Kids’ champion Doreen Green supports more grog bans

Doreen Green’s voice cracks when she talks about “the little ones” who confided in her about alcohol-fuelled chaos at home.

Jaru woman and retired schoolteacher Doreen Green. Picture: Ross Swanborough

Retired schoolteacher Doreen Green’s voice cracks when she talks about “the little ones” who confided in her about alcohol-­fuelled chaos at home.

The senior Jaru woman said her former students, aged seven and eight, came to her for comfort before class in the inland Kimberley town of Halls Creek.

“They would tell me ‘The police took dad’ and ‘Mum’s in hospital’ and ‘People were drunk and fighting’,” she said.

“Sometimes all you could do was give them a hug. It was against Education Department policy but I thought ’These are my people, I can hug these kids’.

“They needed it.”

In 2008, Ms Green, 75, led a movement to ban the sale of full and mid-strength takeaway alcohol in Halls Creek, once described by paediatrician John Boulton as “the Gaza Strip of the Kimberley” because of alcohol-­related injuries.

Ms Green and her supporters succeeded in 2009, two years after the same restrictions became law in the Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing, 290km west. People can drink in pubs and restaurants, but takeaway bans remain.

Ms Green said she was intimidated during the campaign — including with a threat that she would be speared in the leg — but her only regret is that she didn’t fight for the ban sooner.

Alcohol-related hospital admissions fell more than 40 per cent in Fitzroy Crossing and more than 50 per cent in Halls Creek after the bans, a study published in 2019 by Frontiers in Public Health found.

Police are now pushing to extend the bans to every town in the Kimberley, including the tourist hubs of Broome and Kununurra.

Western Australia Police Commissioner Chris Dawson asked the state director of liquor licensing for the blanket restrictions, citing significant harm that alcohol caused and its impacts on law, order, health and welfare.

The Australian Hotels Association’s WA chief executive Bradley Woods called the proposal a “sledgehammer approach” that would only help sly-groggers.

Mr Woods and the McGowan Labor government prefer a banned drinkers register similar to the one in the Northern Territory, although it will first be trialled in the Pilbara region south of the Kimberley.

“It is time for police to stop ignoring the policies of the WA government and get behind their preferred approach of a banned drinkers register which is supported by many in the community and has the co-operation of industry,” Mr Woods said.

Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt welcomed any measure to reduce the impact of alcohol in the Kimberley but said communities must be included in decisions.

Ms Green, who lives in Perth near one of her daughters, cannot forget the kids who arrived at school hungry and sleep-deprived. Adults who were supposed to look after them spent too much on alcohol and were loud all night.

She brought the children food and cushions so they could nap on the floor. “The children are the silent victims in all this,” she said. “People need to remember that.”