Page 4786 - Week 16 - Monday, 25 November 1991
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MR BERRY (Minister for Health and Minister for Sport) (12.01): This is really about a bunch of people trying to share out the law and order vote on the basis of anecdotal evidence about what might or might not happen in relation to alcohol consumption around bus interchanges. Opposition members have decided that the punitive model - penalties and prohibition - is the answer as far as law and order zealots are concerned. This is not evident from the report of the committee that looked into this matter. For example, GALA - the then Gaming and Liquor Authority - put the view:
... similar legislation in South Australia and Western Australia did not work because, as with move-on powers, the result tends to be that people simply move somewhere else to drink.
People say that it gets them away from interchanges. We are about fixing the problem, not shifting it somewhere else. That is the difference between us and you people. The report goes on:
GALA indicated that in Adelaide's Hindley Street, foot police had appeared to be far more effective as a deterrent than had "dry areas" legislation.
The police just go out and arrest people for hoon behaviour and control it. It is not about prohibition and punitive measures. That is not what control is. Labor moved to do something about it. That is what is burning these people opposite.
We understand that you have to start in the school system to make sure that something is done about the consumption of alcohol amongst our young people. We are not going to discriminate against our young people because of the images and models that society demonstrates to young people as being appropriate. We are going to fix the problem. Unlike the people opposite, we are not going to sit around. We are not going to go for the punitive model; we are not going to go for prohibition. We are going to end up fixing the problem.
Dr Kinloch talked about our efforts thus far as marginal issues. They are not marginal at all. What we are doing is dealing with the problem at its root. Clearly, the indications are that 40 per cent of young people from 12 to 16 years of age - young men, at least - had been involved in binge drinking, in the course of a survey that was conducted by the Government. Something has to be done about that. There is no point going into the bus interchanges and proposing prohibition and punitive measures. You have to get to the problem at its root cause. You have to get to them within their peer groups, in the education system, and so on. You have to provide money for educative programs, and that is what Labor is doing. We are about fixing the problem.
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