Abuse of children in WA must be stopped

While national attention focuses on the fire emergency, especially in the southeast, an ongoing tragedy at the opposite end of the continent is too serious to overlook. Children’s lives and safety are at stake from chronic abuse in their own homes. For several days, indigenous affairs editor Paige Taylor has reported on a proposal by Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson for blanket restrictions on alcohol sales across the Kimberley, including the tourist hubs of Broome and Kununurra, for the sake of health, welfare and law and order. Under the proposal, bottle shops would be banned from selling anything but light beer. Full- and mid-strength beer, wine and spirits would be limited to restaurants, pubs and other ­licensed premises.

Family assaults in the northwest more than doubled in the six years between 2012 and 2018 — from 83 a month, or a total of 996 in 2012 to 228 a month or a total of 2740 for 2018. This is despite the fact that fewer than 35,000 people live in the remote towns and communities of the Kimberley. Mr Dawson’s officers consulted indigenous leaders and frontline workers before he asked the state director of liquor licensing for the blanket ban. Half the Kimberley’s residents are indigenous. As senior Jaru woman Doreen Green, who successfully campaigned for a ban on full- and mid-strength takeaway in her home town of Halls Creek 10 years ago, said, it was wrong to describe the proposed alcohol restrictions as racist. It was a human rights issue, she said. Ms Green saw the effects of alcohol abuse on children when she taught in Halls Creek in 2002. She acted then because her students, aged seven and eight, were exposed to family violence and sleep-deprived.

Experience shows such restrictions are effective. Similar action in other parts of the region, such as the small inland Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing 12 years ago, resulted in emergency hospital presentations falling 36 per cent in the first year. A subsequent study found the world’s highest rate of foetal ­alcohol spectrum disorder among children born in and around the area before the restrictions

WA Police was prompted to investigate the extent of alcohol-related crime and harm in the Kimberley after State Coroner Ros Fogliani’s report in February 2019 into the suicides of 13 indigenous children and young people in the region between 2012 and 2016. Almost all the children and young persons who had taken their own lives had grown up in homes marred by high levels of alcohol abuse. In Kununurra, about 70 local children are periodically in trouble with police for crimes they commit in small groups while roaming at night. At least one child has said he preferred a jail cell to going home.

Mr Dawson’s proposal is at odds with the McGowan Labor government and the Australian Hotels Association, which favour the establishment of a banned-drinkers register instead. A register has been in place in the Northern Territory since 2017 and is designed to block known problem drinkers at the point of sale. Experience with the BDR has been mixed. The system can be beaten, with friends buying alcohol for those who have been struck off. Police in the Kimberley favour region-wide ­restrictions to thwart sly-groggers transporting alcohol hundreds of kilometres and selling it at inflated prices. They are best placed to judge the most effective strategies.