Are any of you still pursuing your New Years’ detox resolutions? Despite it being right in the middle of Ginuary, I’ll give you fair warning: look away now. Australians’ intake of alcohol has been very much in the news lately, and all this talk of binge-drinking culture is making me thirsty.
According to government-led health advocacy, Australians buy masses of alcohol to drink heavily before going out to bars and pubs, in order to get as inexpensively wasted as possible – this is apparently called pre-loading.
I’d never heard this term before hearing it mentioned around the new year, after the furore following a young man’s death from alcohol-fuelled violence while on a night out in Sydney.
There are three terms associated with drinking outside of licensed venues;
- Pre-loading (drinking at home before going out)
- Side-loading (drinking between venues)
- Post-loading (drinking at home after being out)
This terminology conjures up visions of humans as futuristic cyborgs, having alcohol software loaded into hardware-style bodies. Many of us just call it “having a drink”.
As alcohol prices rise, it is no surprise that this type of behaviour is common. Governance around alcohol is clearly attempting to duplicate the precedent set by tobacco taxation in regards to health, yet indications are that it is not working in the same way. Higher alcohol prices only encourage binge drinking, as people save their alcohol consumption for one big night on the weekend, rather than drinking smaller amounts throughout the week.
Governments like Barry O’Farrell’s in NSW and even the federal government seem to truly believe that the way to stop binge-drinking culture and alcohol-fuelled violence is to price the population out of drinking. Or at least drinking what they enjoy.
Currently beer and spirits are taxed by alcohol content, while wine is taxed by value. The inherent snobbery encased in a system like this is clear, and it has not worked to make us drink more like the French – a civilised glass or two of wine paired with dinner – but has led to Australian wine industry’s reputation being devalued by high volume, low-quality (and priced) products.
For a government that lionises personal freedom and choice, they don’t seem overly concerned about cutting the waste on regulation around getting wasted. Rather than legislating higher alcohol prices through taxation, if government really wants to change behaviour we should be fashioning a culture that is more aware of alcohol, not less.
So I’m suggesting that we encourage the creation of social rituals around drinking at home paired with cultural consumption. Match an excellent nip of whisky with Patrick de Witt’s novel Ablutions, or Charles Jackson’s The Lost Weekend (“one drink was too many and a hundred not enough”). A night in with a good bottle of wine and the wine-snob movie Sideways. A martini while re-watching Mad Men, or Arrested Development (remember, vodka goes bad once it is opened; same goes for gin). Or upload a flute or two of Bolly, paired with Patsy and Eddie in Absolutely Fabulous.
Our federal government is against ‘nanny-statism’ – this isn’t about our health, or the safety of our streets. Government intervention in alcohol pricing, if and when it happens, will primarily be about raising taxation revenue to fill government coffers. Anyone would think our government is wasted.
Anne Treasure works in communications, is a recent survivor of the book industry, and exists mainly on the Internet.
