PM Tony Abbott On Australia's Booze And Violence Culture

Australia's prime minister Tony Abbott writes for the Daily Telegraph, in a front page "exclusive" about Sydney's drunken street violence culture, and reveals details of his personal opinions about alcohol and it's role in Australian society that may surprise some:

"...there's a world of difference between having two or three drinks a night and occasionally a bit more on a Saturday night and this new binge culture which sees young people drinking nothing from one week to the next and then, when they drink, not knowing when or how to stop."

So it's not drinking, it's not knowing how to, well, hold your piss (as Australians used to say).


Here's the full piece by PM Abbott:

Like most Australians, I enjoy a drink on social occasions.

However, as a father and as a citizen, I'm appalled by the violent binge drinking culture that now seems so prevalent, especially at "hot spots" in our big cities.
I'm sick of the fact that alcohol-fuelled violence has turned places that should be entertainment precincts into "no-go zones".

Hospital emergency departments should not be overflowing with the victims of substance abuse every Friday and Saturday night. The media should not be full of stories about the latest casualties from our own streets.
 
We've got two problems. The first problem is the binge drinking culture which has become all too prevalent among youngsters over the last couple of decades. I'm realistic enough to know that young people won't always be perfect and that making mistakes along the way is a normal part of growing up.
I certainly made a few mistakes as a younger man and have got into some embarrassing situations.

However, there's a world of difference between having two or three drinks a night and occasionally a bit more on a Saturday night and this new binge culture which sees young people drinking nothing from one week to the next and then, when they drink, not knowing when or how to stop.

The second problem is the rise of the disturbed individual who goes out looking not for a fight but for a victim.

We are seeing these king-hits, or coward punches as they are now being called. They are random acts of unprovoked, gratuitous violence.

Inevitably the target is an individual quietly getting on with life. This is a vicious, horrible change.

Brutal people, often with a history of violence, are getting it into their heads to pick on a vulnerable individual. It is utterly cowardly. It's brutal, it's gratuitous, it's utterly unprovoked and it should be dealt with very severely by the police and the courts.

It is well known that as a university student I played rugby and boxed. Boxing taught me many things, including the power of a single punch. If there's danger from a single punch in a boxing ring, it is multiplied exponentially when it's delivered to an unsuspecting or unprepared victim on a concrete footpath, or in a crowded pub or club.

Tragically, it's not just one young life that is destroyed but many. In an instant, one person becomes a victim, another a criminal - and the lives of their families are irrevocably damaged.

As Prime Minister I accept that the fundamental responsibility in this area lies with state governments. It's not just Barry O'Farrell's problem, it's an issue that communities are facing in suburbs and regional centres across Australia.

While we all want to see the courts absolutely throw the book at people who perpetrate this kind of gratuitous, unprovoked violence, we have to recognise that courts can act only after a crime. The challenge for officialdom at every level, for the police, for pubs and clubs as well as for parents and young people is to tackle the binge drinking culture and the violent behaviour that is accompanying it.

We also have to identify if drugs like steroids are also contributing to this outbreak of violent behaviour. There is enough anecdotal evidence from police and our emergency rooms that what we are seeing is not fuelled by alcohol alone. Alcohol is consumed along with other drugs such as ice and other amphetamines.

We need to tackle this issue in a comprehensive and considered way. We don't need kneejerk reactions and stunts that give the illusion of action, but don't make any real, lasting difference.

We need community solutions between police, local government, pubs and clubs and residents. Some communities have already demonstrated that progress can be made and many pubs, clubs and alcohol providers have discovered it is better to solve a problem and be part of the solution, than have a solution imposed on them.

We have to approach this in a way that makes our streets safer. That means resisting the idea one single action will change everything; that one group is responsible for this problem or one politician has the answer or is the cause. While this is not an easy area, with much control in the hands of state and local governments, the Commonwealth stands ready to work with the states, parents and communities. to tackle this scourge.

