The nation's harmful relationship with alcohol is damaging children from the womb onwards, a Northern Territory inquiry has heard.
A parliamentary inquiry is being held in the NT into foetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), which causes facial deformities and mental and emotional disabilities in children whose mothers drink while pregnant.
The problem is more visible in remote Aboriginal communities where drinking rates are high, but it can also affect women in urban areas, and its prevalence is so far unknown.
"What we know is an understatement of the problem," Menzies School of Health Research director Alan Cass told the inquiry.
Health professionals were not adequately trained to recognise FASD, he said, and it could be misdiagnosed.
Priscilla Collins, the chief executive of the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, said the justice system knew little about FASD, and there should be a medical professional stationed at magistrates courts who could identify the disorder in those charged with a crime.
"FASD-affected defendants are more inclined to agree to propositions put to them, they may have poor understanding of time sequences, and increased difficulty in following court proceedings," she said.
Mandatory sentencing in the territory was harmful to FASD-afflicted offenders, Ms Collins said, and judges should consider the disorder when sentencing.
However, the chief executive of the National Organisation for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome and Related Disorders, Vicki Russell, told the inquiry that Australia's drinking culture was the overall problem.
"We have a social and cultural issue here that is more critical than FASD and it's called alcohol," she said.
"These children are not only exposed to alcohol in the pre-birth period but then they're brought into a culture of drinking."
Ms Russell said an increase in the drinking age meant the uptake age would also come later.
A drinking age of 18 means teenagers might start to drink at 14, whereas a drinking age of 21 might result in them beginning to drink at 16, buying them more time to develop without the harmful influence of alcohol.
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