Booze floor price ends, fight starts

By ERWIN CHLANDA

The new buzzword “minoritarian governing” describes minorities getting their way by making a lot of noise or grasping media attention, disproportionate to their place in the community.

Right now it’s firing up the pseudo debate about the alcohol floor price, a measure assuming that people will drink less if they have to pay more, which the new CLP government is knocking on the head.

The government says the Minimum Unit Price (MUP) of $1.30 per standard drink, introduced by Labor in 2018, has not been working.

The government quotes statistics while opponents to the change do not. They refer to the “devastating consequences of alcohol harms in our communities”.

Hospitality Minister Marie-Clare Boothby said in a media release: “The alcohol floor price is a blunt, ineffective tool that fails to address the complexity of alcohol-related harm in the NT.

“Alcohol-related assaults have increased by 38% in the past eight years under Labor.

“People aren’t drinking less; they have changed what they drink, from wine boxes to stronger spirits in glass bottles – which then can be used as weapons.”

The minister says although wholesale data found a reduction in cask wine sales, there is a direct increase of 17% in consumption of hard spirits and 36% of mixed spirits.

But promoters of the floor price claim there is strong community opposition to its abolition, quoting a letter from the Foundation from Alcohol Research and Education (FARE). It is signed by a little more than 200 people, mostly staff of NGOs, medical professionals and academics.

The Alice Springs People’s Alcohol Action Coalition’s spokesperson John Boffa is quoted: “We know that at this time of year violence escalates, and services are under even more pressure.

“We need to be focusing on preventing harm in any way we can – which is why the floor price on alcohol is so important. It’s proven to be effective in reducing rates of violence.”

But FARE provided a Menzies School of Health Research 2023 study struggling to support these claims. It quotes studies from Scotland, Canada, Wales – commonly regarded as irrelevant to the NT.

The study says in part:

• Central Australian studies demonstrated reductions in ICU admissions and emergency department attendances but the impact of MUP cannot be separated from the impact of other measures introduced at the same time.

• An NT report concluded that it was “unlikely that the MUP materially impacted the use of alternative substances”. Two reports noted the lack of data available to investigate this in detail.

• Two reports found significant declines in the NT overall, but the impact of other interventions cannot be separated outside of the Darwin region as MUP was part of a package of reforms.

There appeared to be no convincing contradiction to the government assertions, nor to the tongue-in-cheek survey “with a limited sample size” by Professor Rolf Gerritsen.

The NT Liquor Commission declined to comment. It even conceals who is sitting on it: Clicking on “Members” on its website leads nowhere.

UPDATE Nov 29, 7.50am

Historian Alex Nelson provided the names of the members of the Liquor Commission which he says are published on its website.

The names are: Chairperson Russell Goldflam, deputy chairperson Jodi Truman,
Greg Shanahan – Acting Deputy Chairperson, Prof Phillip Carson, Elizabeth Stephenson, Bernard Dwyer, Katrina Fong Lim, Denys Stedman, Rachael Shanahan and Ebony Abbott-McCormack.

The Alice Springs News tried several times to use the link to the members’ names on commission’s website but did not succeed. Two readers, Vicki Gillick and David Carpenter, also got through (see blow). It’s a mystery!