Alcohol has and always will be part of life in our country - and most countries. Our challenge is to get the balance right.

Abbott is giving a free pass to alcohol profiteers, saying alcohol is a part of Australian society, and that's it. Is this really the right message to be sending out to youth? It's OK to drink 20 or more alcholic beverages a week, as long as you learn how to hold your piss?

He is also claiming that alcohol alone might not be responsible for drunken rages, and while that may be true, the proof is not in yet. Violent idiots are getting pissed and attacking innocent people. This was happening long before steroids or amphetamines infiltrated Australian culture.

The rest of the story is here

Take Your Spew And Wee Elsewhere

Inner-city Melbourne has become one big public toilet, and vomitorium, according to local councils. They want maggoted youth to stop pissing and puking in the street. How to get the message across? 'Shock' ads, of course.

Be warned, the first ad is particularly chunky :

Beer Banned In Bourke

It may be necessary, but it just sounds so downright UnOrstrahyun :

A violent NSW country town that is drowning in broken glass will have the state's most draconian liquor laws when takeaway sales of bottled beer are banned.

Liquor and Gaming director Albert Gardner said it was the first time a town-wide ban on retail beer sales had been imposed in NSW.

In Bourke, police say most of the alcohol-related violence occurs in the homes of locals, not in the pubs or in the street. It's almost impossible for the cops to stop people guzzling litres of cheap piss in the privacy of their own homes, but it's easy to imagine a day coming when the card you have to show to legally buy booze also reveals the number and ages of the children you have in your care.

Alcohol related crime and violence costs taxpayers billions a year, and that's before the health costs associated with hardcore alcohol abuse are factored in. Millions of Australians getting hammered and harming themselves, or members of their families, or total strangers, is an incredible drain on public resources, and state and federal governments are already showing their tolerance of these rising costs is fading fast.

How long before widespread limits on alcohol sales become a part of everyday life for all Australians?

"Just these, thanks."

"Sir? Why are you buying four cases of beer and ten litres of cask wine?"

"What? It's grand final weekend."

"I know that, sir, but it says here you have two children under the age of five years old. I'm only allowed to sell you six cans of beer, and two bottles of wine. By law."

"Are you fucking shitting me? What in all fuck..."

"Now you're being abusive, sir. Therefore, I can only sell you low alcohol beer and wine. By law."

"That's fu...that's wrong."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that's just the way it is."

"All right. I'll just have four doses of Happyland Ecstasy instead, thanks."

"Grinners or Laughers?"

"Better make it Grinners. My mates might get violent if I laugh my head off when their shitty team is losing."

The Last Days Of The Booze-Soaked Politician

How overdue is this? Very :

A push was last night under way to breathtest NSW politicians after Nationals MP Andrew Fraser's late-night altercation with a female colleague.

Health Minister John Della Bosca and Liberal leader Barry O'Farrell backed the unprecedented call to supply breath testing kits for MPs to ensure they do not turn up drunk.

"Honestly, if you are going to have breathalysers for people driving cranes you should have breathalysers for people writing laws," (Greens MP Dr John) Kaye said.

Why stop at testing for booze? If we have to fucking tolerate having drug dogs sniffing us at music festivals, the local pub and walking to the supermarket, then our state and federal politicians can put up with being drug-tested in their workplace.

20-Somethings All Fkd Up On Drugs And Booze....

Well, A Few Are

By Darryl Mason

Studies that show young people are blasting themselves out of reality on drugs and booze should never be trivialised. Then again, it is traditional for tabloid media to take statistics and turn what could actually be good news, positive news, into another 'Young People Today Are Anti-Social Drug Pigs' set of headlines and community decaying charicatures.

When the stats actually reveal that most Australian 20-somethings are not actually fukk'd n' bombd out of their minds, tabloids must apply the word 'underclass', and load up the intro :

An underclass of young Australians is battling depression, booze, drugs, and poor health, according to a landmark study.

