Opinion: Lockout laws won’t work due to Australian drinking culture

OPINION: There’s a good reason lockout laws won’t work in Australia, and it’s all to do with the local culture.

THERE’S a good reason lockout laws won’t work in Australia, and it’s all to do with the local culture.

Culture vs. regulation

A BOTTLE of homemade red wine is the first item placed on the dinner table each night by my 92 year old Nonno. As the family gathers, he quietly sips on his ‘vino rosso’. It will be his only glass for the night. Other family members will join him on occasion. It’s what he did in Italy, an intrinsic part of the culture he brought with him to Australia. It’s what we grew up with. And he has never been drunk.

Italians are the biggest producers of wine in the world and consider its consumption an integral part of their ancient culture. They only recently raised the drinking age from 16 and have almost no regulation, laws or taxes on the control of alcohol. Consumption has been falling for 40 years and alcohol-related violence is virtually non-existent in Italy. It’s not so much the volume they drink, but how they drink.

In 2014, the World Health Organisation (WHO) released a report into impacts of alcohol in 200 countries and found Italy had the lowest rate of binge drinking at 6.2%. Only 1.5% of Italian women binge drink and alcohol dependence issues affect just 0.5% of the population.

In Britain, alcohol sales are heavily regulated, while taxes on wine in Ireland and the UK are the highest in Europe at £2.29 and £1.90 per bottle. There is no wine tax in Italy and very little on beer and spirits. UK trading hours during the week for pubs and bars are between 11.30pm — 1.30am weeknights and 1am — 3am weekends. Surely this high-taxing, highly regulated and constrained trading environment has produced virtuous drinking habits among the Brits?

The facts show this is not true. The WHO found 33.4 per cent of the Irish and an extraordinary 48.2 per cent of people in the UK binge drink. The Americans with their drinking age at 21 and similar levels of regulation fare little better with binge drinking at 24.5 per cent, while more than 10 per cent of the United States population have alcohol use disorders.

In the US, Yale researchers studied first and second generation Irish and Italians who migrated to Connecticut. These were two groups which brought with them distinctly different drinking cultures to a new country impacted by the same laws and regulations. Surprisingly, the researchers found these two groups of migrants still mirrored the drinking behaviour of their former homelands. Their new regulatory environment had less of an impact than that of the cultural influence and drinking behaviour they brought from their country of origin.

A night out in Fortitude Valley, one of Brisbane’s biggest party precincts.

Does Australia have a problem with our drinking culture? Or is the issue with societal norms around anti-social behaviour and interpersonal violence? We appear to have acceptable norms for sober behaviour and a more lax set of the same rules we are measured against when drunk. Some behaviours exhibited while drunk are tolerated when they would be inexcusable if sober.

Growing up in Australia means to experience a culture that has normalised binge drinking to the point where in some cases it’s almost glamorised under this second set of social norms. Our social institutions and nightly news deliver a kaleidoscope of confused social cues about the appropriate role of alcohol in our society and its imprecise impacts on interpersonal behaviour. Supposed role models and celebrated sporting heroes are shown recovering from all night benders or in cuffs for wayward behaviour. Perhaps it’s hard to expect otherwise when their team is named after a beer.

Some of our policy makers are now equally as confused by so desperately seeking to dismiss the significant underlying cultural element causing the bad behaviour. The voting public are generally impatient for solutions to difficult social concerns, and tend to reward those who can offer what appear to be unequivocal yet simplistic solutions like adjusting trading hours.

Labor’s Dr Anthony Lynham’s certitude in his policy position means he finds it unimaginable to explore policy making approximated by decision theory. Instead, Dr Lynham is convinced that he can control human behaviour by moralising, taxing and regulating them into submission. He believes this not because he is an anti-violence campaigner, but rather he is an anti-alcohol campaigner whose main objective is to control supply by obliterating the late night industry, showing indifference and knowing full well the underlying culture has not been dealt with. Yet he will have appeased the public in the short term.

In Australia, alcohol is involved in up to 50 per cent of partner violence and was present in 41 per cent of domestic assaults in NSW. Almost half (44 per cent) of all intimate partner homicides between 2000 and 2006 were alcohol-related, involving consumption by the victim, offender, or both. Similarly, US researchers found reported cases of sexual assault involved alcohol approximately 50 per cent of the time.

