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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2272 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: We have heard you talk about how you want to go off and drink somewhere in private and we heard all sorts of bizarre things in your comments before. All I can say is that the Government's view is that we are a long way from being able to determine exactly what role extended trading hours are playing in the problems to do with the abuse of alcohol in our community. Therefore, we have some more work to do before we can decide what the fate of 4.00 am closing should be.

Ms Tucker has referred to a round table between the parties in this place concerning the future of 4.00 am closing and about a range of other initiatives which are designed to deal with the problems of alcohol abuse in our community, from a harm minimisation point of view. Mr Speaker, I am a believer in a harm minimisation approach to a number of serious problems to do with the use and abuse of legal and illicit drugs in our community. I therefore think that this approach should be pursued, if possible, in this area as well. I support further exploration of the issues which are outlined in Ms Tucker's paper, which she has already tabled. I believe that it represents a way of our being able to get to the heart of the issue, which is so important to the wellbeing of our community and which, as Ms Tucker has already indicated, costs this community countless millions every year through abuse of alcohol.

Mr Speaker, I suppose, to be very succinct - and I want to be brief tonight because of the hour - there is a very simple reason why we need to come back and explore this issue further.

Mr Corbell: You do not know how to be succinct.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR HUMPHRIES: Obviously, Mr Moore, he must have had some sort of little headache this morning that left him with a bit of a wobbly sense of balance. So, I will be very succinct indeed. I recall a serious assault which occurred a year or so ago in Canberra. It was a very serious assault. It occurred after there was an altercation between two groups of people in particular premises trading late at night in the ACT. The two groups moved outside these particular premises. They had gone to a place nearby. They had been in a fight of some sort, and one person had been very seriously assaulted.

Mr Speaker, subsequently I happened to be talking to the licensee of the premises concerned, and I put it to this person that what had happened was a matter that he, as the licensee, needed to be concerned about because the problem had originated on his premises and moved off them and manifested itself in a serious assault. His response to me was, "It was not my problem. It did not happen on my premises". Mr Speaker, I believe that that summarises the nub of the problem we have to deal with here. We have to make the liquor industry in this town - particularly that relatively small sector of the industry which chooses to trade late at night - understand that problems that flow from the abuse of alcohol are problems that all of us have a responsibility to deal with, but most particularly the licensees themselves.

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