Alcohol control in Australia
Alcohol is not the problem, it is the behaviour and culture of drinking that causes harm. This is one view of alcohol consumption in Australia, a perspective that does not go uncontested.
In this view, alcohol is seen as different from illicit drugs and should therefore be regulated by the free market rather than social need.
There is now strong evidence however to the contrary – that regular alcohol consumption can lead to early morbidity and mortality. Because of this, alcohol needs to be tightly regulated through a comprehensive range of strategies that focus on demand, supply and harm reduction measures.
But how did we get to where we are today in Australia and what can we learn from specific initiatives that might change the way in which we address alcohol?
Since the 1950s, Australia has increasingly taken a liberalised approach to alcohol, but it wasn’t always this way.
Many remember six o’clock closing time for example and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, various prohibitions before 1957 meant that it was illegal for them to consume alcohol. This all changed during the 1960s when alcohol increasingly became associated with an ideology of free market fundamentalism.
For many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, the results were catastrophic, with significant increases in drinking offences and alcohol-related health problems. At the national level, this represented the first cracks in the free market frame.
Perhaps the deregulation of alcohol was not such a good thing for the health and wellbeing of Australian’s citizens.
Until recently, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander activists and community groups who have fought hard for alcohol controls have not been heard in national forums. However, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander alcohol issues are now receiving more attention, and are currently the focus of a collaborative network of researchers headed by myself, Professor Marcia Langton and Professor Robin Room from the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Health and Society in the School of Population Health, and Turning Point Alcohol and Drug Centre.
There are a number of important moves in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities that offer precedents and lessons for how the rest of Australia might think about alcohol’s place in our society.
Various community-led residential alcohol and drug treatment centres for Aboriginal people were established throughout Australia, first established in 1974 in NSW by Dr Val Carroll (Bryant), OAM. In the Northern Territory in the 1980s it was possible for communities to apply under the NT Liquor Act for specific restrictions or total bans on the sale, possession, consumption or importation of alcohol in their communities.
Only Aboriginal communities made use of these provisions.
In Tennant Creek in the mid-1990s it was an Aboriginal organisation (Julalikari Council) that instigated the NT Liquor commission’s six months trial of various alcohol restrictions, including a ban on takeaway sales on Thursdays, reduced hours of sales on other days and bans of 4-litre casks of wine. The results were positive with significant reductions in assaults and hospital admissions. This was a historical precursor to various restrictions on hours and volume of sale throughout the Northern Territory, the latest of which can be seen in the roll-out of Alcohol Management Plans.
As can be seen in changes to the Liquor Act in the NT, governments have, at times, responded to community concerns over alcohol. Between 1992 and 2000, the Northern Territory Government funded the Living with Alcohol Program through a special NT tax on beverages with greater than three per cent alcohol content by volume.
The focus was on education, increased controls on alcohol availability and expanded treatment and rehabilitation services. So long as the special tax was in effect, the program demonstrated significant effects on acute harms and possibly longer-term chronic illness. However, the program eventually fragmented, as it required significant alignment and co-ordination of agencies and individuals in the political, fiscal, administrative and industrial domains.
For governments, the easy solution has always been to penalise and criminalise the drinker. This is much easier and politically safer than regulating the market. So programs like the Living with Alcohol Program have often been viewed as too logistically difficult, and Restricted Dry Zones as either too unpopular or applicable to the situations of specific areas where public drinking is viewed as problematic.
However, there has been rising concern about alcohol in Victoria, with increasing reports of drunken violence, youth intoxication and the impact of drinking on family life. There is increasing evidence about the relationship between density of alcohol outlets and violence.
In Australia more generally, alcohol misuse costs run in the billions of dollars. So what are we doing about this in our southern cities, such as Melbourne?
Some positive steps are being made. For example, this year the City of Yarra developed an Alcohol Management Plan framework, which aims to achieve a cross-organisation council response to manage alcohol-related issues.
From December 2009, drinking alcohol in unlicensed areas on the streets of Yarra at any time of the day was banned under the Local Law Eight (LL8).
There is now a voluntary alcohol accord between Darebin council, Victoria Police and local liquor licensed venues, with specific trials of ‘alcohol-free’ restricted zones in Preston and Reservoir. To date, the focus has very much been on the drinkers and the control of alcohol related behaviour.
Added to this, we need to incorporate a focus upstream to the supply of alcohol; where we can buy alcohol, at what time and at what price.
Alcohol is big business in Australia, but the enormous costs to society due to alcohol-related illness, hospitalisations, loss of workdays and harm to others provides a strong argument that change is required.
Dr Richard Chenhall is Lecturer in Medical Anthropology in the School of Population Health’s Centre for Health and Society at the University of Melbourne