Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier today I attended the launch of the Alcohol Advertising Review Board's annual report for 2014-15, along with my colleagues from the Parliamentary Friends of Drug Law Reform, Senator Richard Di Natale and Dr Stone, the member for Murray.

The AARB highlights a serious gap in Australia's current approach to regulating the promotion of alcohol. Given the very considerable direct and indirect harm caused by alcohol, it simply does not make sense that we take a hands-off and a light-touch approach through self-regulation, when the industry continues to promote dangerous drinking and often promotes such conduct to young people.

I want to thank Mike Daube, Julia Stafford, and Hannah Pierce from the McCusker Centre for Action on Alcohol and Youth; Cancer Council WA; the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education; and the Public Health Association for their work in this space.

Reducing alcohol-related harm, including the role of alcohol in domestic violence needs to be a much more urgent and better-resourced public health priority. We have done great work in the area of tobacco control, but alcohol-related harm continues to be a cultural and regulatory blind spot despite the fact that, as shown in the report, the community overwhelmingly supports better, stronger and more effective regulation.

At a time when many Australians are enjoying the football finals in various codes, we should all pay close attention to the wall-to-wall repetition of advertising designed to associate alcohol consumption with healthy activity, fun, young people and success.

The reality is that dangerous alcohol consumption is filling the emergency departments of our hospitals with the victims of road accidents and violence. It is time we acted to prevent this.

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