Do banned drinkers' registers work?

(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)

The Federal and Northern Territory governments have been duelling with conflicting claims over whether an alcohol control measure was working and should be reinstated, or whether it was a waste of time and was right to be axed.

As Murray Silby reports, the banned drinkers' register has become a battleground for politicians debating alcohol-related problems in the NT.

The banned drinkers' register was introduced by the Northern Territory's former Labor government.

It required all people buying alcohol from takeaway outlets to show some form of identity, and aimed to restrict problem drinkers' access to alcohol by putting them on a banned list.

It was thrust to the forefront of political debate when, during her Closing the Gap update in Parliament, Prime Minister Julia Gillard criticised a decision by the newly-elected Country Liberal government to axe the register.

Ms Gillard said she was concerned dropping the register would allow "rivers of grog" to resume flowing into remote Indigenous communities in the Territory.

She said dropping the banned drinkers' register would make it harder to close the gap of Indigenous life expectancy to non-Indigenous people in the NT.

"Since it was pulled down by the Country Liberal Party in the Northern Territory we're hearing worrying reports about the rise in admissions in the emergency department at Alice Springs hospital due to alcohol-related accidents and abuse. People are witnessing more alcohol related-violence. In and around Alice Springs over the Christmas-New Year period, there were at least five alcohol-related deaths. Former banned drinkers are now again on the long list of alcohol-related offences coming before the Alice Springs Magistrates Court each day."

Her criticism of the conservative Country Liberals was supported by federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

And since her speech, Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin and Minister for Indigenous Health Warren Snowdon have continued the attack.

Ms Macklin has told the ABC the register should be reintroduced because it reduced alcohol-related harm.

"The banned drinkers' register certainly had had a positive effect as I said. There's evidence that there were fewer antisocial incidents. We certainly have seen Aboriginal groups, the peak Aboriginal groups in the Northern Territory calling for the reinstatement of the banned drinkers' register before it was abolished. The police certainly indicated that it was a useful tool so, is it going to fix everything? Of course not, but was it useful and should it be reinstated because it's useful, yes it should."

Warren Snowdon joined the attack on the NT government for scrapping the register.

He's the federal member for Lingiari in the Northern Territory, the Minister for Indigenous Health and a resident of Alice Springs.

Mr Snowdon says the register tackled the issue of problem drinkers being able to get hold of alcohol.

"And so when last year, or in fact on July 1, the former Henderson government introduced the banned drinkers' register, it was to much acclaim across the Territory. Indeed, there was strong support for it, and what we discovered over a very short space of time was that within three months alcohol-related assaults across the Northern Territory were down 15 per cent. In Darwin and Palmerston alone, they were down 20 per cent and we had 10,000 fewer antisocial behaviour incidents reported across the Northern Territory. So a significant impact on the Northern Territory community."

Mr Snowdon claims the evidence clearly shows the register worked when it was in place and that alcohol-related issues have increased since it was axed.

"We've seen an immediate spike in drunkenness around Alice Springs. We've seen hordes of people lining up at bottle-os (take away alcohol outlets) and in grog shops. Now it seems to me that a responsible person and I note that the leader of the Opposition very responsibly supported the Prime Minister's view, our view, that the Northern Territory Government should reinstate the banned drinkers' register as a matter of urgency. Responsible people would say it should be done, but unfortunately the Northern Territory Government is acting irresponsibly, irrationally and I think against the best interests of the Northern Territory community."

In contrast to the claims by the Prime Minister and her ministers for Indigenous Affairs and Indigenous Health however, both the Alice Springs hospital and Northern Territory Police say they don't have any figures yet to show whether alcohol-related violence or antisocial behaviour has increased or decreased since the register was dropped.

But the Northern Territory Deputy Chief Minister, also an Alice Springs resident, Robyn Lambley, says she does.

Ms Lambley says the banned drinkers register didn't achieve what it set out to do.

She says police figures show that during the register's period of operation, between July 2011 and August 2012, there were six per cent more assaults than during the previous year.

She also says one individual on the banned register had still been placed into protective custody by police 117 times during its operation.

Police usually take people into protective custody for drunkenness,

Ms Lambley says the Northern Territory Government will do what it thinks is best, not what Canberra wants it to do.

"I think that we as the government of the Northern Territory have the mandate to make decisions around our alcohol policies. We won't be dictated to by Canberra."

The Northern Territory's Minister for Alcohol Rehabilitation and Policy, Dave Tollner, has told the ABC suggestions the Country Liberal government dumped the banned drinkers' register because of pressure from the alcohol lobby are wrong.

"Well, that's absolute tripe (untrue). The fact of the matter is we share the concerns of the Prime Minister, the Opposition leader and all Territorians when it comes to people abusing alcohol. What we're most interested in is finding a practical solution that works and penalising the entire Territory community is not practical and it's clearly not working."

But a professor of Substance Misuse Studies at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin, Peter d'Abbs, says both the federal and Northern Territory governments have got it wrong.

Professor d'Abbs says the banned drinkers' register wasn't in place long enough to show whether it would be a suitable long-term solution or not.

"My view is that it was not in place long enough to be able to make a really informed judgement about whether it was successful or not. I think the figures that are available do point to some small changes, but they're not consistent and so I think some of the claims, probably both by supporters and opponents, go beyond the evidence."

But Professor d'Abbs says the limited evidence suggests the register was having a positive effect in the Northern Territory.

"I think that there is strong anecdotal evidence that since the BDR was dismantled there has been an increase, both in drunkenness in the towns concerned, public drunkenness, and some of the harms that spin off from that. I'm not aware of hard evidence that backs that up at the moment and I think one of the reasons for that is that the Northern Territory Government, having said that it would be very transparent about releasing data, has to my knowledge not made the kind of information available. But anecdotal reports from people like police and others with frontline experience suggest there has been a deterioration."

The register has support among a number of Aboriginal organisations across the Territory.

Donna Ah Chee, from the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, a health service provider in Alice Springs, has told NITV news a summit of Aboriginal organisations in the Northern Territory has reinforced its backing of the banned drinkers' register.

"That's something that Congress was involved in an NT summit on alcohol of a number of key Aboriginal organisations across the Northern Territory, including a number of local community people. It was very clear from that summit that people were calling for the reintroduction of the BDR, so it is disappointing that the current Northern Territory Government is not prepared to do that."

Professor Peter d'Abbs, from the Menzies School of Health Research, says now the Banned Drinkers' Register is gone, the Northern Territory Government is left with something of a vacuum in its alcohol policy.

"The BDR was part of a broader suite of measures that did constitute a policy and of course without the BDR the rest of those measures have effectively fallen over and in some cases also been dismantled. Of course the other point was that the incoming government took the BDR away but had nothing, certainly no well-thought out policy, to put in its place and I think that was a huge mistake."