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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2627 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The consultants note at this point:

One of the challenges of this project will be an endeavour to see if this observation applies to the Australian Capital Territory.

The authors of a report which was the result of a project supported by the European office of the World Health Organisation, also cited in this consultants' report, claim that sufficient cross-cultural evidence exists to suggest that conclusions are generally applicable. The Darwin study showed an overall increase in alcohol consumption and an increase in serious and aggravated assault in the wider areas of Darwin. Of the 28 references cited here, 13 did not really address the issue of regulation of trading hours, eight appeared to see regulation as counterproductive, and the rest were fairly inconclusive. In other words, from these references, which have really not substantiated the validity of a trial, for some reason the consultants come out saying, "We think we should go ahead with the trial anyway".

I already noted this morning what I thought was of value in this. One of the things that were of value was the statistics on alcohol-related harms, and I will repeat them. Mr Humphries said, "Of course the police are well aware of this", but I was very shocked and I will repeat it so that it is on the record again: 5 per cent of all deaths, 30 per cent of all road deaths, 23 per cent of suicides, 51 to 73 per cent of assaults, 40 per cent of domestic violence offences, 77 per cent of street offences, 58 per cent of malicious damage, 59 per cent of noise complaints and 20 per cent of all medical work are related to alcohol harm. It is also stated in the same reference that the Commonwealth generates $3.6 billion per year from alcohol and tobacco taxes but the percentage return to the community is very small. The Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia also released a report recently, about which the consultants say:

The ADCA report calls on all Australian governments to:

* increase funding available for prevention, research, education, intervention and treatment of drug related problems;

* ensure that adequate treatment programs and services are available to all people experiencing drug related problems;

* involve non-government organisations, local communities and consumer groups in decision making, especially in service delivery, research, policy development and planning; and

* provide increased professional support (training and professional development, terms and conditions, career options) for people working in the drug field.

On my reading of this report, the most consistent evidence is that it is recognised that the more useful reforms in drug-related harm were responsible serving practices, which came out in quite a few of the references; and training of crowd controllers. Quite a few of them were consistent in commenting that, whatever the closing time, that is where you will find the traffic accidents and the violence.

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