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by Pamela Lyon
Liquor Licensing in the Northern Territory - particularly the number and type of liquor outlets-has been a source of continuing controversy and serious concern for at least two decades, especially, but not exclusively, among Aboriginal people.
In the early 1970's, a Board of Inquiry noted with alarm the large number of liquor outlets relative to the population, many of which were crude structures, without amenity, selling take-away alcohol. The board concluded that an open-slather approach to licensing - any magistrate could issue one - contributed to the serious and urgent problem of excessive alcohol consumption in the Northern Territory.
Immortalised in song for its "bloody good drinkers", the Territory was already acknowledged as the hardest drinking subdivision of a nation which led - and continues to lead - the English speaking world in alcohol consumption.
While problems among Aborigines were of special concern, due to alcohol's devastating effects on Aboriginal culture, family life, social structure and community development prospects, heavy drinking was found to be by no means a predominantly Aboriginal problem: it was, rather, a deeply entrenched part of Territorian life generally.
However, Aboriginal drinkers, who are more visible in their drinking style in part because they are barred from most drinking venues by dress regulations, made easy targets as "the problem", and they continue to do so today.
The Board of Inquiry made a series of wide-ranging recommendations to address the Territory's alcohol problems, including those specific to Aboriginal communities, but the main recommendation was for the complete redrafting of the Licensing Ordinance 1932-72 and establishment of an independent statutory body to administer it.
Five years later, following the grant of self-government, the NT Liquor Act 1978 was passed and the Liquor Commission was established. Described by the Commission's first chairman as a "piece of social legislation" intended to address the Territory's massive alcohol problems as well as address regulatory concerns, the Liquor Act was one of the most progressive in the nation, for several reasons:
The first Liquor Commission reflected a particular concern for Aboriginal alcohol problems: the chairman came from the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, the "community member" was an Aboriginal man from Arnhem Land and the "legal member" (by law, one member must be a lawyer of at least five years' experience) would become an Aboriginal Land Commissioner.
A decade after the Liquor Act was passed, however, the Northern Territory still consumed considerably more alcohol per head of population over the age of 15 than Australia as a whole - 72% more-according to the Drug and Alcohol Bureau. Average weekly alcohol expenditure in that year, 1988/89, was nearly twice the national average.
The last time such a comparison was made (1984/85), the Territory had 69 % more liquor outlets per capita than the nation. In 1988, it had twice the number of retail liquor licences per 100,000 population over the age of 15 than Western Australia, another hard drinking state, and nearly three times as many take-away outlets.
Not surprisingly, the Territory also had more alcohol-related problems: road fatalities, most of which are alcohol-related, were nearly three times the national rate. The proportion of all deaths that were alcohol-related in the NT (10.8%) was nearly three times the proportion of the nation. Alcohol was also a factor in 70% of imprisonments, the majority of which involved Aboriginal people.
Then, last year, Aboriginal alcohol problems in Central Australia became headlines in the national media. In April, more than 200 Aboriginal women, many painted in traditional style, marched in Alice Springs to protest the continuing devastation wrought by grog on Aboriginal lives and culture.
In June, a report commissioned by Tangentyere Council showed alarmingly high rates of alcohol consumption in Alice Springs and a serious impact on community services. Alcohol was shown to be a factor in about half of the deaths in Alice Springs town camps, a high proportion of which were from violence. Mortality rates among this group were roughly one and a half to two times that for Central Australian Aborigines generally.
In June and July, alcohol from outlets along the Lasseter Highway tourist road to Uluru National Park was implicated in Aboriginal deaths and serious injury, after take-away selling policies at these outlets had been liberalised by the Liquor Commission. Following one death, the Aboriginal community of Imampa appealed by letter to the Human Rights Commission.
Finally in September - 17 years after the Board of Inquiry - Race Discrimination Commissioner Irene Moss called for submissions concerning discrimination and human rights issues as they relate to the distribution of alcohol in the Northern Territory, particularly Central Australia.
What had gone wrong with the social experiment begun with the passage of the Liquor Act ? A number of factors most certainly contribute to the continuing high level of alcohol problems, including a large number of liquor outlets inherited by the Liquor Commission and the hard-drinking culture of the Territory. But the factor that stands out for many Aboriginal people is the Liquor Commission.
