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Kevin Rudd's realisation that alcohol is out of control ("We're in booze epidemic - Kevin Rudd", Herald Sun, 21 Feb 08) is welcome because a large part of the solution is within his grasp.
In The Lucky Country, published in the early sixties, Donald Horne wrote "Australia has never been an alcoholic society in which drink was necessary to practically all social activity." But today we cannot make the same boast. We draw no boundaries around alcohol - it is a product for every occasion, every activity, day and night, 24/7.
As a result our alcohol problems are obvious right across Australia. South Australian hospitals admit twice as many people for alcohol intoxication as they did five years ago. Ambulance officers in Victoria resuscitate fourteen year olds on the street after alcoholic overdoses. Violence in Melbourne is so bad even John Nieuwenhuysen, the man who accepts the credit for designing deregulation, now says things have gone too far.
Yet the states cannot take really effective action because they are trapped by the national competition policy which removes their ability to restrict the supply of alcohol. When he was Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello fined state governments for keeping controls on alcohol licenses because it reduced "competitiveness." As a result of this policy Victoria has expanded the number of licensed venues from 4,000 to 17,000 and pubs and clubs can trade around the clock.
Our politicians are trained by economic puritans to believe economic competition trumps social responsibility. Yesterday, Victoria's Mental Health Minister said "We need to find the right message", but the answer does not lie in a snappy slogan. It lies in thinking about the place of alcohol in our society, and not just the economy.
Competition policy insists consumers must be able to buy alcohol at all times, so nightclubs and bars can trade all night, regardless of the consequences. Every type of business can serve alcohol: bookshops, vendors of flowers, hairdressers. Victoria has even licensed a video store and a laundromat, and now supermarkets want beer, scotch, vodka and rum on the grocery shelves next to the lemonade.
Once we understood that children deserve protection from alcohol, but free-market rules means there are no rules. The market is flooded with alcoholic drinks that look and taste like soft drinks. Research shows they are favoured by the youngest underage drinkers, but it would be "uncompetitive" to ban them. The new generation of premixed spirits contains 9% alcohol, twice as strong as regular beer, and packs nearly three standard drinks into a single can. They are an open invitation to the binge drinker, but it would be "discriminatory" to take them off the market.
The National Competition Council argues greater competition makes for economic efficiency and lower prices. It treats alcohol as an everyday product, like milk or eggs. Naturally everyone enjoys paying less, but lowering prices for booze allows drinkers to drink more. We see that means more violence, more drink-driving, more accidents and injuries, and more alcohol casualties occupying hospital beds. The cost to the health system alone is enormous.
We have forgotten what previous generations knew: while alcohol gives great enjoyment to many, it is a potentially dangerous product that is not for everyone and requires special treatment. A product that kills more than 3,000 people every year and puts 70,000 people into hospital must be treated differently to other products in the marketplace.
No one is suggesting people can't enjoy a drink. But we need to balance reasonable access to alcohol with the alcohol anarchy that is all too obvious on the streets of all our suburbs and towns.
If Prime Minister Rudd is serious about ending the alcohol epidemic, he and the state Premiers must get together and remove alcohol from competition policy. Special products can be exempted from the NCP. Alcohol is one of those. It would allow state governments and local governments to impose controls on alcohol that would make the streets and roads safer. And it would help to protect young people from premature drinking.
Mr Rudd has promised to end the blame game between the state and federal governments over health. Starting with Australia's alcohol burden will be his first test.
Geoff Munro
Director, Community Alcohol Action Network
Australian Drug Foundation
Date: 2008-02-26
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