Not for a second can we regard alcohol as a mitigating circumstance in these crimes or ever allow the removal of culpability from the perpetrator. Yes, the figures are alarming, but consider the fact the other 50 per cent of offenders were sober. The reality is alcohol did not do this: rapists rape, murders take the lives of others and violent grubs bash their domestic partners in the same way they randomly and cowardly punch young people at any time of the day or night.

Prohibitionists like Dr Lynham claim alcohol consumption is driving our young people to commit reckless acts of anti-social and violent behaviour because they lack inhibitions. These conclusions rest on unsupported assumptions and are not supported by research. If alcohol was disinhibiting then Lynham’s logic would suggest an indiscriminate effect irrespective of environmental cues. Should the 50,000 people attending Brisbane’s entertainment precincts on a Saturday night produce 50,000 perpetrators of anti-social behaviour? We have approximately 20 people who are responsible on any given night. That’s .0004%. Put it another way — there are 49,980 people whose behaviour does not cause harm to others.

Self-inflation or disinhibition are weak describers of what drunkenness actually is because these effects of alcohol are selective and inconsistent. Disinhibition suggests the constant retreating of sensitivity to one’s environment. Steele & Joseph’s ‘myopia research’ powerfully suggests the exact opposite is true in that we actually become increasingly sensitive to our immediate environment when drunk.

The death of Brisbane teenager Cole Miller brought the lockout debate to a head.

“I ntoxicated people will be more or less likely to exhibit risky behaviour, depending on the cues provided”. They found when impelling cues were present, intoxicated people reported greater intentions to have unprotected sex than did sober people. When subtle inhibiting cues were present, intoxicated and sober people reported equally cautious intentions. When strong inhibiting cues were present intoxicated people exerted more common sense than did sober people.

Some great research by Heath (1998) found “there is overwhelming historical and cross-cultural evidence that people learn not only how to drink but how to be affected by drink through a process of socialisation”. Numerous experiments conducted under strictly controlled conditions and in different cultures have demonstrated that mood and actions are affected far more by what people think they have drunk than by what they have actually drunk. “In simple terms, this means that people who expect drinking to result in violence become aggressive; those who expect it to make them feel sexy become amorous; those who view it as disinhibiting are demonstrative. If behaviour reflects expectations, then a society gets the drunks it deserves.”

Laws and regulations don’t come close to driving behavioural change. Rather, there are few things more powerful than culture change supported through education. The current debate on trading hours in Queensland creates a diversion away from dealing with the far more complex issue of the cultural dimension of this societal problem, which needs to be addressed. The consequences of not doing so are immense. It is the power of culture which sends consistent and correct signals to our young people about the role of drinking and impacts of unacceptable levels of interpersonal violence in our society and it’s culture which will finally be able to break through that confused set of social messages and provide to our young people a constructive and positive example of how to drink.

Brisbane vs. Newcastle

Queenslander’s should be rightly suspicious of politicians like Dr Anthony Lynham when they express certainty about the outcomes of their stated policies, or conversely, dispense equal certainty regarding the negative consequences of alternative policies.

In the limited ‘trading hour restriction’ research available, optimal Government policy response is neither conclusive nor is the argument settled, particularly when the response involves thousands of jobs losses. The widely named ‘Newcastle solution’ was indeed a solution for the 11 nightclubs in Newcastle, it’s not for the entire state of Queensland. Queensland already has a comprehensive, multifaceted solution targeted for the state’s situational factors. However, this $44M program was scrapped a year ago by the current government.

A series of points can be made to discount the emotional rhetoric offered by Dr Lynham and Attorney-General Yvette D’Ath:

● To quote the Newcastle research, “There is no single approach to alcohol regulation which will ultimately lead to the most desirable outcomes for all involved, no one ‘magic bullet’ which will address alcohol related problems in all social settings”.

”There is no one single answer to the question of ‘what is the most effective mix of restrictions?’ A combination of restrictions which work well in one area may not produce the same outcomes in another. Some restrictions appear to work under a range of different conditions while others appear to be situationaly and/or circumstantially dependent. Ideally, combinations of restrictions should reflect the needs of the population to which they are to be applied and the number of possible combinations is large.” Lynham must have missed this part of the research.

● Lynham’s single mindedness on trading hours neglects countless other observations in research available. Severe restrictions on trading hours and lockouts implemented in Newcastle were required at a time when rates of violence had skyrocketed 80 per cent, awareness campaigns and front line measures were negligible and the relationship between police and licensed premises was uncooperative.