Reporting on Aboriginal views regarding the issues underlying Aboriginal deaths in custody in the Northern Territory, Marcia Langton observed:
"The [Liquor] Commission was seen to be acting on behalf of businessmen selling grog, and to be deliberately extending the availability of alcohol ... and profit motive was seen as its overriding principle."[1]
Indeed, the Liquor Commission is today a very different body, philosophically, than it was when it was first constituted. In 1986 it was administratively joined to the Racing and Gaming Commission. That merger, and the appointment as chairman of both bodies of Kelvin Rae, marked a shift in the Liquor Commission's approach to licensing and its sympathy with licence objections based on the "availability hypothesis".
The availability theory states what seems mere common sense: the more available alcohol is, the more people will drink, and the more people drink, the more alcohol-related . problems they will have. The availability theory is by no means uncontroversial, not least due to its potentially uncomfortable effects on the powerful liquor industry and government revenues.
Increasingly, however, alcohol researchers are concluding that prevention programs, to be effective, must include elements which address alcohol availability as well as more traditional strategies such as public education. Elements which effect availability include taxation, trading days and hours, minimum drinking age, advertising, and the number of outlets.
If alcohol availability is an important issue for the general community, it is arguably more so for Aboriginal people. Anthropologists have long observed that Aborigines tend to be "opportunistic" and binge drinkers: they drink when grog is available and until it is gone. This is particularly true of Aboriginal drinkers in remote communities: if alcohol is not easily available, it is more often than not done without. Consequently Aboriginal organisations throughout the NT and elsewhere have focussed on availability as a central issue in getting a handle on Aboriginal drinking problems. This has particularly been the case in Central Australia, where alcohol consumption and the number of liquor outlets per capita is even higher than it is in the Territory generally.
One of the earliest successes was in 1980, before the first Liquor Commission, in a case involving the take-away licence at Glen Helen Lodge, 145km west of Alice Springs. As was then frequently the case in Central Australia, the road house proprietor had long declined to sell take-away alcohol to Aborigines as a matter of personal policy. Whilst paternalistic and apparently racist, such policies effectively served to minimise the ravages of alcohol abuse in Aboriginal communities. No one complained.
In the late 1970's, this informal policy at Glen Helen changed. In Hermannsberg, Papunya, Areyonga and Haasts Bluff, the change was immediately apparent: alcohol-related incidents of violence, property damage, injury and death soared.
On behalf of the communities, the Central Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service (CAALAS) objected to renewal of the Glen Helen take-away licence, citing the massive social harm such sales were causing these communities. The Liquor Commission agreed that these concerns overrode the licensee's need to make a profit and the travelling public's alleged need for take - away alcohol. The off-licence was permanently revoked.
Prior to the merger with the Racing and Gaming Commission, Aboriginal objectors in Central Australia enjoyed similar successes before the Liquor Commission in other cases involving roadhouse off-licences as well as applications for new licences in town.
In Alice Springs, Tangentyere Council led the fight by Aboriginal organisations against new take-away outlets and sought removal of off-licences at small grocery stores, where alcohol was sold as a household staple like bread or milk. Significantly, the early Commission was so concerned about the number of off-licences in Alice Springs that it required removal of a licence before the new Coles supermarket would be granted one.
So successful was the Aboriginal organisations' opposition - admittedly at a cost to CAALAS of thousands of dollars per objection - that no new off-licence was granted in Alice Springs until 1986. After the merger, the Commission under Rae actually overturned a decision by his predecessor, Rob Coutts, not to issue a take-away licence at the Gap Motel.
In granting the licence, the Commission noted that the "experts" disagreed about the importance of availability and concluded:
"The problems of alcohol abuse cannot in our view be solved to any great extent by the removal of a few licenced outlets which are not trading unlawfully."
However, this was a new licence. Four years later, the Gap Motel would be the centre of controversy again when it started a home delivery service, Dial-a-Carton. Such a move, Rae said, was within the licence conditions.
By 1990, the number of takeaway outlets in Alice Springs declined to 19, from a peak of 24, largely due to the consolidation of three bulk selling licences, business closings and the destruction by fire of one outlet. An additional take-away licence was removed with the purchase of a small grocery store by Congress; the Aboriginal MedicalService, and the grog was poured into the street.
But nowhere was the Liquor Commission's attitude toward availability more apparent - and more devastating to Aboriginal people - than it its decision in relation to take-way alcohol along the Lasseter Highway.
