparity. I would hope that brewers are suggesting that fossil fuels pay more, rather than envious of the sweetheart deal given to that famously corrupt and destructive industry.
4. And again, I’ve written a piece specifically on that issue since it’s so prominent at the moment.
5. p36, with thanks to Michael Donaldson for linking to that study in his Friday Night Beers newsletter.
6. Besides, it’s now headquartered in New York and incorporated in Delaware. (Originally, I linked to a news.com.au story for the Fosters link. A few days later, VinePair came along and saved me from that irony.)
7. When Blackflag’s problematic viral video about excise landed them on the news, they were very quick to take up the host’s suggestion of a protectionist tax.