Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Ageing (Senator Ellison) to a question without notice asked by Senator Allison today, relating to alcohol abuse.

On the very day when we are to deal with a massive set of bills, one measure of which is to completely ban alcohol in Indigenous communities, the best this government could do to defend itself regarding the very serious problem that is looming not just in Indigenous communities but more broadly in society is to provide a list of spending programs—$3 million, $4 million and $25 million over several years—in answer to my question.

In fact, Australia spends about $1.3 billion on drug policy to do with illicit drugs, but only a very small amount on alcohol abuse. As we know, alcohol is a major contributor to death, to hospitalisations and, as we found out this week, to serious brain injury in this country. So, in the same week that we are dealing with this legislation, the Prime Minister has effectively scoffed at the fact that Defence Force soldiers were seen binge drinking in a YouTube video, and ARBIAS produced a report about alcohol related brain injury, in which it said that more than two million people are risking brain damage through alcohol abuse. We also saw a story about the alcohol industry targeting young people with ready-to-drink alcopops and that these posed very serious problems.

Research shows that 7½ million working days are lost due to alcohol abuse, and the economic impact of that amounts to $1.2 billion every year. Families are also torn apart, domestic violence is rife as a result, and we are experiencing that in our hospital system. Police services are being overstretched as a result, and our courts are being clogged up. In fact, 10 people die every day in Australia as a result of binge drinking.

Of course, it does not suit this government’s ideology to deal with this problem. It would much sooner look at illicit drugs and say, ‘This is the real problem that is being faced in this country.’ That is certainly where all of the money is going. It just is not reasonable, because, as I said, around one in eight Australians right now risks alcohol related brain damage because of current risky drinking levels. The researchers that produced this report said that the future, in terms of brain damage, is looking very grim because of the very high levels of binge drinking and consumption generally in the younger age group. Some of this brain damage will not be seen until some years hence.

It is important that governments turn their minds to this issue, look at the tax system and see how low-alcohol products might be facilitated. For years and years, people have been calling for better labelling on alcohol products. The very tiny writing at the back of the product is not enough to tell parents that under-age drinking is not safe in any quantity. I gather that a proposal is being developed on labelling of alcohol products, but it is too little, too late. In the meantime, alcopops are out there. They are very sweet drinks that resemble fruit drinks and which have an alcohol content that is equivalent to that of full-strength beer. It is not good for teenagers in particular to be drinking these products, and drinking them in a way which is making them drunk, very often in a binge drinking kind of way.

It is disappointing that that was all the minister could come up with. There was no mention of tax reform, serious labelling reform or of whether or not, and how, the government might be working with the states on questions like marketing, advertising and point-of-sale opportunities. There are far too many outlets. We know this about Indigenous communities—places like Alice Springs have huge numbers of grog outlets. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.