One in five Australians in their mid-20s has a serious mental or physical health problem.

Twice as many suffer depression or anxiety, take illegal drugs, or engage in risky, anti-social behaviour.

What the decades-long, landmark study, the Australian Temperament Project, actually reveals is far more interesting than that guff. But the good stuff, that is the positive news, is dumped beyond the headlines and the first few paragraphs, where most people do not read :

"(They seem) to be an industrious, engaged group of young people..."

About 80 per cent had jobs, 20 per cent were studying, half of them worked 39-50 hours a week and another 10 per cent worked more than 50 hours a week. And 60 per cent were involved in a committed relationship with a partner.

Spin the 'underclass' stats another way, and you get this :

5 out of 6 23-24 year olds do not suffer depression or anxiety.

5 out of 6 do not engage in anti-social behaviour.

5 out of 6 do not use cannabis, or any illegal drugs, and do not binge drink regularly.

4 out of 5 do not have any long-term mental or physical health problems.

Consuming toxic quantities of booze, however, remains a problem. They hit their mid-20s, they drink more, and more often. Then again, isn't 3 or 4 drinks regarded by health officials as a 'binge' now? But as with cannabis, Es, speed and acid, most of them will likely decrease their drinking as they get bored with it, in their late-20s, and tire of hanging in nightclubs and pubs most weekends, when clear-headed work and love and hibernation Saturday nights become more desireable, along with healthier bank balances.

If the worst that can truly be said of a reasonably small number of 23-24 year olds is that they drink too much, then they're not doing too badly after all.

They may not be marrying and having kids at the rate that Baby Boomers did, but they are not soaking up anywhere near the same quantities of drugs and alcohol. More of them have jobs, more of them are working longer hours, and far less of them are dying on the roads.

Plus, more importantly, the mid-20ers are nowhere near as isolated from their families as Boomers were in the 1970s. Look at this remarkable stat, shamefully buried at the bottom of the story :

...94 per cent of young people said their relationship with their parents was important to them.

The best news of all.

Sydney Cops : Alcohol, Not Drugs, Is The Biggest Crime-Related Threat To Community

A stunning quote from a cop on a reality of life fighting crime in Sydney :

"The majority of our work is alcohol related..."

All those cops, all that training, all that money, all that paperwork, and most of their time is spent trying to stop drunk people from smashing the shit out of each other. Alcohol-related violence is not a minority crime. It is the majority of all crimes today in Australia. We are an alcohol-soaked country, and we get hammered and abuse and beat each other into hospitals, or police cells, at rates that regularly rank high in world rankings.

A War On Alcohol, according to Sydney police, is overdue. But that's probably a bit too Taliban-esque for Australians.

"You can take our lives, but you will never take our Bundy & Cokes!"

Then again, we do have laws in Sydney now that allow police, and 'deputised' volunteers, to harass, search, question and arrest people for being "annoying."

So nothing's off the table right now.

To Drink Or Not To Drunk, Heavily

Australia is a binge-drinking nation. Apparently. That's binge-drinking where 'to binge' now means sipping back three or four mildly boozy drinks in an hour. Or a wine-tasting session as it's also known.

Times have changed.

Binge-drinking used to mean chugging half a large bottle of cheap scotch or burboun just before you stumbled into the party or nightclub, and then finishing yourself off with whatever was handy, and didn't have cigarette butts floating in it.

The Rudd government wants to reduce binge-drinking, so the 'Don't Do It!' ad campaigns begin.

The first ad tells us that if you have boozy barbecues with your mates in your suburban backyard and you tell your kid to go in and get dad a beer from the fridge, he'll grow up to have boozy backyard barbecues and will also tell his own kid to go and get dad a beer from the fridge. And so the terrible cycle of beer-fetching passes down through the generations.

At first I thought the message was that too much booze will make you too lazy to go and get your own frigging beer. Or that children who always do what their parents tell them will grow up to become bossy clones of their piss-addled dads.

