Qld youth crime crisis: Premier casts doubt on mayors’ booze ban

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has cast doubt on three Queensland mayors’ proposal to restrict alcohol sales in their crime-hit towns. VOTE IN OUR POLL

Senior Queensland government officials have been dispatched to Mount Isa and Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk confirmed she is in talks with her Northern Territory counterpart amid an influx of people coming across the border to access alcohol.

But Ms Palaszczuk also poured cold water on a proposal by a trio of North Queensland mayors to bring in a banned drinkers register to restrict alcohol sales, saying she envisaged they would have trouble putting the system in place.

Community groups in Mount Isa have noticed an influx of people coming across the border from areas such as Tennant Creek and Alice Springs following the NT government’s reinstatement of booze bans.

The three Queensland mayors – Mount Isa’s Danielle Slade, Townsville’s Jenny Hill and Cairns’ Bob Manning – have called for a banned drinker register, similar to a policy in the NT, to restrict alcohol sales and reduce crime.

Mayors Bob Manning, Jenny Mill and Danielle Slade

Across the NT, patrons, including tourists, buying alcohol must produce their driver’s licence or passport at bottle shops to be scanned. People can add themselves to the Banned Drinker Register or be put on it by authorities.

Katter’s Australian Party state leader Robbie Katter, whose Traeger electorate is based in Mount Isa, has also been pushing for the measure, and said it would be a tool to address the problem, not a fix, and would give the community “breathing space” so services to help people could be delivered.

Ms Palaszczuk, speaking in Toowoomba on Friday, said Deputy Premier and Local Government Minister Steven Miles would have a look at the proposal, though she put the onus back on the mayors to “state very clearly” how they would implement it.

“From an outsider looking in, I think they may have trouble bringing it in because it would mean tradies, families, mums and dads having to produce identification in those big cities to get alcohol,” she said.

“The Deputy Premier is happy to hear their proposals about how they would implement it and how it would work and how they would fund it.”

Ms Hill said the state should fund the register, considering councils don’t “collect one red cent” from liquor licences and related taxes.

“It should be (funded by the state). Governments make a fortune from liquor taxes and excises — federal and state.”

Ms Palaszczuk acknowledged the influx of people coming across the border from the NT, saying she had spoken to Ms Slade and dispatched a team of senior officials to Mount Isa this week where they remain.

She said she was in discussions with NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles about the issue.

Ms Fyles confirmed she had been speaking to bordering states “over the last couple of months” about alcohol, saying the NT would work with any jurisdiction to “stop cross-jurisdictional movement when it comes to alcohol”.

Originally published as Qld youth crime crisis: Premier casts doubt on mayors’ booze ban