Decriminalising public drunkenness will be a nightmare and place police in an impossible position

Woke Victorian government plans to send people home to sober up, rather than locking them up, will be a drunken nightmare.

Going soft on public drunkenness will only encourage Victorians to stagger around boozed.

You need to ask how arresting people in Victoria for being drunk in public ends up being an argument about race.

It has though.

Victoria police have been placed in an impossible position from November this year when nanny state laws kick in with the mad idea that drunks will be transported home to dry out, not jailed.

There is even a push to take boozed-up Victorians to a friend’s house or to a sobering up centre.

Naturally we all feel sorry for Tanya Day the Indigenous woman whose death has driven this so-called reform and for her family.

Reports from a coronial inquest into her death in 2019 revealed she had fallen asleep on a train headed to Melbourne from Bendigo.

Victoria Police will be placed in an impossible position when public drunkenness is decriminalised.

She was taken off the train at Castlemaine and arrested for public drunkenness which would indicate someone had complained.

She was taken to the local police station and the coronial inquest was told her arrest for public drunkenness saw her hit her head at least five times in a holding cell.

Tanya died in hospital from a brain haemorrhage three weeks later.

Beyond tragic.

Fast forward and the Victorian government’s Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes has justified decriminalising public drunkenness around that case, indeed she said “the main reason” was to prevent drunks having to sober up in police cells.

Then the race card gets played.

Minister Symes claims: “We have Aboriginal people who are arrested for the sole offence of being drunk in public and that is causing immense trauma, and in some instances, we know this has resulted in people dying.”

Really! I can only presume we also have non-Aboriginal people arrested for the sole offence of being drunk in public, so why the distinction?

Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes says drunks should not be sobering up in police cells. Picture: Nicki Connolly

Ms Symes doesn’t tell us how many people have died or where and when but inserts an Indigenous issue with alcohol consumption as a reason for changing the law to allow anyone to get smashed on booze and put themselves and everyone else in danger without fear of arrest.

This is a nightmare for serving police. A drunken free-for-all.

Can nobody in Spring Street see what a danger this is for sober Victorians and what a dangerous risk for Victoria Police who might challenge a bunch of drunks who know the law?

It’s summer and outdoor drinking is a national hobby in Australia. Let’s take a group of non- Indigenous 22-year-old males who get smashed on the St Kilda foreshore and are abusive, loud, foul-mouthed and obnoxious.

They’ve gathered outside a couple of local restaurants or the Espy Hotel, and the owners have complained. Are police then expected under these new laws to turn up and gently persuade these drunks it’s time to go home? Or perhaps a chauffeur driven transfer to a friend’s place or to one of these so called sobering up centres, which I doubt even exist?

Our police are not nannies.

Attorney-General Symes claims a sobering up centre will be opened in the CBD so I suppose you could put it alongside the second heroin injecting facility in that Flinders Street building taxpayers paid for.

Real value for money.

And apparently there are already sobering up centres operating on a trial basis in some parts of the state, but she refused this week to discuss the results.

Police Association boss Wayne Gatt didn’t mince his words accusing the state government of having a cavalier approach to negligent and reckless reform.

He made the very real point that he believes it’s dangerous to take away the safety net police have now to manage drunk people in public (arrest) who don’t want a so-called health response to their boozing.

The Ambulance Union secretary Danny Hill is a supporter of the changes, calling sobering up facilities a good step.

Secretary of Victorian Ambulance Union Danny Hill supports the new laws but do his members?

I wonder how the crews on the road, as opposed to the staff at union HQ, will feel about loading up an ambulance with a bunch of drunks to drop them off at a sobering up centre?

It shouldn’t come as any surprise Hill supports anything the Andrews government does.

During the recent state election campaign, he called the Liberal Party a “virus” and said “I don’t ever want them near my members again”.

All this going soft on public drunkenness will do is encourage more people to get smashed and believe it is OK to stagger around boozed.

If you believed you were likely to be picked up by police for being drunk you’d be more likely to order an Uber, jump in a taxi or sober up before leaving a venue.

As it is, entertainment precincts like Chapel St with its three clubs with 24-hour licences spit these people out onto the street at dawn and what follows is often a horror show.

Victoria’s new nanny state laws will see drunks transported home to dry out, not jailed.

There’s rubbish from fast food, vomit from too much cheap grog and drug-affected patrons are becoming traffic hazards.

The idea that scrapping those laws will stop Indigenous people dying in jail and somehow that makes this a sensible reform is an insult.

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