Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister please update the House on police views on binge drinking?

Bob Debus (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for her question and indicate that last week I attended the regular national meeting of police ministers and police commissioners. There was there unanimous agreement that alcohol related violence and binge drinking is the single biggest drain on police resources across the country, particularly on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. One police minister spoke of a recent visit to Los Angeles, where law enforcement authorities apparently expressed amazement that so many Australian venues have 5 am liquor licences. That is something that we are hearing more concern about from our local communities.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Simpkins interjecting

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cowan is warned!

Bob Debus (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In March, the day after the Prime Minister announced a new national strategy to address the binge drinking epidemic, the police commissioner in New South Wales, Andrew Scipione, said that any move to tackle alcohol abuse was a ‘wise investment’. He described that abuse as an enormous national problem and he said that 70 per cent of every police engagement with a member of the community in the streets of New South Wales has alcohol as a factor. That is an astounding statistic.

Recent research shows that the New South Wales Police Force spends the equivalent of the salaries of 1,000 full-time constables just to deal with alcohol related issues. Two weeks ago, Commissioner Scipione said drinking habits have changed. There had been what he called a normalisation of binge drinking, with many young Australians now going out determined to get drunk whatever the consequences, and that involved both men and women. The commissioner pointed out that he was not himself a wowser. He said it was, however, time to listen to the community and to work to change the drinking culture. Those comments were echoed by commissioners and commanders across the country. Young people who binge drink think they are bulletproof. Young men get into fights and young women are left vulnerable to sexual predators.

The link between alcohol use and road trauma is also well known. There is a wealth of evidence to show that a substantial proportion of assaults are alcohol related. A trends and issues paper by the Australian Institute of Criminology is to be released later this month and it will show that recorded assaults have increased steadily over the past 10 years by over 40 per cent. There is recent research which conservatively estimates that alcohol related crime in Australia costs $1.7 billion a year.

Nobody wants to spoil the enjoyment of having a few drinks, but moderate consumption is not the problem. Police commissioners have praised the government’s recent decision to increase the tax on premixed drinks. We cannot ignore advice from officers who are in the front line dealing with a major national problem. Frankly, criticism of any measure to reduce binge drinking is very hard to fathom. A definition of binge drinking can indeed only assist responsible drinking.