Dry Oz Communities Brew Booze From Vegemite

Shops will report any large sales of Vegemite as it’s being used to brew alcohol in dry communities.

“Businesses in these communities also have a responsibility to report any purchase that may raise their own suspicions”, he later added.

The national debate over the continued sale of Vegemite could be laughed off as duly spirited – if it weren’t a matter of life or death in aboriginal communities and, therefore, a human-rights issue that could elicit further worldwide condemnation of Australia’s historical mistreatment of its indigenous population.

The purported epidemic has gotten so bad that Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has bemoaned Vegemite as being a “precursor to misery”.

Vegemite is a a dark brown paste made from brewer’s yeast, vegetables, and spice additives often used on top of toast.

Vegemite was invented in the 1920s and intended for use as a war-time substitute for Marmite but continues to be popular with Australians.

In 2013 the Queensland government said it was considering removing alcohol bans in certain communities, due to a growing increase in the production of homemade alcohol.

For the Prime Minister of Australia, Vegemite should only be used as a nutritious spread on your morning toast or on your sandwiches.

One former school principal with decades of experience teaching in north Queensland Indigenous communities told Guardian Australia he first became aware of Vegemite used in brewing alcohol in the 1990s but this had since been eclipsed by an even unlikelier method – orange juice filtered through nappies.

For the most part Australians seemed bemused by the story…

The Sydney Morning Herald said people are buying up to 20 jars at a time to make moonshine.

“What we can’t do is endlessly subsidize lifestyle choices if those lifestyle choices are not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have”, Abbott said in March, according to the Guardian.

But Dr John Boffa of the People’s Alcohol Action Coalition, who is based in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, said the problem was not widespread.