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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-06-18 Daily Xml
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ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. D.G. Hood:

That the Social Development Committee inquire into and report on the adequacy and appropriateness of laws and practices relating to the sale and consumption of alcohol and, in particular, with respect to—

1. Whether those laws and practices need to be modified to better deal with criminal and other antisocial behaviour arising from the consumption of alcohol;

2. The health risks of excessive consumption of alcohol, including—

(a) 'binge drinking'; and

(b) foetal alcohol syndrome;

3. The economic cost to South Australia in dealing with the consequences of alcohol abuse; and

4. Any other relevant matters.

(Continued from 9 April 2008. Page 2353.)

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (19:48): I rise to speak to the motion of the Hon. Mr Hood which seeks support to refer this important issue to the Social Development Committee. Speaking at the outset, I indicate that my party room has not yet formed a position on this particular reference. I will express my own vies at this stage, although, having spoken to a number of my colleagues, I would be surprised if there was not majority support for the reference that the Hon. Mr Hood is seeking, at least from my party. In speaking to this motion, I have been motivated on this issue, in part, by what I have seen over the past days and weeks, and perhaps months. I must say that I am becoming increasingly angered and frustrated by the views that are constantly being expressed by the anti-alcohol, anti-drinking health nazis who seem to populate the world and Australia and, sadly, now seem to be populating Labor governments federally and at the state level, as well.

In speaking to this motion, I commend the Hon. Mr Hood, because at least this particular motion is saying, 'Okay, let someone in South Australia look at this issue, gather some fact and evidence, and make some decisions on the basis of some fact and some evidence.' Sadly, at the national and state level, in my view, we are seeing all sorts of foolhardy notions being put forward by governments, politicians and others purporting to be a response to the excessive drinking of alcohol problem characterised as binge drinking—and exactly what this is I will address during my contribution this evening.

As I said, at least this particular motion is saying, 'Well, let the Social Development Committee look at the issue and come back with some recommendations before we head too far down any particular path.' At the outset, I will read at length from a recent article which appeared in The Sunday Age of 15 June. It is an excellent article by Michael Bachelard, a feature piece in The Sunday Age. The article is headed 'Hitting the drink' and states:

The language is urgent, the message alarming: alcohol is out of control, a time bomb, a silent epidemic. Alcohol-fuelled violence is mounting, our cities becoming perilous, our youth in more danger of brain damage and assault.

Politicians, journalists, police and politicians are delivering the same message, driven by a group of anti-drinking health professionals recommending new restrictions on Australia's favourite social lubricant.

In federal and state parliaments, the message is finding its target. Governments are increasing taxes and contemplating restrictions on alcohol advertising; we may soon confront labelling laws that put gruesome pictures of cirrhotic livers on wine bottles; the state's police chiefs are coordinating their power to curb binge drinking; and the nation's alcohol guidelines are about to be changed to declare that more than two drinks a day constitutes risky drinking, and more than four is a binge. The Victorian government, citing research now beginning to show that a significant proportion of Victorians drink too much, is restricting liquor licences for the first time since the 1980s. It is contemplating an increase in licence fees, enforcing a trial 2 am lock-out and considering recruiting underage operatives to buy grog and trap unwary publicans...

The rhetoric suggests that the problem is suddenly escalating, but it's not. Quietly in the midst of it all the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare produced a little study that poured cold water on the enterprise. The overall drinking status of the Australian population has been stable over the past two decades, it said. It went on, 'There has been virtually no change in the pattern of risky drinking over the period 2001 to 2007, and 2.4 per cent more people are teetotallers [that is, in 2007 compared with 2001].

Presenting to the Senate committee investigating Kevin Rudd's alcopop tax increase, the government-funded study based on interviews with more than 20,000 Australians identified a slight increase in preference for ready-to-drink mixed spirits, but mainly among older groups, and said this did not appear to have directly contributed to an increase in risky alcohol consumption. In fact, among the underage women who are the target of the tax rise the institute identified a decrease in numbers taking risks on a monthly basis from 32 per cent to 27 per cent. On the question of total alcohol consumption there is surprising unanimity, even from the health professionals keenest on urgent government action.