The tourist road to Uluru National Park and beyond begins at the Stuart Highway at Erldunda, the first mad house south of Alice Springs. Between Erldunda and the rock there are three liquor outlets that sell take-away alcohol: Mt Ebenezer Roadhouse, Curtin Springs Roadhouse and the Ernest Giles Tavern at Yulara.
Between Mt. Ebenezer and Curtin springs lies the Aboriginal community of Imampa. The Mutitjulu and Docker River Aboriginal communities are also on or near the Lasseter Highway. Anangu from the Pitjantjatjara Lands in South Australia and Ngaanyatjarra Lands in Western Australia also regularly use this road. It is, broadly speaking, in the "vicinity" of 4000-5000 permanent Aboriginal residents, all of whom now reside on dry communities.
Until 1988, most of the take-away alcohol at these outlets was unavailable to Anangu, as Pitjantjatjara people call themselves, mainly as a result of agreements reached between the Pitjantjatjara Council and the licensees. The Erldunda Roadhouse did not have an off-licence; an application was withdrawn in 1984 when the Council objected.
Mt Ebenezer Roadhouse sells only take-away beer and has a limit of six cans, the result of a 1980 Liquor Commission decision to reduce the havoc wrought on nearby Imampa. When the Imampa Community bought the roadhouse in 1987, in part to have even more control over sales to community members, the new licensees agreed not to sell grog to all persons (not just Aborigines) resident of or travelling to or from Pitjantjatjara lands and communities.
The Pitjantjatjara Council has similar agreements with the licensees of the Ernest Giles Tavern and the Kulgera Roadhouse, south of Erldunda, which were noted on the licences. The Council had sought to make the terms of these agreements conditions of the licence, which are more binding, but the Liquor Commission baulked on the grounds that such conditions might contravene theRacial Discrimination Act.
The language of the prohibition is race neutral and 20-28% of those affected are non-Aboriginal, but it is clearly aimed at certain Aboriginal people. Such discriminatory "special measures" are allowed under a number of international covenants to which Australia is a party, provided their intent is to assist a particularly disadvantaged group.
The South Australian Licensing Court, on the other hand, had no difficulty with such a provision. These conditions were imposed on the licences of Maria Roadhouse and Mt Dare Homestead. The "Marla-type conditions" work well at these establishments. At Mt. Dare, the restriction was put in place for the benefit of Aboriginal outstations in the Northern Territory.
At Curtin Springs, however, there was not even a formal agreement. Curtin Springs licensee Peter Severin, as had the Glen Helen licensee before him, had a long-standing personal policy of not selling take-away alcohol to Anangu. A Pitjantjatjara Council attempt to strike a formal agreement was rejected by the Liquor Commission because the informal arrangement "worked".
Then in January 1988 - as happened at Glen Helen - Severin suddenly changed his practice and started selling up to one carton of beer and one four litre cask of wine per person per day to Pitjantjatjara people. The effect was of floodgates opening.
South Australian police reported alarming increases in incidents of public intoxication, violence and other alcohol-related offences, especially at Amata and Ernabella. Nursing sisters at Mutitjulu and Amata reported skyrocketing cases of alcohol-related trauma and injury and apparent child neglect. As adult authority broke down under the influence of alcohol, petrol sniffing among children and young people increased.
At Imampa, community development projects came to a standstill. Alcohol-related violence was so bad, the school closed for 20 weeks when teachers requested an emergency transfer. Cases involving substitute care or guardianship, mainly of children whose parents' drinking put them at risk, increased 11-fold.
Complaints were made to the Liquor Commission and/or to Severin by Pitjantjatjara Council, the Women's Council and individual communities. Rae, responding for the Commission said there was no basis for complaint as Severin was trading lawfully.
As in the Glen Helen case, an objection was made to renewal of the licence. At Curtin Springs, however, revocation of the licence was not sought, only imposition of Marla-type conditions restricting take-away sales. The Council was willing to settle for an agreement as pertained at other outlets in the area.
Unlike at Glen Helen, and despite a long hearing in which evidence of the disastrous effects to Aboriginal communities predominated, the Commission renewed the Curtin Springs licence without restrictions or requiring an agreement. Worse, at exactly the same time, the Commission approved a new, unrestricted take-away licence at Erldunda.
Although Liquor Commission decisions are supposed to be final, Pitjantjatjara Council has applied to the NT Supreme Court to quash the Curtin Springs and Erldunda rulings on grounds of denial of natural justice. Those cases have cleared one judicial hurdle and are still pending.
