Michael ThornLast week the NSW ACT Alcohol Policy Alliance (NAAPA), a new coalition of health, community, and frontline organisations working to prevent and reduce alcohol-related harms, was launched in Canberra.
NAAPA’s ‘arrival’ was applauded by Attorney-General, Simon Corbell, MLA, and the ACT’s new Chief of Police, Rudi Lammers, with both men acknowledging that more needs to be done to reduce alcohol harms in the ACT.
Simon Corbell, MLA at the Canberra launch of NAAPA
Less enthusiastic about NAAPA, and highly critical of one of its founding members, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE), was ClubsACT.
Its Chief Executive, Jeff House, called for a public debate on the role of alcohol in Australia (We need a sober debate on the misuse of alcohol, Canberra Times, 9 August 2013).
As an organisation working to change the way Australia drinks, FARE welcomes community conversations about alcohol.
So first, as with any debate, and in the interests of openness and transparency, it seems only right to identify the two teams.
For the affirmative, we have FARE, an independent, charitable organisation working to prevent the harmful use of alcohol in Australia.
For the negative we have ClubsACT, an industry association representing licenced clubs in the ACT.
While FARE exists to prevent and reduce alcohol-related harms, the alcohol industry, ClubsACT and the licenced clubs exist to sell alcohol.
Mr House states that public policy is not served well by misinformation, half-truths and distortions.
I couldn’t agree more, and with that in mind, I wish to canvas some of the points raised by Mr House.
At its Canberra launch, NAAPA flagged it will advocate for a range of measures to reduce alcohol-related harms in the Territory, but it was NAAPA’s proposal for reduced trading hours that has most upset ClubsACT.
The evidence shows that the introduction of a modest reduction in trading hours will lead to a very significant reduction in alcohol-related harms.
In rejecting the proposal, ClubsACT argues that such a policy would mean all venues would close at the same time.
This is simply not true. NAAPA is calling on the Government to wind back trading hours to 3am only for those venues currently trading beyond that time. To suggest otherwise is deliberately misleading. Licensed venues would continue to have a range of different trading hours as part of their conditions.
In raising its concerns, ClubsACT also points to data showing that alcohol-related crime has fallen, and national alcohol consumption is down, using those figures to imply that the job is done and that no further action to reduce harms is required.
This again highlights the differences between NAAPA and the alcohol industry.
It begs the question; how many alcohol-related domestic assaults are acceptable, how many road fatalities, how many incidents of alcohol-related violence on a Friday or Saturday night?
Thankfully, at the launch of NAAPA earlier this month we witnessed strong indications from both the Attorney-General and the Chief of Police that they believe the job of reducing alcohol harms is not complete. Both agree that the levels of alcohol-related violence in the ACT community, while lower, are still not acceptable.
>ClubsACT also argue the problem is not the alcohol, but the drinker.
It’s an argument straight from the alcohol industry playbook.
It’s far better business for the alcohol industry to blame one or two bad apples, instead of embracing effective evidence-based measures that might impact on a licenced venue’s bottom line.
Mr House also suggests that the effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined not by alcohol, but by cultural rules and norms, quoting research conducted by the Portman Group.
What he fails to acknowledge is that the Portman Group is in fact a UK-based alcohol industry front organisation.
>He also fails to acknowledge that increased availability, aggressive promotion and advertising, and ever-cheaper pricing all contribute to the normalisation of alcohol and impact on our ‘culture’ and patterns of consumption.
He recalls how disappointed he was that a violent on field altercation in a recent Origin game was celebrated by local media.
Apparently his keen observation doesn’t extend to footballers acting badly on and off the field and then standing proudly in front of their sponsor’s alcohol-adorned backdrops to apologise for their indiscretions.
ClubsACT accuses FARE of pushing its national agenda here in the ACT, yet alcohol use and misuse presents the greatest public health challenge faced by any government in Australia today, and the reality is that no jurisdiction in the country escapes unscathed.
If ClubsACT genuinely welcomes a robust debate on measures, which would reduce alcohol harms in the ACT, then I would have expected it would welcome the input of NAAPA, a broad-based alliance of health experts, frontline workers and academics.
If we want effective measures to reduce alcohol-related harms in the ACT, we need to ensure the alcohol industry isn’t the only voice in the room when those measures are developed.
It is worth asking why ClubsACT has been so vocal in its opposition of NAAPA.
ClubsACT wishes to portray itself as serving the community.
However, in stridently opposing a reduction in trading hours, ClubsACT risks the appearance of only being interested in ensuring its members serve more drinks and keep cash registers ringing, regardless of the consequences.
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