Per capita alcohol consumption in Australia reached a peak in the early 1980s and has since declined by about 25 per cent, Alex Wodak, the Director of St Vincent's Hospital's Alcohol and Drug Service, told another Senate inquiry recently. 'Fundamentally, consumption seems fairly stable' said Robin Room, the head of the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research at Turning Point in Melbourne. Australia's alcohol consumption—about 9.9 litres of pure ethanol a person per year—is in the middle ranks among comparable developed nations, but according to Wodak asking whether alcohol consumption is rising, falling or staying about the same is nothing more than the detail. 'The first order question we should be asking is whether Australia regards the health, social and economic costs of alcohol to be acceptable', he says.

With a new study suggesting an annual economic cost of $15 billion from alcohol, and 3,500 alcohol-related deaths, there's little doubt that alcohol remains a problem, some say the most serious drug problem in Australia. It is just that it has always been there. What has changed is the amount of concern. Alcohol is receiving enormous attention. There are 12 national inquires into alcohol policy at the moment. The National Health and Medical Research Council is reviewing the official drinking guidelines; the Food Standards Authority is looking at health advisory labels on alcohol containers; Council of Australian Government ministers have an alcohol policy forum later this month; there are two Senate inquires; and, there are at least two separate inquires on taxation levels and alcohol.

In Victoria mental health minister Lisa Neville is pushing through a number of measures as part of the Victorian alcohol action plan, which includes the controversial 2 am lock-out.

The article goes on to talk about international trends and a variety of other issues in relation to taxation, and it is a much longer article than the lengthy analysis or quote I have just taken from 'Hitting the drink'. The point the journalist Michael Bachelard is making there is that the evidence in accord with this recent government study of 20,000 Australians has demonstrated that the overall drinking status of the Australian population has been stable over the past two decades, that there has been virtually no change in the pattern of risky drinking from 2001 to 2007, and that in fact 2.4 per cent more people were teetotallers in 2007 than in 2001.

At least some people out there are trying to get some perspective into this whole debate on alcohol consumption and binge drinking. It is the political flavour of the month. It has been booted along by publicity seeking Labor politicians in the main: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Premier Mike Rann in South Australia and his ministers Mr Holloway and Ms Gago, who are all outspoken and staunch advocates of the controversial lockout policy which they are trying to impose on South Australians, and I will address some comments to that in a moment.

The other extraordinary media story I have seen in the past couple of weeks that has prompted me to speak out this evening on this issue was being generated from the National Health and Medical Research Council. Again, this was a story in TheSunday Age but also covered in many other national papers on the weekend of 15 June. The heading in TheSunday Age was 'Three drinks with dinner and you're out', again, an article by Michael Bachelard and co-authored by Heath Gilmore. To quote from that article:

Three glasses of wine during dinner is about to be redefined as a binge drinking episode under the federal government's new official drinking guidelines to be released next month.

I look at some colleagues in this chamber and, if three drinks of wine during the dinner break are to be defined as a binge drinking episode by the federal government, sadly we will have a fair few people in this chamber and elsewhere classified and defined as binge drinkers under this new policy that has been contemplated by the National Health and Medical Research Council. The article continues:

In what one health professional has slammed as a message that makes no sense at all, the guidelines will say that having more than four standards drinks a day constitutes a binge. An average glass of wine is 1.5 standard drinks. That means that if a man is sharing a bottle with his wife and takes a slightly larger share, that he has had a binge, says Paul Haber, the medical director of Drug Health Services Addiction Medicine at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred College.

Former health minister Tony Abbott said Australia was now in a 'moral panic' about alcohol and has accused the Federal Government of ignoring illicit drugs.

A draft of the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines attracted controversy when it was released in October because it removed any difference between men's and women's safe drinking rates, saying that neither sex should have more than two standard drinks a day.

The former guidelines said men could safely consume four drinks, and women two. Risk was then graded according to the increasing number of drinks, with 11 or more for men, and seven or more for women, being 'high risk'.

But the head of the council's alcohol guidelines committee, John Currie, told The Sunday Age that when the final guidelines were released next month [in July] the two-drink limit will remain. He said the former safe limit for men—four drinks—would become the absolute upper limit.

'There's a new section there that says on any occasion, if you're going to set a top limit you really need to set a limit of four drinks at the most. So our definition of binge drinking will drop as well; that is new,' Professor Currie said.

