The Northern Territory's chief minister has two words for problem drinkers who come to Darwin: they can "piss off".
Adam Giles was in Alice Springs on Tuesday to launch the town's alcohol management plan in a bid to reduce harmful levels of drinking and anti-social behaviour.
The Country Liberals government has championed temporary beat locations (TBLs) with police patrolling bottle shops in regional centres in the NT, excluding Darwin, which local businesspeople say has resulted in a rise in crime as people travel to the capital in order to drink freely.
"There are always people who come in during the wet season in the top end who like to consume alcohol, live in the long grass (sleep rough) and cause trouble," Mr Giles said.
"My message to those people is piss off and get off the country in Darwin, go back to your home communities, stop causing trouble in Darwin, that's not what it's about.
"We want a resilient community, a resilient environment where it's good for everybody to live." He said that having police at bottle shops in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek and Katherine had created "a good balance" between supply and demand of alcohol and anti-social issues, and the government was considering other staffing options to take pressure off police staffing bottle shops.
He said the government is not considering introducing TBLs in Darwin because there are more than 60 takeaway alcohol outlets, and police resourcing would be a bigger problem.
Alice Springs' Alcohol Reference Group decided against implementing an ID-scanning system that would see problem drinkers turned away at the register.
This is a similar plan to the former Labor government's Banned Drinkers Register, which the CLP scrapped as an election promise in 2012 and maintains it will not reinstate.
"Point-of-sale interventions have actually worked," Deputy Chief Minister Peter Styles said.
The People's Alcohol Action Coalition has long called for a floor price on alcohol, but that was also not taken up by the reference group.
"If that was an issue (they) would have raised that and put it in the plan," Mr Styles said.
