Page 1120 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 1991
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I was pleased to hear the comments that various people have made about advertising. I believe that it is possible to curtail the level of advertising purely within the ACT - on billboards around the place. When we looked at it, there were not a great number of places - because of our policy on advertising generally and on billboards - where liquor is advertised; around the stadium, and around Natex, perhaps. I do not know whether they are currently there, but these are places where it can be done.
That is desirable, and I think there is agreement here that it can be diminished. Most significantly, the advertising that we see on television is somewhat beyond our control, but that is where this has to start. The Chief Minister's response indicated that this issue will be raised with the Commonwealth Government's Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy. Mr Humphries made mention of it. I am sure that you will speak out very strongly in encouragement of bans on alcohol advertising. I urge you to keep these very important matters on the agenda.
Where there was a problem of public misbehaviour identified, inevitably it related to alcohol. So much of this report, and so much of other consideration of our problems in Canberra, focused on alcohol. We have to do everything we can to try to diminish the problem that abuse of alcohol causes. The Violence - Directions for Australia report from the National Committee on Violence makes a point that I think is very significant - one that demonstrates how difficult it is to overcome the problem. They comment:
The fact remains that drinking has been an integral part of Australian culture since European settlement. It is particularly central to the culture of young males. Hard drinking (and often, fighting) has been a central part of male identity.
That is the culture of alcohol. It is a very difficult one to overcome, yet I believe that it is necessary to take steps - even in Canberra, even in this relatively small community of 300,000 people - to do so. That same report draws our attention to the fact that its research concluded that more young people are starting to drink alcohol, and at an earlier age, and they do so in a manner that might be described as binge drinking.
It seems that the problem is accelerating. We must take steps to try to reverse that development. It is particularly undesirable. It was my view on the committee, as we heard our evidence, that alcohol is a significant problem when it comes to the public misbehaviour that we were looking at. Nevertheless, alcohol plays a much more
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