The difference between Newcastle and Queensland could not be more stark. The Queensland Police/venue relationship is collaborative and alongside other stakeholders is considered ‘world’s best practice. Secure taxi ranks, rest and recovery centres, like Lance Mergard’s ‘Night Safe’ are the envy of the nation.

● Research identified the vast majority of incidents occurred in Queensland between midnight and 3am, well before the currently proposed lockout. Newcastle implemented restrictions at a time of increasing violence, rates of violence in Queensland have reduced 25 per cent over 4 years prior to the current government scrapping the program that was measuring the results, along with the scrapped alcohol education program included in the school curriculum and the $1M in funding for alcohol awareness programs.

Brisbane’s Treasury Casino operates around the clock.

Several reviews assessed research evidence for the impact of opening hours on alcohol consumption and related harms concluded “the effect of changes to trading hours was inconsistent but that nevertheless, when applied strategically, such restrictions have the potential to reduce drinking and alcohol related harms”.

The research also concluded that changes to trading hours have some impact on the “patterning of problems of alcohol intoxication across both time and place”. They added that, taken as a whole, the international evidence for “small changes in trading hours is suggestive but not conclusive” and that the effect of such changes is “likely to be closely tied to local contextual factors”

The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Newcastle found “rather than the restrictions, it is possible that negative media publicity and other licensing activity may have pressured hotels in the Newcastle to more rigorously enforce responsible service of alcohol. Similarly, even if the reductions were due to the restrictions imposed, we cannot say for certain that it was the reduction in trading hours, the lockout, the other restrictions or simply better management practices that produced the effect.”

They concluded “the observed reductions in violence were due to the trading hours or the other aspects of the restrictions” because of a temporal shift in assaults towards earlier times in the evening. There was also evidence of a decrease in the proportion of assaults recorded between the hours of 3am and 6am in the year following the intervention. Recorded crime data suggesting that a greater proportion of assaults occurred earlier in the evening in the intervention site following the restrictions.

This temporal shift is mentioned again in research titled Patron Offending and Intoxication in Night-Time Entertainment Districts, found that physical incidents observed in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, Geelong and Wollongong suggested that — “while the trading hours in Wollongong close at 2am, the patterns of intoxication are very similar to those of other cities which close at 5am. The pattern of intoxication occurs earlier in the evening suggesting that earlier trading hours may shift drinking cultures to the evening rather than late-night/early morning economy”.

While the Newcastle research discussed implementing restricted trading hours when rates of violence were unacceptably high it outlined the case for trading hours restrictions were weak in the areas where violence rates were lower. This is the fundamental point of difference between Newcastle and Queensland.

Brunswick Street Mall is another hot spot in the Fortitude Valley precinct.

● Lynham’s love for lockouts is not backed by the Newcastle research which suggests their findings on trading hours “are somewhat confounded by the introduction of a venue lockout at the same time”. They continue to outline “this type of intervention is very limited, and has generated ambiguous results at best. Results have normally indicated an initial reduction in assaults, but this apparent success is often ultimately attributed to the increased police presence in the precinct. Further, decreases have often prompted an eventual increase in assaults which ultimately surpassed pre-intervention rates. The evidence on lockouts thus remains largely inconclusive.”

And further “the findings of this study are ultimately similarly confounded, like previous studies of lockouts, by the combination of the lockout with reduced trading hours. While this measure has clearly changed the dynamic, it is unclear whether that effect has reduced alcohol-related violence”.

The elements of trading hour reductions that work, do so not by changing the culture of drinking or violence but through urban renewal. It’s designed specifically to reduce venue concentration through massively reduced patron attendance ultimately crippling businesses. Patron numbers have fallen by up to 80 per cent in Sydney in Kings Cross, there are almost no venues left to attend.

Anthony Lynham will not waver on reducing trading hours to 3am claiming it will reduce violence up to 27 per cent. He has failed to explain to Queensland why this new arbitrary 3am 27 per cent reduction is an acceptable new benchmark of violence. What if a reduction is observed but the rates of violence are still not in line with community expectations, what then? Do we keep winding back hour by hour till it happens? If his aim is to genuinely reduce violence, why not wind hours back to 10pm?

* Robert Cavallucci was LNP Member for Brisbane Central from 2012-15