The risk limit had been set there because 'from four drinks upwards the risks of accident and injury on any single occasion...escalate really quite dramatically'.

The new guidelines will also contain no 'medium risk' or 'high risk' categories. "At the moment you've got 'low risk', 'risky' and 'high risk'. What we'll now have is 'low risk' or 'above low risk'", Professor Currie said.

This has big implications for alcohol researchers, whose figures will show that people previously thought to be drinking at safe levels are now considered at risk, or even binge drinkers.

Professor Haber, who treats alcohol-addicted people every day, said his informal survey of acquaintances suggested that the new guidelines were 'indefensible'.

'I think that the message is a fairly extreme position, and it's just difficult to sell...I think that several members on that committee, as individual people, don't see the value in drinking, and don't see the social value in drinking for other people.'

Professor Haber said that 'most of the harms from alcohol come from patients who drink a lot', and that the level of risk the NHMRC committee was prepared to recommend was arbitrary, and too low.

'What are the lifetime risks of bushwalking, surfing, skiing, bicycle riding or driving a motor vehicle?

'Most human activities entail both risks and benefits and our lifestyle decisions are properly based on a broad consideration of both, rather than simply the potential for harm.'

The article then goes on to discuss the concerns one would expect from the alcohol industry and a spokesman from the distilled spirits industry, so I will not quote those; they would be the expected comments.

What I am saying is that we have, with Prime Minister Rudd at the federal level and Premier Rann and ministers Gago and Holloway at the state level, this push at the moment to crack down on what they are describing as an exploding or ever-increasing problem that is out of control, and they talk about binge drinking. At the same time, we have the National Health and Medical Research Council indicating that, if you have three or four drinks with dinner or on a particular occasion, you are now going to be defined as a binge drinker.

I think that is so out of touch with the real world as to be laughable. With this push from politicians and leaders, such as the people I have mentioned, and, associated with that, this particular recommendation on binge drinking, we could find ourselves in a situation where ordinary Australians who are going about their normal business and enjoying themselves, in moderation, having three or four drinks, being classified as binge drinkers and part of a problem. Frankly, I find that ridiculous.

As I have said, that is part of the paranoia that is being generated at the moment by governments and politicians. The anti-alcohol health nazis, supported by leading politicians at the state level, are engendering this panic and paranoia and saying that we have to take ever more extreme measures in terms of tackling the problem.

Yes, there is a problem in relation to alcohol and excessive alcohol consumption, but I will never support—and I hope the majority of members in this chamber, on reflection, will not support—a notion that someone who has three our four drinks of an evening is a binge drinker. My message to you, Mr Acting President, and to some of your colleagues in the caucus who might share that view, is that they ought, at this stage, to be asking questions of people such as minister Gago and minister Holloway, together with Premier Rann, who are leading this charge in cracking down on what they classify as binge drinking.

If there are any of you in the caucus who share the concerns and views I have, now is the time for you to be raising them with those ministers to find out what they are getting up to at these ministerial council meetings. As we have seen (and I will raise this issue in a moment) with this foolhardy idea of a lockout, minister Gago and minister Holloway go off to these national conferences and come back with these bold proclamations whereby they have this jolly good idea to lock people out of clubs and bars in Adelaide at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and they agree to these trial lockouts at a national level, at the ministerial council meeting they have just attended.

In my view, these are the sort of decisions that should be made by governments and, ultimately, parliament. The licensing laws and trading laws, over the years, have been based on decisions taken by the parliament. However, what I have highlighted over recent days about the actions of recent weeks is that Premier Mike Rann has been trying to ensure that we implement a 3am lockout of clubs and bars, without any reference to the parliament, by having police visiting licensees of clubs and bars and trying to get them to sign an administrative order under the Liquor Licensing Act for a supposedly voluntary lockout at 3 o'clock in the morning, together with some other conditions.

If the Premier wants to institute a policy like that, as has occurred in the past, it is my strong view that he should take it through his caucus and, if his caucus supports him, he should come to the parliament and the parliament should vote on these sorts of issues and if, ultimately, the parliament agrees to that policy, so be it. As a member of parliament, I will be in a minority. I will speak against the bill, but I will accept the decision the parliament makes on issues such as this.

