Fyles dresses down bureaucrats for ‘unacceptable’ 8-month Banned Drinker Register data hiatus

GOVERNMENT data into the Banned Drinker Register has finally been released after a major delay, with Alcohol Policy Minister Natasha Fyles saying she gave bureaucrats a dressing down over the “unacceptable” delay

GOVERNMENT data into the NT’s Banned Drinker Register has finally been released after an eight month delay, with Alcohol Policy Minister Natasha Fyles saying she had given bureaucrats a dressing down over the “unacceptable” delay.

The Banned Drinker Register (BDR) data, which is supposed to be released each month, has not been published since June 2020, with Ms Fyles saying the issue was tied to different government departments being unable to merge the statistics they each held.

On Tuesday the government released the report for December 2020, which included data from previous months.

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The Banned Drinker Register data was released after an 8 month hiatus. Picture: iStock

It shows 0.1 per cent of all point of sale alcohol transactions are rejected because someone is found to be on the BDR — a rate that has remained relatively stable since the data was first published in January 2018.

In December 2020, one in every 941 alcohol sales on average were rejected Territory-wide.

There were 3617 people on the BDR as of December, 63 per cent of those due to police bans.

Ms Fyles said the data delay was “unacceptable” and that she had “made that quite clear to the government agencies involved”.

“You’re looking at health, (alcohol) licensing, and police, but we should be able to give Territorians a small amount (of data) even if we are facing these technical issues so they can understand how the BDR works in the NT,” she said.

Alcohol Policy Minister Natasha Fyles. Picture: Che Chorley

Shadow Minister for Alcohol Policy Gerard Maley. Picture: Che Chorley

“It is unacceptable that we saw the data taking significant time to get out.”

Opposition Alcohol Policy spokesman Gerard Maley, who had raised the mysterious absence of the BDR data in January, said the delay was “unacceptable”.

“I don’t think anyone believes an eight month lag in reporting figures is a “technical glitch,” Mr Maley said.

Meanwhile, businesses with Banned Drinker Register scanners are still struggling to detect the Northern Territory’s newfangled driver’s licences.

The issue was first raised in December, after the NT News revealed the new licence had to be placed in a very specific position on the Banned Drinker Register scanner in order for it to work.

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Hospitality NT chief executive Alex Bruce confirmed the problem was ongoing.

He suggested the government focus on “making the BDR work better” before rolling it out to pubs and clubs across the Territory — in reference to the contentious proposal by the independent Liquor Commission to expand the BDR to three pubs in Tennant Creek.