Since May 1989, when the two decisions were handed down, an Imampa man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for killing his girlfriend under the influence of Erldunda alcohol. In addition, Pitjantjatjara Council has complained to the Liquor Commission in relation to four deaths and one serious burning involving alcohol from Curtin Springs.
After initially dismissing two of the complaints on grounds there was no breach of Curtin Springs licence conditions, the Commission has now agreed to hear all of the complaints and take evidence regarding social damage at hearings scheduled for late August.
It remains to be seen how responsive the Liquor Commission will be to the pleas of traditional Aboriginal people in Pitjantjatjara country. Ironically, the Commission cited the opposition of a small group of Aboriginal women from bush communities in rejecting an application for an on-premises licence for an Aboriginal social club in Alice Springs.
Proposed as a controlled environment for Aboriginal drinking - an alternative to the riverbeds and town camps -Tyeweretye Social Club had been granted a site and construction funds after eight years of lobbying. The case has since been reheard by the Commission and its decision is awaited.
Whether the general issue of liquor licensing in the Northern Territory, and the effect of the Liquor Commission decisions, will be examined by anyone in a position to effect change also remains to be seen. A Sessional Committee of the NT Legislative Assembly is due to report on "the use and abuse of alcohol by the community' in August, but it is unclear whether it will address these issues: neither licensing nor the Liquor Commission is specifically mentioned in the terms of reference.
Chief Minister Marshall Perron has pledged to take strong measures to deal with alcohol problems in the community, but his response to date has been to urge the restriction of Aboriginal rights to drink alcohol and receive benefits cheques in their community of choice, crack down on public drinking, and step up apprehensions for public drunkenness - actions which mainly punish Aboriginal people.
The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody specifically recommended that the Territory review the operation of its liquor laws, examine the availability of alcohol, particularly in Central Australia, and consider appointing an Aboriginal member to the Liquor Commission. The NT Government has yet to act on these recommendations.
Race Discrimination Commissioner Irene Moss has told Aboriginal organisations in Alice Springs that she will go to the Centre in September to investigate the situation further. Perhaps the Human Rights Commission will answer Imampa's plea:
"The Liquor Commission is not interested in us and is not listening to us .... We have been talking for too many years and too many people are dying, and still nobody wants to make the hard decisions to help our people."
Adams, Phillp (1973) "Report of the board of inquiry appointed to inquire concerning the liquor laws of the Northern Territory", Department of the Northern Territory, Canberra.
Department of Community Services and Health (1988) Alcohol in Australia: A Summary of Related Statistics, Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra.
Langton, Marcia (1990) "Too much sorry business", Aboriginal Issues Unit (NT), Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Darwin (included in Vol.5 of National Report)
Lyon, Pamela (1990) "What everybody knows about Alice: a report on the impact of alcohol abuse on the town of Alice Springs", Tangentyere Council, Alice Springs.
NT Department of Health and Community Services (1991) "Submissions from the Department of Health and Community Services to the sessional committee on the use and abuse of alcohol by the community", Darwin.
Pitjantjatjara Council (1990) "Submission to the sessional committee on the use and abuse of alcohol by the community", Alice Springs
Tangentyere Council (1991) "Submission concerning the distribution of alcohol in Central Australia to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission", Alice Springs.
The Sessional Committee of the NT Legislative Assembly on the 'use and abuse of alcohol by the community' reported in early August, making a large number of significant recomntendations to reduce alcohol use and abuse in the community, several of which are pertinent to this report.
In its first sentence in chapter 1 the Committee acknowledges that availability is "central" to the problem of alcohol use and abuse and recommended that the number of liquor outlets in the NT be reduced over three years to more closely reflect the natural per capita level.
The Committee recommended that takeaway sales at roadside inns be discontinued except to overnight visitors and registered local residents. Arrangements between road-house management and Aboriginal communities should be formalised as conditions of the licence, the Committee said. Any other special condition required by the community should be imposed provided the Liquor Commission is satisfied that it is the wish of the majority of the community or warranted in light of past problems.
Finally, tire Committee recommended that the structure and role of the Liquor Commission be reviewed noting;
"The need for the Commission to be more socially responsive."
[1] Langton, M. (1991) "Too Much Sony Business", included in Johnston, E. National Report , RCIADC Vol.5 p319, AGPS, Canberra.
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AboriginalLawB/1991/39.html