And why is it that anti-booze and anti-drug ads always seem to be centred on rural or suburban Australians, living under grey skies or washed-out flourescent lighting?

Why no ads showing rich celebrities doing dunny lines of gak at an awards show? Or a politician downing eight martinis in a flash city restaurant before weaving back to parliament? Or the boss of a financial mega-corporation keeping the board waiting while he hides in his executive toilet and tries to empty a tall glass of vodka into his mouth with trembling hands?

You can do anti-drug ads without grimming the shit of the people you're trying to reach and hopefully teach something worthwhile. Here's one example :




Discouraging binge-drinking in Australia is a particularly tough mission, though something with the gloss, humour and style of the one above would be a good start.

A lot of people binge drink because they enjoy getting that utterly smashed and bombed, the faster the better. A far smaller number gulp down six or seven beers, for three or four hours, because they don't like themselves much and they find this kind of self-punishment satisfying. It's next to impossible to convince hard-core alcoholics to do anything they don't want to do, or anything much at all except drink.

But most Australians binge-drink because it feels good. So how do you stop those who enjoy it? Preach moderation? Or go the illegal drugs line and waste millions of dollars telling people who love ecstasy because it makes them feel absolutely awesome that they're really not having fun at all?

If it was my gig to do an ad to discourage people from drinking heavily, particularly now, I'd show someone coming home from the pub, falling against the table as they empty out their pockets, and wallet to discover they have no money left. Just a bit of silver shrapnel. Way overdue credit card and utilities bills on the table catch the eye. They go to make something quick to eat. Nothing to eat in the fridge, the cupboards are next to bare. The milk in the fridge is lumpy. The frustration and hunger is obvious.

They go for a piss. A stream of gold coins arc into the toilet bowl.

Then they puke.

A nearly endless stream of $20 and $50 notes geyser from the mouth, the toilet overflows with cash.

You might not get them to stop binge-drinking, but they'll have a hard time forgetting what they keep blowing all their money on.

Nelson : Boozey Kids More Pissed But Smarter Than You Think

The Rudd government's tax hammer on alcopops was supposed to cut down on teenage binge-drinking. Well, that's what the PM claimed anyway, but we know he is really under the control of the ruthless, heartless Big Wine corporations. Ratchet up the price of alcopops and kids will be forced to turn to Merlot to get their kicks. That was Rudd and Big Wine's conspiratorial plan anyway. But it's backfired.

Opposition leader Brandy Nelson is shocked, stunned, horrified, mortified to discover that teenagers who can no longer afford a six pack of Wild Turkey & Cola have cleverly routed Rudd's cunning tax hike, designed to force youngsters into joining the Chardonnay Set, by....MAKING THEIR OWN ALCOPOPS!

Young people are avoiding buying pre-mixed drinks and are instead mixing their own with more alcohol, Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson says.

"The outcome of this so-called alcopop tax is that the punchbowl is back," Dr Nelson said.

Be warned, the fondue set, salmon mouse and stuffed eggs will surely follow the punchbowl's return to teenage parties.

Because teenagers never thought to mix their own drinks to save money before, Brandy Nelson has done extensive research into this utterly new social phenomenon. Here's what he's learned :

"What young people are now doing is buying full bottles of spirits or they're buying hip flasks, they might buy one bottle of coke, they're mixing them up, they're getting a larger dose of alcohol..."

That's done it. It's not enough that this innovative way of making your own alcopops is already spreading like New York City herpes through MySpace and MaggotedKids.com chatrooms, now Brandy Nelson has gone and opened his big mouth to the national media.

You're not allowed to publish recipes for cooking up crystal meth, but Brandy Nelson sees no harm in telling the children of Australia how to homemake alcopops. And he calls himself a doctor! The hypocrisy...

