Page 3277 - Week 11 - Thursday, 12 September 1991
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Mr Collaery: Mr Speaker, the rules of the house require an unqualified withdrawal.
Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, I withdraw it in an unqualified way, but I will replace it by saying that what Dr Kinloch is about is spreading furphies about the problems of alcohol abuse with the view to grandstanding on this issue. This is not a positive measure.
MR COLLAERY (4.00): Mr Speaker, earlier this year a credible report was published estimating that the misuse of alcohol is costing the Australian community at least $6 billion a year. That information comes at a time when we learn from a national survey that ACT people were, as the Canberra Times reported, consuming more alcohol, as I understood it, than the rest of Australia on a per capita basis.
This loss to the community of $6 billion a year was put to the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy on 27 March 1991, which I attended with my colleague Mr Humphries. I think it ill behoves Mr Connolly to speak the way he did, because he will have to take his place at the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, and he will find that much of what he said is refuted by the black and white statistical evidence before that council, which is part of the Federal Drug Offensive.
The Rally believes that there should be an early inquiry, independently, into the sale and distribution of liquor, including the licensing of premises in the Australian Capital Territory. This is not a proposal which is restricted solely to legal and legislative reforms. Mr Connolly entirely missed the point of the MPI. It is an appropriate juncture - now that GALA has been abolished, now that law officers are taking on the full responsibilities in this role and at a time when the Territory has recently had self-government - at which to have this inquiry.
It may well result in a different structure for the administration of liquor, and gambling, perhaps. But certainly it is time for an inquiry to see whether the Law Office is the appropriate place for many of these regulatory functions. The inquiry must be independent, because there are strong social links between political parties and the liquor industry. All of us - and I include myself - have friends and acquaintances in that industry, and some of us have indeed been on the boards of directors of licensed premises. And, of course, as a practitioner I have many liquor licenses for clients.
I hasten to say that no-one in the Rally is presently a director of licensed premises; but at least two, to my knowledge, are members of licensed clubs. They are not wowsers, as was implied of Dr Kinloch. As well, the Labor Party has its own
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