Page 443 - Week 02 - Thursday, 22 February 1990
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The majority of young people are not exhibiting unusual behaviour. They may be boisterous, occasionally loud, physically energetic and take up a lot of space, but these things are not unusual behaviours.
There are problems, as I have said, but in the context of a city of almost 300,000 people who generate a great deal of activity, it is not surprising that there are problems from time to time.
After hearing so many people, the committee came to the opinion that where these problems occur they are almost invariably due to the abuse of alcohol. There is no question about that; over and over again, that is what we were told. But let us also put this into context. Take the Food and Wine Frolic, for example. Figures were presented to us that 100,000 to 150,000 attend there and they keep coming, year after year, so it is obviously a popular and successful event. During that event there may be 20 or 30 arrests for drunkenness - and that would be the upper limit. To the police that is a darn nuisance. It requires a great deal of work, and that is their perspective of it. But by and large the Canberra citizens thoroughly enjoy the event, so I think that is the context in which we are expressing these views.
If we take note of the terms of reference and make some recommendations to ameliorate such problems as exist, predominantly we have to look at alcohol. Therefore, we have made a number of recommendations there. In passing, I will mention some that seem to me to be more significant, and my colleagues will no doubt indicate those that they give greater priority to. We would like to see more in the way of server intervention programs. We thoroughly dislike the situation where beer is continued to be served to people who are long past the limit of any responsibilities.
Another matter we would like to see is a scale of penalties for breaches of the Liquor Act. At present the only penalty that can be imposed is cancellation of a licence, and that is a severe penalty. We think that a scale of penalties should be written into the Act so that there are fines or suspensions for a short period so that the response from the Gaming and Liquor Authority is proper for the breach that has occurred.
We want to support some of the recommendations in the "Violence, Directions for Australia" document from the National Committee on Violence. Three of those recommendations were of particular interest to me. One was that the excise on low-alcohol beer should be adjusted to make that type of beer more popular, health warnings should also be put on alcoholic beverage containers and the advertising of alcohol in the electronic media should be banned. We would very much like to see that happen. Along with that we would like to see the advertising of beer and
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