UPDATE : In other Australian booze related news, a Queensland carpenter stopped to take a roadside toilet break. He dropped his pants, squatted down in the bush and let go. The snake he was dumping on wasn't happy, and sank its fangs into his gear :

"I thought I was gone," Cairns carpenter Daryl Zutt said of his now notorious encounter with a brown snake during a roadside toilet stop in remote Far North Queensland."I thought, ‘Maybe, this is it. Maybe, I’m gonna cark it’."

So he did what any red-blooded Australian bloke would do when he finds fang marks on his cock and knows he is staring sudden death in the face. He went for the rum. But he didn't drink it, he used the cold can of rum to ease the pain of the bite, while his mates raced him to hospital :

"I squatted down … I reckon I must’ve nearly sat on his head," he said.

"As soon as I felt it, I yelled. It really hurt. When it happened, I knew in the back of my mind it was a snake. I seen him coming out from between my legs."

Yeah, we've all had that dream. Especially after rum.

Coming To Your Living Room, Police-Enforced Alcohol-Free Zones

Many Australians agreed with alcohol bans in violence and sex-crime plagued Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. Sure, the meme went, such catch-all bans mean responsible drinkers in those communities have to go without, but if it saves a community from more alcohol related violence and sex crimes then, well, obviously it's necessary, isn't it?

But what happens when alcohol bans are proposed for communities that not Aboriginal?

That is, what if police decide that a certain part of a suburb, or street or apartment block should be made a no-go zone for booze, due to violence and disorder, but the no-go zone is filled with white, middle-class Australians instead of Aboriginals?

What then?

Drinking a glass of wine in your own home could be illegal under extreme new liquor laws that rubber-stamp the use of no-go alcohol zones in NSW.

Under the plan, drinking hotspots across the state can be labelled as "restricted alcohol areas" for up to three years under new laws that are just 10 weeks away.

A document recently published by the State Government reveals the detail of the alcohol bans outlining that areas of "chronic alcohol abuse" can be slapped with a range of restrictions.

"Restrictions will not be limited to indigenous communities," the paper reads.

Under the new laws, any area of the state can be declared a restricted alcohol zone and it applies to the sale of alcohol as well as possession and consumption in any premises - licensed or not.

...it was still undecided as to what penalties might be imposed if someone was caught with alcohol in a banned zone.

Eviction? Enforced alcohol counselling?

Perhaps instead these no-alcohol zone insurgents will be screened for booze before they can enter their neighourhood or apartment building, or forced to endure in-home surveillance cameras.

It is undeniable that the media hysteria surrounding binge drinking and teenage alcohol abuse in recent weeks, with plenty of story meat processed by police media units, has been part of the softening up process for the implementation of alcohol-free zones that include the interiors of peoples' homes.

You can take away an Australian's right to smoke in public, to not care about seat belts, to burn off the rubbish in the back yard instead of sifting it for recyclables, to ride a train without a ticket once or twice in a year of paid for travel and to shout abuse at referees and opposition sporting teams, but if you try and take away the right to get hammered at home and pass out face down in a pizza box while missing the last five minutes of the Friday night game on the wall screen, then you're rolling down a road filled with neon billboards bearing the warning "Trouble Brewing."

This Violent Pisshead Nation


The Cronulla Race Riots : the day the world saw the savage, ugly face of alcohol-fueled violence in Australia


The British still lead the world for alcohol-related violence, abuse and psychotic levels of binge-drinking. But Australians are rapidly closing the gap :

The Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation (AER) says the level of alcohol abuse in Australia is unacceptable, and it is causing more harm than tobacco smoking.

A study commissioned by the AER asked 1,000 people about their experiences with alcohol over the Chrismas-New Year period.

Head of the foundation, Daryl Smeaton, says in that time 2.2 million Australians over the age of 14 experienced physical or verbal abuse from someone who had been drinking.

"It's involved in so much family violence and sexual assault and child abuse," he said.

"It is the major contributor to harms from personal assaults, it still contributes to 30 per cent of the deaths from motor vehicle accidents."

Mr Smeaton says the Federal Government has already identified alcohol as one of the main causes of chronic disease.