It should not be the case that the Premier of the state, together with the police force and others, should sneak through the back door and try to ensure that up to 100 licensees in the CBD sign a supposedly voluntary administrative order for a voluntary lockout of clubs and pubs.

As I highlighted in question time this week, a number of those licensees have said to me that they will not sign. They felt pressured, and I gave the example of one licensee who received three separate visits from police officers on two consecutive working days, a Friday and a Monday. For the life of me, crime is going on out there and members have highlighted what the police ought to be doing; however, they have the capacity for an individual licensee (and a number of them, I assume) to receive three visits, with the one who visited on the Monday morning saying, 'If you haven't signed it now, we'll come back this afternoon to see whether you are prepared to sign it then.'

The licensee said to me, 'I'm feeling pressured by all this. They are telling me that I am one of the last ones left.' As I have demonstrated to the council with the front page of The Advertiser today, that is not true: at least 25 to 30 per cent of licensees have not signed the voluntary order. However, they were being told by the police, 'First, this is going to happen; secondly, you're one of the last to sign; and, thirdly, if all of you sign, it will mean that the parliament won't have to consider legislation.'

The licensee also said, 'If I am one of the only ones left not to have signed this, the police have considerable powers in relation to the Licensing Enforcement Branch of the South Australian police force. I am concerned that maybe we will get more than our fair share of random inspections and audits over the coming years.' I hasten to say that nothing like that was said to them by the police, but it is a genuinely felt concern put to me by the licensee.

He asked me, 'Is it true that we are one of the only ones standing out?' I said that I did not know but that I had received a number of calls and that at that stage, on the basis of those, I did not believe that what he had been told was true. Subsequently, I became aware of other information that indicated that it was not true that they were one of the last few remaining. As I said, on the front page of The Advertiser today Inspector Duval from the South Australian police force confirmed that 25 to 30 per cent of licensees had not signed the voluntary order.

There is a range of reasons why I, as an individual, oppose this proposition. In the debate tonight, I do not intend to go over all those again, as I gave a brief five-minute contribution during the last week of sitting and highlighted some of those issues. There is no doubt that a lot of mainly young people enjoy going to bars and clubs in the early hours of the morning and, although it is predominantly younger people, a number of older people enjoy it, too.

Their view, and my view, is: why should the vast majority of people, who are going about their business and enjoying themselves listening to music and bands, enjoying meeting friends and new people in the early hours of a Sunday morning and not causing any trouble or grief to anybody else (and, I concede, perhaps at a time when many of the members of this chamber are safely in their beds), be penalised because of the unruly behaviour of a minority? Why should that be the case?

It is a bit like saying that all members of parliament shall not drink in the Parliament House bar because we had an example of a member complaining about the behaviour of two senior state government ministers through the excessive consumption of alcohol one evening. Why should all members be penalised because one or two could not behave themselves? Why should all people who enjoy clubs and bars in the early hours of the morning be penalised because a minority cannot behave or handle themselves properly?

I think it is a relatively simple proposition, and it is one I think members of the government caucus and committees ought at least to contemplate before they sign off on this. The voluntary lockout is not going to happen because, on the basis of what some licensees are telling me, they are not going to sign. Inspector Duval said that, if there is not 100 percent sign-up, there will not be a voluntary lockout.

As I understand it, the options that remain are that the Commissioner must go to the Licensing Court and try to argue for conditions on licences for up to 100 venues, and those licensees will have the opportunity to argue their case. It will be interesting, because the Commissioner will have to demonstrate that the actions of those licensees are the cause of the problem.

Those members in the chamber who have any experience of young people these days will know that many of them have consumed alcohol at home or at private parties before they go to clubs and bars (and members should look at the National Health and Medical Research Council findings). Why? Because they cannot afford to buy a lot of drinks at some of the clubs and bars. They queue up at places like Electric Circus, pay $10 to $20 to get it in and then pay somewhere between $7 and $13 for a drink such as a cocktail or a beer.

If you are the Treasurer of the state you may be able to afford it, but not many young people can afford an excessive number of drinks at those sorts of prices, so they consume alcohol before they go out and visit clubs and bars, where they will, of course, have something further to drink.

What the licensees are saying is that, if there are licensees breaching the current laws—that is, alcohol cannot be served to intoxicated persons—crack down on them, the ones who are offending. The police minister makes this point, too, and I agree with him.

