WA ignored health advice on Kimberley, Pilbera regions’ alcohol abuse problem

WA’s chief health officer asked for major alcohol restrictions in troubled regions, but insead the government opted for a banned drinkers register.

WA chief health officer Dr Andy Robertson’s request for sweeping alcohol restrictions was not honoured by the state government. Picture: The Australian

Western Australia’s influential chief health officer urged the McGowan government to consider sweeping alcohol restrictions across the troubled Kimberley and Pilbara regions before the state instead adopted the hospitality and liquor industry’s preferred model of a banned drinkers register.

A report prepared by state chief health officer Andy Robertson – whose Covid advice has been unfailingly adopted by the McGowan government throughout the pandemic – shows that he recommended the government consider either barring or restricting the sale of mid- and full-strength alcohol across the state’s north, where problem drinking in Indigenous communities has fuelled violence, crime and a health crisis.

Dr Robertson’s submission – dated December 2020, just as a banned drinkers register trial was beginning in the Pilbara, and about six months before a similar program began in the Kimberley – recommended restrictions on the sale of mid- and full-strength alcohol across the regions, or alternatively the introduction of volume restrictions that would meaningfully reduce access to high volumes of alcohol. A banned drinkers register was not mentioned.

While Dr Robertson’s submission did not make any specific recommendations about the daily volume limits that should be introduced, saying only that consideration should be given to the scientific evidence linking standard drink consumption to a variety of harms, the federal Department of Health recommends healthy men and women consume no more than ten standard drinks a week and no more than four standard drinks a day. Under the ‘‘Takeaway Alcohol Management System’’ introduced in the major Kimberley towns of Kununurra and Wyndham as part of the government’s two-year banned drinkers register trial, individuals are limited to no more than one carton of full-strength beer, three bottles of wine, or one litre of spirits and higher-alcohol wines per day.

Dr Robertson said a “meaningful” reduction in supply was a critical element in reducing alcohol-related harm in the Kimberley and the Pilbara, including in reducing the incidence of foetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

“When alcohol is not readily available, there is a positive impact on the volume of alcohol consumed, frontline and hospital pressures, community harmony and social harms,” he wrote.

“Reducing the availability of liquor within communities with high alcohol consumption and related harm will assist to prevent FASD.”

The call from Dr Robertson mirrors similar urgings from WA police commissioner Chris Dawson.

Both men have been at the centre of WA’s Covid response, with the police commissioner also drafted in to lead the state’s vaccine rollout.

The efficacy of the banned drinkers register has been called into question after it was found that only 48 people had been placed on the register in the eight months since the government introduced the initiative.

WA Police Minister Paul Papalia last week said it was still too early to make any calls on the effectiveness of the program.

“I don‘t think there’s any evidence that abolition of alcohol has worked anywhere,” he said.

A spokesman for Mr McGowan said the government was committed to completing the two-year trial.