"They need to go further, they need to acknowledge that alcohol is the number one health and social problem in Australia," he said.

He says the first step is restricting the trading hours of bars, to prevent drunk people congregating on the streets late at night.

When I was a kid growing up in Sydney's western suburbs, not only was gutter-crawling alcoholism socially acceptable, stumbling drunk children were a perfectly reasonable source of comedy at school and town fetes and local rugby league games. Booze-soaked domestic violence was nothing out of the ordinary. The beaten wife was usually regarded as the problem, not the heavy drinking husband.

I still remember adults in the local supermarket gossiping about a young woman doing her weekly shopping whose entire face was black, blue and purple. Her husband was a known violent alcoholic, but was usually referred to as "a bloody great bloke".

"She shouldn't wind him up like she does," one of the gossiping, older woman said about the savagely beaten young woman. "But she'll learn."

Her husband beat her to death a few years later.

It's a rare day indeed that you see headlines containing the words 'Cannabis Fueled Violence'.

Alcohol Use Amongst Adolescents Linked To Violent, Suicidal Behaviour

Alcohol Fuels Nationwide Violence

They're Coming For The Children

Children of drug-and-alcohol addicted parents would be adopted out, and addicted children under 18 forced into rehab, if extremist conservatives like Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop had their way.

Wait, my mistake. Did I write alcohol addicted parents? Okay, that was wrong. Bishop only wants drug-addicted parents to have their children taken away from them.

From news.com.au :

Liberal MPs on a House of Representatives committee inquiry into illicit drug use have called for a hardline approach to drug policy, including dumping the Government's "harm minimisation policy".

Naturally. Everybody knows that the hardline approach to drug policies always work a charm. Look at how few drug addicts there are in the US, for example, where only tens of millions of people are hooked on pills, cocaine, heroin and ice.

The committee recommends adoption be established as the "default" care option for children aged five and under, where child protection authorities had identified illicit drug use by the parents.

It also recommends amending legislation to allow for children up to 18 years to be placed in mandatory treatment if they are addicted to illicit drugs.

Labor MPs on the committee, in a dissenting report, raised concerns about how the inquiry had been conducted.

Some witnesses had experienced "outright hostility because their expert views did not accord with the personal beliefs or political aims of those questioning them", they said.

Outright hostility from extremists like Bishop? Accused of letting her "personal beliefs or political aims" get in the way of accurately assessing expert opinion? Tell me it's not true. I refuse to believe that.

It should come as no surprise that alcohol abuse wasn't considered anywhere near as dangerous, by conservatives in this parliamentary committee, as all those evil illegal drugs.

So why the focus on only seizing the abused or neglected children of smack junkies or ice freaks? Because most of them are poor and can't afford lawyers to fight back. Rich junkies can afford nannies to make sure their babies' nappies aren't crawling with cockroaches, or that 3 year old Tanya isn't undernourished.

And also because there's only a few thousand families where children are placed directly in harm's way by the use of those drugs by their parents.

If you start talking about alcohol, then the abuse and neglect figures rocket up to hundreds of thousands of families. Tearing apart the culture of abuse spawned by alcohol would mean deconstructing and rewriting the entire fabric of Australian society, where white middle class families, per capita, utterly outrank those of poor Aboriginal families for loading up on booze and beating ten kinds of hell out of their kids.

There's a problem with drug-addicted parents mistreating their children, of course there is, but it's typical of conservatives like Bishop to only focus on the smallest sliver of a far bigger problem. Naturally, the conservative tabloid media and talk back radio will praise politicians like Bishop for taking a "tough stance" and a "zero tolerance" approach to illegal drugs, while filling advertising space flogging the drug of choice for child-beating, kid-abusing mums and dads - alcohol.

Hell, drinking half a case of beer and punching your eight year old son the entire length of the hallway is an Australian tradition. It's how you turn wimpy little boys into real men, apparently.