The newly formed Tamworth crime prevention group on Friday decided it would investigate whether a midnight curfew on licensed premises – that is the closing of venues and liquor outlets at 12 each night – could help it win the battle of the booze. The move comes in the wake of police statistics that show eight out of every 10 incidents they’re called out to are related to alcohol. Police in the Oxley police command want leadership for a social issue that has drive crime up and overwhelmingly occupies more of their work. Scott Weber is the president of the Police Association of NSW. In this article, which first appeared on Friday in the Newcastle Herald, Mr Weber writes that when it comes to alcohol and violence, the government should be acting in the best interests of our young people.
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DEALING with the innocent victims of alcohol-fuelled violence is a tough part of any emergency service worker’s job.
When that victim – or the offender – is not much older than a child, it’s even harder.
Alcohol consumption levels in Australia are high by world standards – and our young people are not immune.
In fact, high-risk drinking among young people is a disturbing pattern.
At a recent parliamentary inquiry into strategies to reduce alcohol abuse among young people, experts and stakeholders talked about what is needed to curb alcohol abuse among younger generations.
The sense of deja vu in the room was palpable.
Emergency service workers and experts have been saying the same thing to politicians for years now that the key to reducing the incidence of alcohol-related harms is to limit the access and availability of alcohol.
It sounds simple because it is. In Newcastle we’ve seen first-hand how it can work.
Since modest restrictions, including reduced trading hours, lock-outs and restrictions on high-alcohol content drinks, were introduced in licensed venues across Newcastle back in 2008,
we have seen a 37 per cent decrease in late-night assaults.
And the number of people presenting at hospital emergency departments has dropped by 26 per cent.
When you consider that 56 per cent of all liquor offences in NSW in 2008 occurred on licensed premises, highlighting a clear failure by licensees to take responsible service of alcohol laws seriously, it’s no surprise that introducing measures in licensed venues was going to have an impact.
That doesn’t mean that Newcastle is perfect – there’s still a long way to go.
The chances of someone getting injured as a result of alcohol-fuelled violence in Newcastle this weekend are still too high, but the point is they’re not as high as they were prior to the introduction of those simple measures – nowhere near as high.
There aren’t many social problems that can be curbed so quickly and dramatically – but all the evidence suggests that alcohol-fuelled violence is one of them.
If our politicians were told they could reduce the road toll by 37 per cent tomorrow simply by introducing a few simple little measures, they’d be jumping over themselves to introduce them and then shouting about it from the rooftop of Parliament House.
Our politicians have been sitting on the answer for years now, and in Newcastle we’ve been living the answer since 2008.
Numerous reports and studies showing the impact the Newcastle measures have had have been waved in front of our politicians faces, and the people who see it first-hand every single weekend – police, paramedics, nurses and doctors – have been knocking on their doors begging for them to be introduced elsewhere for years.
So why then did the former state government not introduce the measures that have been so effective in Newcastle elsewhere in the state?
Why weren’t our politicians shouting about the plummeting number of victims of alcohol-fuelled violence from the rooftops of Parliament?
The only logical answer to the lack of desire from our politicians appears to have been the stranglehold the alcohol industry has over our decision makers.
Changes to electoral funding laws have curtailed its influence and there is now nothing to stop the government from acting.
Emergency service workers have a motive for wanting to see alcohol-fuelled violence curbed – we’re being assaulted in record numbers by people who’ve had too much to drink.
And large amounts of our time (70 per cent in the case of police) is taken up dealing with alcohol-related issues.
That’s why we started the Last Drinks coalition of police, paramedics, doctors and nurses.
But that’s not the only reason. Emergency service workers aren’t just men and women in a uniform, we’re also parents, aunts, brothers and sisters.
We know the chances that one day it could be our son or daughter laying on the hospital bed recovering from a boozed-fuelled incident are too high.
The Newcastle measures won’t solve all the alcohol problems our younger generation face, but combined with a strategy on alcohol pricing and promotion and community engagement, they’ll go a long way to significantly curbing them.
Young people are particularly vulnerable to the damaging effects of alcohol – we can’t afford to let our government sit back like its predecessor and pretend it doesn’t know what it can do to help protect them any longer.
Barry O’Farrell has recently shown he is prepared to make decisions in the best interests of the people in NSW.
This is an opportunity for him to ignore sectional interests and make decisions in the best interest of the state’s young people.
