Learning from the Nordics on Alcohol Policy

the social benefits of putting our biggest bottle-os in public hands

Alcohol is very much a part of ordinary life in Australia. Who doesn’t like to have a few drinks (or more) with our mates after work, on the weekends and public holidays, or to celebrate special/not-so-special occasions? Everyone remembers former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews viral “get on the beers” line that he uttered when telling the public that it wasn’t appropriate to invite your friends over for a drink during the COVID-19 pandemic. A popular remix, edited to make it sound like he was a staunch advocate for the beers, has since received over 9.5 million plays on Spotify. We can’t forget former Prime Minister Bob Hawke, who formerly held the world record for sculling a yard of ale in 11 seconds and lent his likeness to a craft beer brand. Even our current Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has his own brew. But this raises a question – if booze plays such a big role in our society, why are all the bottle-os owned and managed by private interests?

Australia has a private retail duopoly for alcohol, as the top two retailers are owned by Endeavour or Coles respectively and the top four retailers collectively held over 75% market share in 2023.¹ The Endeavour Group, which spun out of Woolworths in 2021, and the Coles Group own most of the popular alcohol retailers in the country. Most of our big names: Dan Murphy’s, BWS, Liquorland, First Choice Liquor and Vintage Cellars are owned by Endeavour or Coles. Collectively, they have a lot of power to set prices, muscle out smaller independent retailers, and lobby state/territory governments on alcohol policy. Their monopoly power also allows them to push costs onto smaller brewers, distilleries and wineries.

Buy Out the Big Bottle-Os

Instead of having a private duopoly competing to make as much profit as they can, we could bring Australia’s biggest bottle-os into public hands. We could put a limit on the role of the profit motive in the alcohol industry and start to reconceptualise our nation’s relationship with alcohol. I’m not trying to make yet another socialist argument that public ownership is a panacea. It really is something that’s been done in other countries to great success. The Nordic countries, with the exception of Denmark, all have state-owned alcohol retail monopolies.

The fact that sales and profits aren’t a driving force for the Nordic public retailers doesn’t mean that they don’t care about providing good service to their customers. Contrary to the myth that public retailers are bad for consumers and limits their ability to choose between different brands, Sweden’s Systembolaget is well-known for carrying a wide range of beer, wine, and spirits. A broad selection of alcoholic beverages is available to consumers, even in more remote areas. The alcohol monopolies in Finland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway and Sweden are all relatively popular among voters, with the Systembolaget specifically being rated as the most trusted business in Sweden every year since 2013. Public support has saved the Systembolaget from privatisation, unlike Sweden’s pharmacies and railways.

Research commissioned by the Systembolaget suggests that publicly run bottle-os could have a positive impact across the supply chain. A big public option could give the federal government a lot of buying power, which would put them in a great position to negotiate with suppliers. This could make it possible for the government to promote compliance with environmental and employment laws through the supply chain, as liquor producers would have no other retailers to sell to. This buying power doesn’t have to be used to screw over our local craft beer breweries and gin distilleries either. The Systembolaget operates on the principle of equal treatment for all suppliers, meaning that they’re not allowed to give preferential treatment to big producers when negotiating terms or deciding which shelves their drinks end up on. It’s not hard to imagine how doing something similar here could help our small breweries too.

Selling Responsibly

The Nordic retailers are also widely regarded as playing a crucial role in limiting alcohol-related harms, with public health research in the U.S. suggesting that privatisation would result in increased excessive alcohol consumption and other alcohol-related harms. It’s not hard to see why, as the social problems that come from alcohol abuse are treated as public health issues rather than personal moral failings. 

Support for Sweden’s Systembolaget is built largely on the principle of social solidarity – alcohol is seen as a collective, social issue rather than a private one. The monopolies collectively share the explicit goal of eliminating private profit interests in the alcohol market and prioritising public health. They aim to sell alcohol in a way that meets public need instead of private greed.  

In contrast, Australia’s big private retailers invest a portion of their profits into DrinkWise, which public health researchers suggest is a cynical corporate PR campaign disguised as a responsible drinking NGO. Revenue from publicly owned bottle shops could instead be used to fund government-run campaigns to promote responsible drinking and important public health research. This research would be far more trustworthy than reports commissioned by companies that serve to lose out from policies reducing alcohol-related harms. It’d also help reduce the influence of Australia’s alcohol lobby – a small but useful step towards democratising the industry and the broader economy. 

Important data on alcohol consumption and purchases could be swiftly made available to the government and the wider public. This data is crucial for understanding trends in alcohol-related harms and allowing the government to make consequential policy decisions. A government-owned bottle-o could get this information quickly and ensure that it’s as accurate as possible. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for data published by private statistics companies like Roy Morgan, the public could access this data for free. This would be good for transparency’s sake but it’d also be good for public health researchers (and bloggers!) too as they would have access to a free, high-quality source of useful data.

Sorry, but the Beers (Probably) Won’t Get Cheaper

I’ll admit that focusing on reducing alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of the public. Most of us love a drink or two, or three, or four, and you might be reading this hoping I’m about to move on to talking about how a public alcohol retailer is a ticket to cheaper beers. Unfortunately, it isn’t. It’s very unlikely that a public retailer, with a social mandate to reduce alcohol-related harms while still allowing for safe(r) consumption, would make alcohol any cheaper. If anything it’s more likely that alcohol would get a bit more expensive.

This all sounds a bit lame. Everyone had a bit of a laugh when the Alcohol Beverages Advertising Code forced the alcoholic lemon squash ‘Hard Solo’ to change its name to ‘Hard Rated’ because they felt that the ‘Hard Solo’ brand was too appealing to minors. Public health measures, especially post-COVID, are considered very uncool in the same sort of way that your parents not allowing you to sleepover at your mate’s house was uncool. The average punter thinks it’s uncool, the populist left finds it uncool, the populist right finds it uncool, and honestly I doubt the technocratic liberal centrist types would get on board either.

You don’t even hear advocates of deregulation or the legalisation/decriminalisation of illicit drugs talk about how those policies reduce drug-related harms that much any more. Instead it feels like people have increasingly adopted a libertine, quasi-libertarian ‘live and let live’ approach. I’ve even heard otherwise principled and thoughtful people tell me, with a straight face, that cigarettes aren’t as bad for you as the medical experts say – “It’s actually the capitalist system that makes you stressed out, which makes you sick, and the cigarettes help by calming you down, maaan”. Personally I think it’s a good thing to treat drug-related harms as a public health issue, without enacting overly regressive, punitive or ineffective policies to manage them.

Get on the (Publicly-Owned) Beers

The Systembolaget shows that there are many potential upsides to putting the big bottle-os into public hands. We can improve the range of available drinks, the customer service, use our outsized buying power in a fairer way along with pursuing public health goals and limiting alcohol-related harms.

This isn’t to say that we need to nationalise the entire sector or copy everything that Sweden does, but bringing our biggest alcohol retailers into public ownership would be a good first move. The successes of the Nordic alcohol monopolies suggests that the state could run things much better than the big private bottle-os do.

1. Finding a lot of good data on the alcohol retail market without forking out tens of thousands is, unfortunately, very difficult.