Mark McGowan and top cop clash over Kimberley booze ban

Mark McGowan and his police commissioner have clashed over ‘rivers of grog’ in the Kimberley.

WA premier Mark McGowan. Picture: Colin Murty

West Australian Premier Mark McGowan and his police commissioner have clashed over “rivers of grog” in the Kimberley, the remote region where successive coroners have drawn links between alcohol, indigenous suicides and extreme family violence.

West Australian Police Commissioner Chris Dawson spoke out on Thursday in favour of blanket alcohol restrictions in the Kimberley­, saying his officers in towns across the region dealt with “significant trauma” caused by too much alcohol consumption.

But later Mr McGowan, who does not want blanket restrictions, used a press conference to publicly disagree with Mr Dawson, saying his proposal to ban bottleshops from selling anything except light beer would hurt tourism.

Mr Dawson had earlier describe­d the damage caused in the Kimberley as visible and palpable­. It was hurting children and even giving them permanent brain damage in the womb, he said.

Mr Dawson spoke to senior indigenou­s people and frontline workers before asking the state directo­r of liquor licensing for the unprecedented restrictions in May last year.

A decision has not been made. The Australian has been told his report cites hospital and domestic violence data including that family violence more than doubled in the region between 2012 and 2018 while the population contracted.

Mr Dawson’s call came after WA State Coroner Ros Fogliani made a point about the damage excessive alcohol consumption had done to almost all of the 13 indigenous children and young people whose suicides she examined, in a report published in February.

They all lived in the Kimberley. The youngest was a 10-year-old girl. Her parents were chronic drinkers and she witnessed shocking domestic violence.

“This is not just police being members of the Temperance Society­, we deal with this 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the harms are real,” Mr Dawson said.

“They affect people. In fact they affect the unborn, so there is a real serious issue that has to be ­addressed.”

Mr McGowan shares the Aust­ralian Hotels Association’s preference for a banned drinkers register to block problem drinkers at the point of sale. He said he understood the police point of view but did not agree with it. “It is a difficult issue and people and governments and regions and communities have been struggling with this for many, many decades,” he said.

“The problem with a blanket restriction is it impacts those people­ who do the right thing; it impacts tourism industry in the northwest, which is very, very ­important; and to a degree it remove­s self-determination. If you just have a blanket approach you are going to hurt the tourism industry and we will hurt jobs across the northwest and we will also see tourists go elsewhere, so it’s not an easy ­solution.”

Mr Dawson’s call comes 12 years after senior women of Fitzroy­ Crossing successfully lobbied­ for a ban on full- and midstrength takeaway alcohol in their Kimberley town.

The ban, which allows people to drink full-strength alcohol in licensed premises, was rolled out to Halls Creek, 290km west, in 2009.

In the years after the bans, paediatrician James Fitzpatrick worked on a research project that showed children before the ban had the highest rates of fetal alcohol­ spectrum disorder in the world. After the bans, the percentage of women in Fitzroy Crossing and Halls Creek who drank alcoho­l in pregnancy fell from 55 per cent to less than 20 per cent.