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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3251 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

It is a nonsense to apply this ban just to beer. What about all the other mixer drinks that come in glass bottles? One that comes to mind is a vodka mix. I think they call it a Ruski. Young people drink it all the time. How will they be able to tell at the hospital whether somebody was cut by a bottle that contained Ruski or one that contained beer? Let us be serious about this. What about cider in a bottle? How many people do you see now drinking cider? The only way you will be able to tell whether it was beer or cider in a bottle is if there is a small bit of glass left in a wound.

It is getting to be ridiculous when you ban just beer in glass for 12 hours on New Year's Eve. What a foolish proposal. If you wanted to deal with the issue, if you were serious about it, you would look at all glass. An empty chardonnay bottle, I suspect, hurts a lot more than an empty VB bottle. It is quite a lot heavier and travels further. The glass from such a bottle, I suspect, cuts just as badly. Do you think those who have been denied beer in glass will give up alcohol for the night or until 12 o'clock so that they can get some beer in glass afterwards? Stop kidding yourself.

They will get something in glass, if it suits them-perhaps wine, perhaps rum, perhaps Bacardi, perhaps something even a little flasher than that. If they want to spend a little bit of extra money, they can buy a bottle of Dimple, or they can buy a small flask of sipping whisky in glass. Do you think they are going to give up glass for the night just because you say they cannot have glass beer bottles for 12 hours on New Year's Eve? No, of course, they are not.

This is just foolishness. At the end of the day it will not prove anything. If there is an assessment of what happens in our hospitals, how on earth are hospitals going to be able to demonstrate that the injuries were caused by the glass that contained beer? They are not going to be able to tell. It is just a nonsense to approach it in this way.

If you were to ban the consumption of any alcohol at all in certain areas, then you might be getting close to the issues, but imagine the outcry. How would you define the areas? Imagine the outcry from business and so on.

This is just an attempt to create the impression that the government is doing something about a notional public safety issue on New Year's Eve. It is about creating an impression. It is not about dealing with the problem at all. To deal with the problem properly requires harder, even harsher approaches to the issue, which the government could not withstand and would be rejected by the community for.

This is a silly piece of legislation. It ought to be put in the dustbin. It should be taken away by the Attorney and rejigged. I know that he will get up and argue passionately that the brown glass around beer is far more dangerous than the green glass around apple cider or the glass around chardonnay, whisky, rum or any of those sorts of potent alcoholic beverages.

Beer glass is supposedly far more dangerous. Is it because beer is a working-class drink, perhaps? Is it for some other highly technical reason that escapes me? There is a highly technical reason why the brown glass containing beer is more dangerous than the other glasses! What a lot of nonsense!

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