If people are breaching the peace outside the venues, crack down on them. We need a greater police presence. The minister thinks that he has a major point, because a couple of years ago I raised the issue of an increased police presence in the CBD. It is entirely consistent with the position that I am putting today. The solution to this problem is not a curfew that punishes everybody; the solution to this problem is to tackle those who are causing the problem, and we need police to do that. If people are misbehaving in the streets, in public, we need to crack down on them, and we need police to crack down on any licensee who is breaking the law by selling alcohol to clearly intoxicated persons. That is fair enough. The licensees will accept that but, in the end, in many cases, it is not the licensees and the management of the venues who offend.

One particular licensee said to me that, in the discussion he had with officers from the liquor licensing enforcement unit—and I will not put their names on the record at this stage—when he challenged the officers with this particular argument, they said, 'Look, we accept that the management of these venues is not the problem.' If the management of the venues is not the problem, why then are commercial enterprises being penalised and why then are mainly young people who attend these venues about to be penalised by the government?

As I said, I will not go through all of the arguments in relation to the curfew—there will be other occasions for that—but I highlight it as an example of why I hope a motion like this might be accepted. Before the government, its caucus and the parliament goes down the path of a knee-jerk response to the latest issue, I hope that someone sits back and looks at it dispassionately. I have quoted from articles in The Sunday Age. There may well be other reputable bodies quoting research studies that challenge some of the work from the National Health and Medical Research Council and a survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, although, as I said, that survey evidently involved 20,000 participants.

I readily concede that there may well be other studies and there may well be other academics who challenge the validity of these issues, but let us at least have somebody in South Australia have a look at this matter before we charge willy-nilly down a certain path, whether it be a curfew at 3 o'clock, or anything else. The point that I have made to some licensees—and some of them are out there making this argument—is that it is better to have a curfew at three, because you never know what the government, or somebody else, might want to do. They might want to make it 2 o'clock. My argument to some licensees is that, once they have a curfew at 3 o'clock, they will want to continually cut the curfew back. It will not stop at 3 o'clock.

Already evidently tonight the Mayor of Glenelg is saying that there should be a 12 o'clock curfew for the hotels in his area. I think the current curfew, or lockout, I should say, is 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Inevitably, once your foot is in the door in relation to whatever the time is—2 or 3 o'clock—there will be pressure for it to be cut back further when it comes to reducing the capacity for people to enjoy Adelaide's nightlife.

The final point I make in relation to the curfew is that the motion talks about only the CBD. So, those of you who know the West Thebby pub, which has a 24-hour licence—I see a nod—the Arkaba, which goes to at least 5 o'clock, the Royal, places like the Hackney, and others, which are very close to the CBD, of course, they will not have a lockout enforced. Therefore, people will be attracted to those particular venues.

In Melbourne, a very vibrant entertainment industry has developed in Chapel Street, which is further out of the Melbourne CBD than the West Thebby, the Royal, the Hackney or, indeed, the Arkaba in Adelaide. Whilst all this is going on—and I do not oppose it—the casino has its own act. I think it can take in 5,000 or 6,000 drinkers and gamblers of an evening, so if anyone is going to benefit from people being forced out at 2 or 3 o'clock on a Saturday or Sunday morning, or whenever it happens to be, it is the casino. If I were in the casino's position, I would be rubbing my hands together with glee, because I will be the only game in town. Everybody else's commercial enterprise will be disadvantaged and the only place to go will be the casino.

The government is talking about a token attempt to try to convince the casino to close down the Loco Bar—or Loco's—on North Terrace. I do not know what the casino wants to do, but I would be amazed if it agrees to a voluntary lockout of Loco's. But, even if it did, there is still room for another 5,000 or 6,000 people in the drinking and gambling areas of the rest of the casino.

As I said, I am expressing a personal view in relation to this. The party will determine the position in relation to the motion to refer this matter to the Social Development Committee. I am certainly very sympathetic to the principles which underlay this motion, and I certainly hope my party will support the reference to the Social Development Committee. If this matter is referred to the Social Development Committee, I hope that members will throw some light, some substance, some fact and some evidence on this debate rather than the knee-jerk political stunts and responses which, sadly, we have seen so far.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. J.M. Gazzola.

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