Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

Can I say how pleased I am to be able to speak to the tabling of the report Alcohol, hurting people and harming communities. I thank the chair, the member for Murray, for her leadership of the committee. I thank the other members of the committee for their forbearance—I hope there was not too much of that, but there may have been a bit!—and the convivial way in which we worked together, the collaborative way in which we discussed the issues and the way in which we were able to come together to have a unanimous report with recommendations.

I also thank our secretariat, who are sitting here in the advisers gallery, for their wonderful work. They showed a great appreciation of the issues which were of concern to us and were of great assistance to us in coming to our deliberations.

I want to thank all of those who gave evidence for the report. It is well-informed and canvasses a wide range of issues and highlights, as the chair has said, the tragic impact alcohol is having on communities across Australia. The committee was able to interrogate the issues closely despite, in some cases, a lack of cooperation from some. In particular, I note the lack of cooperation from the Northern Territory government, who refused to allow us to speak with those with the most knowledge as witnesses to the committee. That included the health professionals at the Alice Springs Hospital, who had firsthand and ongoing daily experience of the impacts of alcohol on the health of the community and on violence because of alcohol misuse.

Significantly, the committee was able to assess what should be done to address the misuse of alcohol and the impact of alcohol in families and communities. The report considers under a number of headings the social and economic determinants of harmful alcohol use, health and alcohol related harm, best practice strategies to minimise alcohol misuse and alcohol related harm, best practice alcohol abuse treatments and support, FAS and FASD, and determining patterns of supply and demand. As a result of those deliberations around those headings, a number of very important recommendations have been made. I want to highlight just a number of them, because they will be contentious. There is no question that there will be people in the community who will be opposed to what we are recommending. Nevertheless, we believe that these recommendations are vitally important. Recommendation 6, for example, goes to the question of advertising and suggests that the Commonwealth take steps to establish a nationally consistent and coordinated approach to alcohol advertising, including banning alcohol advertising during times and in forms of media which may influence children and, significantly—and I think probably most contentiously—banning alcohol sponsorship of sporting teams and sporting events, including but not limited to those in which children participate or may be involved. There is another aspect of that, which is included, and people may want to refer to that themselves.

The recommendation which I think is going to be of most use to us, in terms of harm, goes to the issue of a minimum floor price and the introduction of a volumetric tax. The report speaks significantly about these things and talks of the evidence. It gives the recommendation of the introduction of a national minimum floor price for alcohol and that prompt consideration be given to the recommendation on the Henry review of volumetric tax.

Lastly, knowing that my time is limited, I want to refer to recommendation 8, which is that the Northern Territory government do something which was successful in the past. They need to reintroduce the banned drinkers register and set up a comprehensive data collection and evaluation program which monitors criminal justice, hospital and health data. That, I believe, is self-evident. We also recommend, at 9, that the Commonwealth re-establish the National Indigenous Drug and Alcohol Committee—very, very important. And in other parts we talk about the need for justice reinvestment and other preventative measures.

I commend the report. I thank all of those who have made a contribution to it and most particularly my colleagues on the committee.

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